I’ve said in the House before that sometimes the questions from my own side are harder than the questions from the other side.

I am honoured and a bit daunted by the prospect. I am House leader, but I think from my perspective—and I’ve been in this House for a while. I have tried and we have tried to work with everyone in this House. I don’t always agree with everyone in this House, and I make it very plain when I don’t. But where we can work together, we will work together. We’re all here for the same reason, and I hope that in the future we do a better job of working together.

The goal of the bill is obvious. It makes sense. It’s not saying that there are no issues, because it’s not that—there is going to be a loss of farmland. Whenever there’s a boundary change, there are going to be people who are impacted. It’s not saying that no one is going to be impacted, but the overall benefit is larger than the problems that can be solved, and that’s our bar for a bill. If the problems caused are greater than the benefit that could happen, then it’s thumbs-down for us—I was going to say “two thumbs-down,” but I can’t do that. It’s pretty simple. If the benefit outweighs the risk—this bill very much does that, and that’s why we can support it.

I’ve talked about it in my remarks—how the auto industry has impacted northern Ontario or is going to impact northern Ontario, and how the electrification of the auto industry is going to have an even bigger impact on northern Ontario.

Regarding the Ring of Fire, the one thing that we are all going to have to realize is, we all have to benefit. There has to be a true partnership with the people who are there now. That has not happened in the past. Indigenous people are still paying the price for that. We have to be cognizant that the people who live there now have to be partners. Unless we realize that, the Ring of Fire may never happen, and that is a very serious issue.

I haven’t been here that many years—I’ve been here 12 years—but there are things that have changed. Before, when the government dropped a bill, or introduced a bill, the opposition would often have a couple of weeks or a month to do the research; we’d have a bit of a heads-up. It wasn’t always friendly. Sometimes when the opposition has more time to do research, it causes the government a bit more trouble, but at the end of the day, the province gets better legislation, because it’s our job to find the faults, if they are there.