Thank you so much to the member for his remarks. It’s always great to hear from the communities, and particularly Windsor–Tecumseh, who are a great example—and, of course, the member from Elgin–Middlesex–London as well. These communities had such great industrial development back decades ago, before Ontario was hollowed out, and now, what we’re seeing is the reindustrialization of Ontario. It’s very exciting, and this bill is very much a part of it.

I wonder if the member could outline the on-the-ground impacts for the community in terms of jobs and the resulting benefits that that will bring. You’ve seen it before. And what’s the vision for your community and those around from this exciting announcement through Bill 63?

I was listening to the remarks from the member for Windsor–Tecumseh and I wondered if he could provide any background information on the mega-site initiative. We understand that the province announced it in 2019 and then last year, or I guess in 2021, the government hired a consulting firm, Newmark, to oversee the site selection process. However, there has not been any release of the findings from Newmark, which would help us understand why this particular site was selected.

Can the member tell us why the government has not disclosed the report from that consulting firm that was overseeing the site selection process?

We’ve been listening to the opposition for much of the afternoon speaking about a number of concerns—the daycare, the agency location that was just mentioned, the Ambassador Bridge—none of which are actually relevant to this particular piece of legislation. They are imagining things that might go wrong, that might be negative. They are being relatively pessimistic, in my opinion. This government has been optimistic. We are optimistic about our future and the future of our children.

Through the Speaker, I ask the member if he would comment on whether this bill represents a positive step forward, a positive vision for St. Thomas and Elgin county.

It’s always an honour to be able to stand in this House—I believe it’s the first time since the break that I’ve been able to speak—and to start the debate, or my portion of the debate, on Bill 63, An Act respecting the adjustment of the boundary between the City of St. Thomas and the Municipality of Central Elgin.

I listened all day to the debate, particularly to the Minister of Municipal Affairs, but before I talk about what’s inside the bill, I’d like to talk just for a few minutes, in my role as House leader, about the process of the bill. The bill was dropped yesterday in the House—fine. That’s the first time we saw it. Then, last night, it’s up for debate. I don’t know how long the government has been looking at it. I take it that they’ve been looking at this for a long time, and I appreciate that, but in my years of business, when you’re burned a couple times, you get shy.

If you’ll remember, a bill went through this House that you needed to use the “notwithstanding” clause to get something done, and you clapped and you hit each other on the back. You were so happy. And this had to be done right away. And a week later—it was the shortest life in history; it was the Men in Black bill—you rescinded the whole thing. It had to go so quickly.

If you will remember another bill, a bill about broadband, which I completely supported except for the middle part that had the MZO in—the minister of the crown at the time, when I asked him a question, said, “Well, if you don’t like that part, just rip it out and pretend it’s not there.” Now, in my personal career in business, if somebody did that to me twice, you know what? I wouldn’t do business with them the third time, and I think every business person here would have the same opinion. So forgive us if we’re a bit reluctant, when it’s dropped, no briefing—so we’re expected now to debate this bill. And it’s our job as the official opposition, yes, to be critical, but also we are proud Ontarians. We want this province to move forward just as much as you do, believe it or not—just as much. The government can’t even produce a briefing before this bill is likely going to get to second reading. So I hope with the businesses you’re working with to secure these contracts, that you know how to do business with them better than you know how to do the business in this House, honestly.

It is really hard to do that. It’s really hard. And notwithstanding that, when you get a bill—and I will give credit where credit is due on this bill. At least this bill is on one subject, right? We’ve had a few hours to look through it, haven’t even had a full day, and it’s on one subject.

So the first thing we do is you have to look for the poison pill in the few hours we’re getting, and when you only get a few hours, you get suspicious right away, right? The bill is dropped, and then the next day, a full day of debate. Well, then you get suspicious: What are we missing. What are we missing? That’s where it starts. So forgive us for being critical and a bit less than trusting of what the government is reporting. That’s where we’re starting from.

And just for future reference, if the way—and I’m going to sound like I’ve been here way too long, and maybe I have; there are lots of people trying to end that. In days of yore, a bill could drop and you might have a week or two weeks to be able to do your research, to call the people who were involved in the bill, so you could actually have a fulsome debate. That hasn’t occurred with this government, and it also hurts this government. It hurts your government because if you think that when you have to rescind a bill after a week—if you think that was a proud moment, then you are sadly mistaken, sadly mistaken. Every one of you could have stood in your place and said, “Oh, no, no. We shouldn’t do the ‘notwithstanding’ clause,” and you sat—oh no, you didn’t. You cheered, until a week later, I didn’t see any cheering. And that’s hurting yourself. And I—

I listened intently to the Minister of Municipal Affairs this morning, a minister who I try to work with. I don’t agree with everything philosophically; often we disagree philosophically, but he’s a good minister to work with.

Coming from municipal government, as many of us do, his explanation of having a big project—and this is a mega-site for, obviously, a big project; we don’t know what exactly. And I fully understand that in business there are certain commercial things we can’t make public. I also understand, as a business, you want to deal with one municipality. As a former councillor, I understand that. That makes perfect sense to me. That explanation I don’t have a problem with. You want a business, regardless of size, but the bigger they get—they want to be able to deal with one municipality. If you’re dealing with rules—and I always go back to my own personal business; I had farms in a couple of townships, and even that was difficult sometimes. So I can only imagine what it is like when you’re dealing with a huge business.

One part, as a farmer, and as someone who is very conscious of loss of agricultural land—there will be some loss of agricultural land here, and that is somewhat contentious. But as you will recall, the official opposition, under my name—we proposed something called an agri-cultural impact assessment. The government voted against it and said it was too much red tape. But I would put forward, just in my mind, how this would have worked on this project—yes, there’s going to be agricultural land lost, but there is also, on one side, a huge benefit. So is there a bigger benefit for this project as a whole compared to the production capacity that’s lost? And I think I don’t have purview to everything that we’re looking at, but the proximity to the 401, the proximity to the town, the size of the project, the land that is needed, in my mind, the way I would see that process going, it wouldn’t take years, it wouldn’t take—it would—well, click, click, click, yes.

So there is going to be some opposition regarding the loss of land, but I think that the benefits of this project, if it is for batteries for electric vehicles—we all know where the car manufacturing sector is going. We all want the car manufacturing sector to succeed, regardless of where we are in the province.

Questions?

Point of order.

Obviously, we are in a very competitive environment and, really, when there are issues with sites that need to be corrected, let’s do that without it being seen by all of our competition. The reviews give an opportunity for the municipalities to go and bolster their sites and make sure that they become ready in the long term.

That is predominantly the competitive nature of our industry, and we need to protect Ontario’s competitiveness as we go forward and bring more sites online.

Do you?

Thank you to the member for Timiskaming–Cochrane for your excellent 20-minute presentation.

My question is this: When you rush a bill through like this, who loses out?

Thank you to the member. It is now time for questions. I recognize the member for Windsor–Tecumseh.

Report continues in volume B.

Thank you, Speaker. I’ll be short so my friend member Babikian can ask his question quickly.

Anyway, I appreciate the comments from member Vanthof. Thank you very much to the NDP caucus for supporting the bill at second reading. I know that the crux of this bill is in our industrial land shortage.

I wanted to quote a 2021 report from the Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing on industrial land shortage, which says, “If suitable land and buildings are not available, prospective manufacturers will bypass Ontario and those already here will invest elsewhere.”

It goes on to say, “The shortage of industrial land threatens” the manufacturing “sector that is vital to Ontario’s economic and social well-being.”

The goal of the bill that we are debating today is to try and solve this very problem in the St. Thomas-Central Elgin area. I wanted to find out if the member agrees with the findings of this report as a general part of supporting this bill.

I would like to continue on that question. I appreciate the question from the member from Scarborough–Agincourt and I want to continue on it, because there’s an assumption in that question that global warming is going to be a gradual warming. What we’re seeing around the world is actually climate chaos. We saw it last year in Pakistan, for example. A third of the country was flooded and the farmland was destroyed and the crops were destroyed. There were all kinds of problems. We’ve got fires in British Columbia. We had fires in California.

What I think people are saying when we’re saying what my colleague is saying—and I’ll ask him about this—is that we need to protect every acre of farmland because global warming means that we’re facing climate chaos. Places like Ontario are places where we have to protect the farmland because there’s going to be a greater need for this farmland in the future. Have I got that right?

This is a relatively simple bill. It reduces the complexity of creating a mega-site. As a businessman, would you agree that sometimes you have to move quickly or opportunities are lost, and that this is one of those times?

Okay. I thank the deputy House leader for her indulgence. Thank you very much.

The government wants to promote business and jobs. I understand that. So do we, so do I. But when major changes have to be made—when I work with someone who has a plan and all of a sudden the plan has to change in mid-direction, you go, “Whoa, I’m not sure I want to keep working with this.” We all lose when stuff is rushed through and mistakes are made, simply because they’re rushed through too quickly, and you don’t respect others’ opinions just because you don’t agree with them philosophically.

There is a lot of potential in northern Ontario, but don’t think that you can just transfer what you produce here or south of here. We’re not going to be growing field tomatoes in Timiskaming any time soon. There’s a lot of things we’re not going to be growing. We’re not going to be growing 200-bushel-an-acre corn. We grow silage corn. We are way far away from growing profitable grain corn in northern Ontario. We are way far away from growing consistently safe soybeans. We have early frost. We grow soybeans, great soybeans—

And one other thing: The land in northern Ontario isn’t sitting there idling now. It grows trees, and you take 10 million acres out of trees—

Yes, to a point. We have to treat every acre as precious. Some acres we have to give up for other projects, but we have to treat every acre as precious.

The thing that most people are missing with global warming is that in areas like California, if it gets to the point where they can no longer grow crops profitably, efficiently or possibly, they’re not just going to sit around and say, “Well, we’ll just let Ontario go its own way and things will be great in Ontario.” When climate change really impacts, it’s going to cause huge problems. It’s not just that we can grow better crops in northern Ontario, but that there’s going to be huge global food problems.

Across, they’re going, “No, no.” Having to rescind a bill a week after and actually kind of state that it never happened—“Oh, no, that happens all the time.” Well, if that happened in business, you’d never do business with that group again.

And this isn’t a simple bill; there’s no such thing as a simple bill. But this bill is fairly straightforward, compared to some. It deals with one area, one issue. If there had been more confidence in the government, I think it would have been easier—

Thank you, Madam Speaker—

I always enjoy listening to the depth of analysis of the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane. Of course, he has the experience and the wealth of knowledge, being a member of this House for a long time. I understand his concern regarding losing farmland. But the interesting aspect that I personally discovered during the finance committee’s pre-budget hearings in Windsor—we had a representative from the farm industry, and they brought to our attention that, because of climate warming, many of the lands in the north are opening now for farming. He brought his own personal experience; he’s using now—

Yes.