I’m honoured to rise today, on International Women’s Day, to recognize and celebrate the achievements and resiliency of women, girls and gender-diverse people.

When I look around this House and when I go to my constituency office or my office here at Queen’s Park, I’m thankful for the strong, smart women I have the opportunity to work with each and every day who are making a difference and improving people’s lives.

And while I would like to say that we have come a long way, I also want to say that we have much more work to do.

This year’s International Women’s Day focus is on gender equity because simply aiming for equal opportunity is not enough. Equity is an act of inclusion. It is something that each and every one of us is capable of incorporating into our day-to-day lives. Paving a path for gender equity is not limited to women. They need allies—they need allies who identify as men, like I do—working together to forge a path that propels the social, economic and political advancements of women in our words, actions and laws.

Speaker, the caring professions are disproportionately comprised of women workers, who tend to be paid less and are especially negatively affected by laws such as Bill 124—which is why, today, I ask all of us in this House that we make a commitment to work with all sectors and communities to eliminate the barriers women face.

We can do better, we must do better, and we will do better.

It’s an honour to rise to participate in second reading of Bill 71.

I want to be very clear to everyone watching today: Mining is going to play a critical role in Ontario having a competitive advantage in the fast-growing climate economy. We need critical minerals that are mined in a sustainable, ethical way. We need to have a mining-to-manufacturing supply chain not only to build electric vehicles but to also build renewable energy generation, battery storage, micro-grids, electrified public transit. Critical minerals are going to play a vital role, so I want to say to the government, let’s not be hostile to renewable energy anymore. Let’s have this Critical Minerals Strategy be a part of building low-cost renewable energy and resilient grids.

I also want to say to government—and I said this to the Liberals when they were in power—if we’re going to avoid delays in developing the Ring of Fire, then two key critical things need to happen. One is a comprehensive, sustainable land use planning system in place ahead of time to minimize environmental damage and to ensure that we mine in a both fiscally and environmentally sustainable way; and, two, that we work with Indigenous communities to ensure that there’s free, informed and prior consent in the development of mining projects and that we work with those mining companies—and I have met with them—who want to have Indigenous equity ownership as part of mining development in the north.

We can do this. Sudbury’s already leading the way globally in developing sustainable mining practices, especially if you look at places like the mining innovation centre in Sudbury—

One is the phased financial assurances plan that’s in the bill. There can be very good reasons why you would phase that in, but we need to do it in a way that protects Ontario taxpayers. The 2015 Auditor General report says there’s $3.1 billion worth of liabilities of abandoned mines to the people of Ontario. Let’s avoid that in this legislation, moving forward, to protect taxpayers.

And the second one is through the deferred closure plans. Again, I can see the rationale to have flexibility in closure plans, but we need to ensure that those are approved by an independent third party, not by mining companies themselves, to avoid a conflict of interest. So let’s fix that at committee, Speaker.

We need to ensure that the financial assurances system protects the taxpayers of Ontario. According to the Auditor General, we have $3.1 billion in abandoned mining liability; some estimate that’s as high as $7.6 billion now. So we need to ensure that the system is set up in a way to protect the people of Ontario.

And secondly, deferring closure plans: I can understand why we would need flexibility there, but the approval should be done by an independent third party, not by the mining companies themselves.

So I would ask for those changes at committee.

I appreciate the member’s question. Actually, it has been well documented that environmental regulations not only improve communities, like what we’ve seen in Sudbury, but, most of the time, it improves the company’s bottom line. Most of the best fiscally run companies also comply with environmental regulations and have strong environmental and social goals. The reason is because if you are going to manage your ESG goals well, you’re likely going to manage your financial goals well. The two go hand in hand. We’ve seen that.

Sudbury now is seen as a global leader in sustainable mining practices. Everything from electrifying mining equipment to re-mining tailing ponds—there are a whole host of opportunities that, if we have the proper regulations in place, we can be economically competitive in and be a beacon to the world around sustainable mining practices.

I think it’s a false narrative to say that we don’t need regulations or that we need to overregulate. We need smart regulations that protect the public, the environment and the people of this province.