Thank you, my colleagues—a wonderful, wonderful presentation.

Speaker, we know that the world wants Ontario’s critical minerals, and we are the first government to pave the way for this exciting sector by investing in exploration and innovation through our Critical Minerals Strategy and cutting unnecessary red tape so companies can build more mines.

Speaker, my question to my colleague is, why is it so important that qualified professionals certify all aspects of a closure plan?

Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, I grew up in a town that had a mine called Moose Mountain Mine. My mother was actually one of only four women who worked at the mine.

During the 1970s, as the member from Sudbury may recall, the mine was shuttered, and it devastated Capreol, as it devastates communities in the north. That’s why I am so touched, so proud to be part of a government that recognizes the value of the minerals in northern Ontario. The member from Sudbury spoke about how often people in northern Ontario feel that they are being neglected by governments in southern Ontario, but this is a government that recognizes all of the opportunities.

Could either of my colleagues please speak to why we as a government are not only bringing forward a bill, Bill 71, to expedite mining, but investing in all of the minerals in northern Ontario and the economic opportunities it will bring to the north and spinoffs to the south?

It’s an excellent question, Speaker. This is about an overall Critical Minerals Strategy that benefits Ontario north and south, east and west. Our government has put a great deal of thought into the proposed legislation and how, through that legislation, we can address the supply chain issues that the world is experiencing.

That’s why we launched the Critical Minerals Strategy, with targeted investments like the Ontario Junior Exploration Program. That’s all part of our plan, along with the Critical Minerals Innovation Fund, for building this province and securing the supply chain. It is about integrating the province and putting it all together.

Again, government leads, government creates a plan and then we unleash the potential through legislation like this.

What I’m hearing, though, from the members opposite: They say it’s flawed but they won’t point out details. They say they want to make changes but they won’t tell us what they are. We believe that this is a sound, thoughtful piece of proposed legislation and it builds on the original intent of the original act that is being amended. Let’s remember this: What goes unchanged is that, “The purpose of this act is to encourage prospecting, registration of mining claims”—and I hope the members opposite don’t mind if I read from the actual act, which is going to continue—

I hope they support that concept, which is fundamental to this bill—

Thank you for the question. In fact, yes, I did actually visit this laboratory called MIRARCO at Laurentian University. One of the areas of research they look into is how to efficiently extract the mineral value from mine tailings. I think it’s a good thing that we’re moving forward on this legislation. I know that there’s a section of the mining bill that deals specifically with recovering minerals from tailings and waste. It has passed, but it hasn’t been proclaimed. It calls on improvements in the state of the land or the site on which the tailings sit after the recovery operations compared to before.

This legislation tries to change it to “comparable,” and it lets you choose which one is comparable. Either the public health and safety or the environment, only one of them has to be comparable. As I read the bill, one of them could be worse. As long as one of those two, environment or public health and safety, is comparable, then it’s okay, and I—

I appreciate interacting with my colleague from the independent Liberals. It did put a smile on my face when he said that we seem to be moving very quickly on this legislation with mines, because we’ve been only working on it for four years. Of course, the Ring of Fire was announced in 2007, and the previous Liberal government sat on it for 11 years. I can understand that he thinks we’re moving a little bit too fast for this.

I did hear that he’s ready for it to move forward into second reading, but I was wondering if he is supportive and specifically on—what I found so intriguing is that, having met with stakeholders, the waste of previous mining operations was almost impossible to mine out for critical minerals that are in there.

Is he very supportive personally of being able to mine out what was waste in a mine from before and to clean up that area?

It’s an honour to rise in the House this afternoon to speak in support of Bill 71, the Building More Mines Act. I will be sharing my time today with my friend from Sarnia–Lambton.

I want to congratulate the Minister of Mines, both on his historic win last June and on the first piece of legislation to modernize the Mining Act. I also want to thank his team for all their work on this, including Caroline Eisen, who was an intern in my office.

I also want to recognize the great work of the Minister of Northern Development on the Critical Minerals Strategy, which was published last year.

Speaker, this is an exciting time for the mining industry. As the minister said, critical minerals are essential for the transition to a green economy, and Ontario is the best place in the world to mine. Our mines have incredible potential to benefit Ontario, Canada and the entire world.

This is also exciting for my own family, including my son Joey, who is a student in the department of mining at Queen’s University. His class is here in Toronto this week attending the PDAC conference, and they had a chance to visit Queen’s Park yesterday and meet the Minister of Mines. I want to thank the minister again for making time in his busy schedule to meet with the students who will be our next generation of leaders in the mining industry.

Speaker, the minister put it well earlier: The demand for critical minerals in key strategic sectors is growing exponentially both in Canada and around the world. The International Energy Agency predicts that demand for lithium could grow by over 50 times by 2040, and the demand for cobalt, graphite and nickel could be 30 times higher than today, with other critical minerals not far behind. We simply don’t have the supply we need to meet this skyrocketing demand. These minerals are critical for the production of electric vehicles, green energy and batteries, but also for telecommunications, drugs, national defence, and much more. And in most cases, there are no substitutes for these critical minerals. We’re often forced to depend on foreign countries that don’t share our world-class standards on the environment, labour and human rights.

For example, over 70% of the world’s cobalt comes from the Congo, which relies on child labour, often in horrific conditions. I’m reading a book called Cobalt Red, by Harvard professor Siddharth Kara, that documents some of this, that was just published in January. Cobalt is toxic and is often found near radioactive uranium, and yet children in the Congo often dig for it with their bare hands, without any protective equipment. Many are victims of physical and sexual abuse, or even worse, they’re buried alive—their bodies never found. When the previous Liberal government created their electric vehicle incentive of up to $14,000 per vehicle, most of the vehicles that were eligible contained cobalt from the Congo—up to 15 kilograms per vehicle. That’s an inconvenient truth, as Al Gore might say.

I’ll give one more example. Ukraine has Europe’s largest deposits of critical minerals, worth trillions of dollars, including 500,000 tonnes of lithium in eastern Ukraine, one of the largest lithium deposits in the world. It is no coincidence that eastern Ukraine has been the focus of Russia’s genocidal and colonial invasion. Just before the last invasion began, Ukraine began to auction off exploration permits to develop its resources in lithium, cobalt, nickel and other critical minerals that could have made it a leader in the green energy economy of the future.

As the minister said, Canada and its allies urgently need stable and responsible sources of key strategic critical minerals. Fortunately, Ontario is home to tremendous mineral wealth, with a trillion dollars worth of mineral deposits in the Ring of Fire alone. We also have the highest environmental health and safety standards. But, as the minister said, the process of opening and closing a mine takes far too long and costs far too much. It shouldn’t take 15 years to get a mining permit. We need to do better.

Bill 71 would modernize the Mining Act, eliminating unnecessary red tape while maintaining Ontario’s world-class environmental protections. As I said, we need to take these steps to support the transition to a green economy. Many of the changes are based on the advice from mining industry experts and leaders, including many who are here in Toronto at the PDAC convention this week.

I’d like to give just one example, Speaker. Over the last two months, I had the opportunity to travel across the province for pre-budget consultations with the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs. We visited Kenora, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Ottawa, Kingston, Windsor and Essex, and the minister’s own city of Timmins. In Sudbury, we had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Nadia Mykytczuk, the president and CEO of MIRARCO Mining Innovation. She reports that Canada’s mines generate 650 million tonnes of mine waste every year, and there are billions of tonnes more at abandoned mines across the province. These are sites that are expensive for the government to manage and to ensure that dangerous elements like lead, mercury and arsenic don’t poison our lakes and rivers. But there are hundreds of billions of dollars of cobalt, nickel and other critical materials in this mine waste across the province. Modern biotechnology and biomining can help recover these critical minerals, including cobalt, using micro-organisms like bacteria.

That’s why it’s so exciting to see that, if passed, Bill 71 would make it easier for companies to get permits to recover minerals from mine waste sites, including abandoned mines.

Speaker, yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to host the Treasury Board round table with the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and 15 leaders from local chambers around the province, including Timmins Chamber of Commerce in the minister’s own riding and the Greater Sudbury chamber. I want to take the opportunity to thank everybody who joined us and, especially, our moderator, Daniel, and Andrea Carmona from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. I’m proud to say there was great excitement and support for Bill 71, and especially for the work we’re doing to build new, vertical, made-in-Ontario supply chains that would connect critical minerals from the north, including the Ring of Fire, to manufacturing in the south of Ontario.

Ford Motor Co. assembly in Oakville, where I worked for 31 years, is being transformed into a global hub for manufacturing electric vehicles.

In the parliamentary assistant’s community of Windsor-Essex, Stellantis and LG Energy Solution are investing over $5 billion in the first large-scale electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant in Canada.

And just last month, we were able to source a $471-million investment from Magna International, including a new electric vehicle battery enclosure facility in Peel region, with at least 560 new jobs.

Over the past two years alone, we attracted almost $17 billion in investment from global auto manufacturers to build electric vehicles and batteries right across Ontario, thanks to our Premier and his vision to make Ontario a leader in both responsible and sustainable mining, and manufacturing the cars and the batteries of the future.

Speaker, although the minister is right—some of the changes he’s making may seem minor to the people outside the mining industry—Bill 71 is a very important part of the Premier’s vision. It will help to unlock the full potential of Ontario’s critical minerals and provide real benefits to all Ontarians, especially in the north and Indigenous communities.

As the minister said, we will continue to consult with our stakeholders about Bill 71 as we move forward. But I want to join the minister in urging all members of this House to support this bill. We can’t get to the green, zero-carbon future that we all want without building more mines, and we need to build them now for the future of this province.