We have a government that takes a very clear line when it comes to regulations: They hate them. They hate regulations. They hate them so much that they’ve created a Ministry of Red Tape Reduction because there’s red tape everywhere for them. Sometimes, if you misdiagnose something as red tape, you know what you end up with? Yellow tape. You end up with yellow tape sometimes. And so they don’t have a good track record when it comes to this.

This government has the ability to move really quickly. When it comes to the north, not so much, but here we talk about haste when it comes to removing minerals out of the ground. But when it comes to road safety in the north, like we hear from our amazing member from Mushkegowuk-James Bay, they don’t move too quick. And when it comes to clean drinking water in the north, they’re dragging their feet. They blame the feds. They pass the buck.

I’d like to hear from our member, how does this government choose its priorities when it comes to the north?

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—