My question is for the Minister of Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development.

Last week, the Northern Ontario Farm Innovation Alliance, NOFIA, had their annual conference in person for the first time in several years. The conference presented an opportunity for farmers, stakeholders and industry experts from northern and remote communities to gather and discuss ideas for the agri-food sector. Farmers are a critical component of Ontario’s economic strength. Without their hard work and their dedication, our communities and our province would not thrive.

Speaker, can the minister please explain what our government is doing to support the hard-working men and women of our northern and remote agri-food sector?

It’s clear that the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund is providing much-needed leadership in supporting our agri-food sector in the north. Under the previous Liberal government, many of our farmers from northern and remote communities felt like they were not respected. Seeing the minister engaging so collaboratively with this vital industry is incredibly encouraging.

Northern agriculture is vital to the strength and the success of our province’s economy, with northern farms generating over $230 million in revenue and an increasing number of individuals joining this sector.

Can the minister please explain how changes to the NOHFC will better support the agri-food industry across the north, as well as help new farmers enter into this sector?

I want to thank the honourable member for his question.

Northern Ontario farmers feed cities, and increasingly our vast region is in play for Canada’s agri-food agriculture sector in a meaningful way.

I can feel the palpable enthusiasm we shared with the people of the Northern Ontario Farm Innovation Alliance around some of the work that the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund is doing to ensure that they have the tools to be a major player in agriculture and agri-food production in Canada.

We’re expanding capacity, lengthening the ability for seasons with farm technology. We’re investing in tile drainage in Thunder Bay with the agricultural research group. We’re creating terminals in places like Rainy River, in my riding, which have allowed Rainy River to become the largest canola and corn producer in northern Ontario.

These are real developments that are putting our agriculture sector in northern Ontario at the top of the list as destinations for farming.

Anyway, I want to recognize another important aspect of agriculture. It’s very near and dear to me, and it’s important, I know, to the member for Kiiwetinoong. That is food security and food sovereignty for our Indigenous communities. Whether they’re in the southern part of northern Ontario or in isolated communities—we’re working with no less than four or five Indigenous communities on really serious and important agriculture projects.

Mr. Speaker, I promised the member from Kiiwetinoong that we would work with April Mckay at Keewaywin First Nation as she grows out her community gardening capacity, teaching young people how to operate community gardens; Eabametoong in agriculture technology and storage; Thessalon First Nation’s Bio Centre. And, of course, we appreciate the work being done in Wikwemikong First Nation on some other farming.

We’re going to be there for Indigenous communities.

The entire north is going to have a strong presence in the agriculture footprint of Canada.

Yes, we do. The Minister of the Environment questions that, but believe it or not, we all want this province to succeed.

So if you take that, the benefits, I think, would—knowing what we know now, after 20-some hours, the benefits would likely outweigh the loss of agricultural land. I’m saying that—I don’t know, because I haven’t had that long look at the bill, but that’s where I am and that’s where I think we are.

Having said that—and we’ve had a few comments about where we stand on this bill. I’m going to go way out on a limb here. We’re going to support this bill on second reading.

Interjection: Oh, that is way out.

Interjections.

We need to make sure that they have confidence in them, but they also have to have confidence in how this place works, and the way this place is supposed to work is you have some time to look at the bill before second reading, which we didn’t have; you have some time during committee to look at the finer points of the bill; and then you have a final debate on third reading. And the bill doesn’t actually pass into law until royal assent.

But this bill warrants second reading based on what we’ve seen. Much of the reluctance on this bill is the way other bills have been presented in the past and the way this bill was presented now.

So I’m not going to veer off the topic of the bill, but I am going to veer a little bit to the car industry. This hasn’t been the case lately, because now the car industry is starting to come back with electric cars, but the car industry has had some tough times, St. Thomas especially. I know a little bit about that part of the world; I have some relatives there. Other members here who are from northern Ontario will have heard this refrain: “If only we had a car plant in wherever we were, things would be great.” Well, do you know what? When the auto sector wasn’t doing that well, things weren’t that great.

The mining sector—and the Minister of Mines will know this very well—is, I’d say, booming. There are lots of discoveries, and much of that is going to be working into the car sector—the nickel. Also, in the processing—in my riding, the Electra Battery Materials Corp. is going to be refining. It is encouraging that northern Ontario is going to play a role in the electric vehicle industry. Northern Ontario always played a role in the car industry—a lot of iron and steel came from northern Ontario—but now we’re going to play, hopefully, a bigger role.

So please don’t think that those of us who don’t come from southwestern Ontario don’t care what happens in southwestern Ontario, because we do. Because it impacts everyone in this province, in this country—it does.

I’ve got five minutes. In closing, I think this part bears repeating—I can repeat myself; the deputy House leader is going to knock me down again. We get along, but she’s doing her job. If we could do one thing better in working together—we oppose each other philosophically. That’s the great thing about this province: We can get along personally and oppose each other philosophically. Actually, I’m pretty sure that even in our respective parties, there are philosophical differences on various issues. But this would work much better if everyone had more time—and not to hold the process up, because I think the fact they’re trying to rush through things sometimes actually makes things go slower than if we gave everyone the respect to have the time to look at the thing.

So I hope that when this bill passes second reading that we don’t slow things down, but we actually have the respect of the Legislature, the respect to get this done correctly, to have it go to committee and make sure—not everyone’s going to be happy but that everyone is heard.

I think the biggest thing, the biggest aspect of our democratic system that we have to be cognizant of is that everyone has to feel that they’re heard, and sometimes that doesn’t happen. And when that doesn’t happen, people become much more polarized. No one in this room who has worked so hard to be able to sit in this House wants that to happen.

I’d just like to repeat, we are going to vote for this on second reading. It’s something we need to be competitive in this province, and everyone on all sides knows that. We all diminish ourselves when we really push the one side. We have philosophical differences, but if we really want to say, “This one side that we know, you know nothing about this”—that’s not my style. It’s not our style.

We are in favour of it, in principle, on second reading. Hopefully we’ll have a good committee process, and hopefully we can attract generational businesses, green generational businesses, green generational systems, so that our kids and our grandkids and our great-grandkids can benefit from living in this great place as well and we can protect our natural resources.

In my closing two minutes, I’m going to go back to, we do need to have some kind of system in Ontario to recognize the gift we have of farmland, to recognize that you can’t put a moratorium on it. You can’t put a moratorium: “Thou shalt not ever build on farmland.” That won’t work. But you have to realize that farmland is a resource that we just can’t squander, and there’s a difference. There is a difference. Until we have a process like that, we are going to keep losing it, and our kids, our grandkids and our great-grandkids that I spoke of just a minute ago when we were all talking about generational industries—agriculture is a generational industry too. No matter how we do it, we’re going to need the soil. And we are going to lose some with this. We have to be cognizant of that, and we have to be careful.

With that, I thank you very much for your indulgence. I thank the deputy House leader. You’re our deputy House leader still, right?