This petition is titled “Raise Social Assistance Rates.” It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and far from adequate to cover the rising costs of food and rent: $733 for individuals on OW and $1,227 for ODSP;

“Whereas an open letter to the Premier and two cabinet ministers, signed by over 230 organizations, recommends that social assistance rates be doubled for both Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP);

“Whereas the recent small budget increase of 5% for ODSP still leaves these citizens below the poverty line, both they and those receiving the frozen OW rates are struggling to live in this time of alarming inflation;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized in its CERB program that a ‘basic income’ of $2,000 per month was the standard support required by individuals who lost their employment during the pandemic;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to double social assistance rates for OW and ODSP.”

I fully support this petition. I would like to thank Sally Palmer for it. I will affix my signature to it.

Resuming the debate adjourned on March 8, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 71, An Act to amend the Mining Act / Projet de loi 71, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les mines.

I wasn’t sure if my colleagues across the aisle were going to finish their time or not, but I’m glad to start off the afternoon session and just say it really is a pleasure to be able to rise today and of course speak to another great government bill, Bill 71, the Building More Mines Act.

When introducing the Building More Mines Act, the Minister of Mines hit the nail on the head when he explained this bill and why it was being introduced. Quite frankly, it should not take 15 years to build and open a mine. The process to open and close a mine is too time-consuming and costly. This has led to project delays and lost opportunities for Ontario’s mineral exploration and mining sector. At a time when Ontario is securing game-changing investments in its growing automotive sector, we have to do better. If passed, these changes would benefit the entire mineral sector and advance Ontario’s plan to build an integrated supply chain. We will integrate the supply chain by connecting mineral producers in the north, including those in the Ring of Fire, with the manufacturing sector in the south.

As many of you know, I was first elected to this House in 2018, but I have been around provincial politics for pretty much my entire life. I know that the government often must clean up the mess of the one that came before—and no, I’m not referring to the Harris-Eves government, following Bob Rae’s adventures with four-day workweeks. But I am talking about the years of neglect that the mining sector faced under the McGuinty-Wynne Liberals. So I’ll be taking a few minutes to highlight their lowlights on the mining file and their mistreatment of northern Ontario overall.

Although I am a proud resident of Kitchener–Conestoga, many of you will know that I grew up in the beautiful town of North Bay. North Bay is about three and a half, four hours north of here, and it relies very, very heavily on the mining sector and forestry sector to provide good jobs for its residents. North Bay has roughly about 50,000 people nowadays, and it has gone through several challenges. We’ve seen what happened under the McGuinty-Wynne Liberals—it drove great jobs out of North Bay. It’s very unfortunate, because that has such a big, we’ll just say, ancillary bearing on a lot of the other things that happen.

When we lose good jobs in the mining sector in North Bay and other communities around northern Ontario, it has a profound impact on the commercial sector, on housing, and all kinds of different things.

I want to give a quick example that really demonstrated the Wynne Liberals’ approach to the mining sector. I’m going to quote a few things here, Madam Speaker. The following exchange took place during the pre-budget consultation in 2013—we’ll just paraphrase out of here, so I hope it’s okay, and the Clerks will correct me, I’m sure. These members are no longer members in the House anymore, so I think I can use their names, but I guess we’ll find out shortly.

Mr. Norm Miller was speaking here: “You mentioned the mining tax. What specifically did you say about the mining tax?”

In response, Ms. Soo Wong, who was a member as well—and this is as part of the McGuinty-Wynne government—said, “We have one of the lowest in all of Canada.”

Mr. Miller responded, “So you want to raise the mining tax—”

And Ms. Wong said, “Absolutely.” Even though we had one of the lowest mining tax rates in Canada, she wanted to raise it to be able to pay for a lot of their other “projects” that they had under way. My colleagues in the Liberal benches must be saying, “Well, that was 2013. That’s not us anymore.” Fair enough, but again, she was approved as a candidate. This was someone who wanted to raise the mining taxes to some of the most exorbitant in Canada. She was a candidate under former Liberal leader Steven Del Duca in the last provincial election.

We can look at some more recent examples. In the fall of 2017, months before the Liberals lost power, another member made comments that truly angered northern Ontario. Some of you may remember this. I know the member from Nepean will probably remember this very well. There was a headline that appeared in BayToday.ca. The headline was “Do We Live In ‘No Man’s Land?’”

“During a speech by Parry Sound–Muskoka MPP Norm Miller on the north, Lou Rinaldi”—

To be fair here, let’s also tell Lou’s side of the story, which I think is kind of interesting. His excuse for the heckling was that he was speaking to the now current Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. But there was just one problem with his comments: The minister formerly known as MPP Fedeli had left the room several minutes before the heckling. Unsurprisingly, the excuse didn’t help.

The following quotes came from a great mayor of North Bay and also a former member of this House, AL McDonald—just like the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, one of North Bay’s greatest mayors:

“I understand in the heat of debate in the Legislature and life, sometimes things are said that shouldn’t be said. I also believe it’s the solution to the problem that defines us. Make no mistake, your comments may have damaged northern Ontario’s brand.

“MPP Lou Rinaldi, we work hard to promote our city and northern Ontario as a great place to live, raise a family. We try every day to attract business/industry, retain our youth and promote our region.

“It’s a challenge all of us face here in building our northern cities and northern Ontario. Comments like this are a kick in the teeth for all of us that believe in our region.”

I wholeheartedly agree, and quite frankly, it didn’t go well.

Let’s see if he had better luck the next day the Legislature sat. I know we’re all waiting on pins and needles to find out what happened.

The Liberal MPP was then disciplined by the Speaker the following Monday after apparently—again, some of the members may remember member Rinaldi saying, “Maybe we should take it outside,” to talk a little bit more about what was going on in the House.

So here we are again with the Liberals being very out of touch with what is happening in northern Ontario.

Further debate?

Louie—sweet Lou.

Great segue, because my next line is, “And this is why I will be coming back to the bill,” which ties it all in—amazing; it’s incredible.

If anyone, just out of curiosity, was wondering how the story of Mr. Rinaldi ended, he finished a distant third in the 2018 election, losing his seat to the current Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. To my knowledge, that minister hasn’t asked anybody to take it outside yet here in the Legislature, but hey, anything can happen.

Let’s track it back a little bit to why we’re here today. The proposed package of legislative amendments that have been posted on the Environmental Registry is open to the public until April 16, 2023, so I encourage everybody to go ahead and check that out. Realistically, Ontario has a responsibility to support the development of the critical minerals supply chain. This is a simple fact as industries continue to change as we move forward into the 21st century. Whether it’s building EV batteries or components for semiconductors, the world will need more critical minerals. Ontario has such an important role to play in mining, and I’m glad our government is supporting the sector through this bill.

This is a stark contrast, as I had mentioned earlier, in comparison to the former Liberal government. The Ring of Fire was mentioned in every speech from the throne from 2010 to 2017, and in most budgets. They didn’t even bother to mention it in their 2018 speech from the throne, which was, quite frankly, their speech on the way out the door.

I will quote from a few of these:

“Your government is fully committed to working with northerners, Aboriginal communities and mining partners to fully realize the Ring of Fire’s potential.” That quote was from the throne speech on March 8, 2010.

I’ll read another one: “Your government remains fully committed to turning the vast, untapped potential of the Ring of Fire into good, leading-edge northern jobs.” That was from November 22, 2011.

Another one: “A commitment of $1 billion to develop strategic transportation infrastructure in the Ring of Fire and unlock the north’s economic growth and jobs potential”—that was from the budget of the summer of 2014.

As I looked over the years of quotes, I noticed that the promises got bigger but the actions did not. To put it another way, they failed when concerning the Ring of Fire—and I’ve got a little bit of Johnny Cash that we might work in here, but I think maybe just for the sake of time, we’ll skip the singing today.

Realistically, when you go and look through these quotes, by 2016, they had really stopped pretending to care. This comes from a 2016 TVO article on the budget:

“No movement on the Ring of Fire.

“The government made no new commitments on the Ring of Fire, despite reports of a mining sector that’s anxious about the slow pace of work.” That doesn’t sound fully committed to me.

The business world took notice of their fear, of the former Liberal government’s lack of commitment.

When we look at what the Ontario Chamber of Commerce has said in relation to these, we’ll say, lacklustre benchmarks that the previous government had hit, the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport was welcoming the Ontario chamber—they were just here yesterday, I believe, colleagues. Was it yesterday? It was really great to hear them talk a lot about what this government has done right.

We’ve got a very, very positive relationship moving forward with the Ontario chamber, but this was not the case with the Liberals back in 2015. That year, the chamber released its report, Where Are We Now? A Report Card on the Ring of Fire. I just want to highlight a few pieces that came from that. The truly sad thing about these failing grades was that the chamber wanted to work with the government. So why did they give the government of the time a failing report card? According to a CBC article from the time—and I’ll just read through it a little bit—the Ontario Chamber of Commerce executives said that they wanted to talk about projects like the Ring of Fire, but government officials just weren’t returning phone calls. Quite frankly, colleagues, that’s shameful.

Members of this House will know I have five children and I get to see a lot of report cards. So let’s go over the Liberals’ report card for a little bit here. The first grade was for accelerating development of the Ring of Fire. Colleagues, can anyone guess what the grade for whether or not they were able to expedite these types of things was?

The second grade—it does get a little bit better, but we don’t really get above a C here, so—

Interjection.

So what was the grade for following through on the regional framework agreement between the Chiefs of Matawa member First Nations and the government of Ontario? They got a C on this one, so we’re getting a little bit better here.

The next grade was for addressing the physical infrastructure deficit of the Ring of Fire: C-minus.

Oh, it gets better: on capturing more value-added processes in Ontario, a D.

Finally, on addressing the barriers that impede the development of the Ring of Fire and the competitiveness of the mining sector, they got another C.

With report cards like that, it’s no wonder that Ontarians grounded them in 2018. They had a lot of failing grades, so that grounding may last a little while. I’d love for some of the members of the Liberal opposition to stand up and refute me on this in questions and comments, but we’ll see what happens. I’m looking forward to it.

With that, I’m proud to say that our government has given the mining industry—and the opportunity for future generations—the respect that they deserve. I think that’s very important. The Liberals would not answer the call on this file, but we will.

Earlier this week, our government made an announcement at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada—or PDAC—annual convention in Toronto. We announced that our government has approved the terms of reference for the northern road link, and this is very important. The northern road link will connect First Nations communities to the Ontario highway network and the critical mineral deposits that are contained within the Ring of Fire. This will help secure the supply chain for electric vehicle manufacturing here in Ontario. Those at the announcement included the Minister of Mines; the Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks; the Minister of Northern Development; the Minister of Indigenous Affairs; and, of course, the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. Really, I think that just goes to show how serious we are in this government about seeing these things, which the Liberals failed for so many years on, actually come to fruition. In a Liberal government, ministers wouldn’t even pick up the phone, whereas we’re sending four or five ministers to PDAC to make sure that we are engaging with the sector as best we can. We know how critical it is to support this industry, especially when we move into the future. The mining industry in Ontario is responsible for—this is a pretty staggering number—over 75,000 jobs across the province. It produces $11.1 billion worth of minerals that contribute approximately $13 billion to Ontario’s now—ready for this, colleagues?—for the first time in history, trillion-dollar economy.

The Ontario government released its Critical Minerals Strategy last year—a five-year plan that includes addressing regulatory challenges to get mines built more efficiently. And the Building More Mines Act that we’re here to speak about today is an important part of that plan. In November, our government launched the Critical Minerals Innovation Fund as part of that Critical Minerals Strategy. We are supporting the critical minerals sector by funding research, development and commercialization projects to stimulate investments in Ontario’s critical minerals supply chain and protect the province’s economic interests—some tongue twisters in there. Holy smokes.

As I kind of digress here a little bit—these funds really are very important in positioning Ontario as a global leader in supplying critical minerals to grow the economy. These create good-paying jobs and connect resources for future clean technology that I think we can all agree is going to be very important as we move forward. These are such things as electric or hybrid vehicles that we will be manufacturing here in the province of Ontario.

The goals of the fund are to help increase exploration, development, mining production and processing of critical minerals within the province to enhance collaboration between industry, post-secondary institutions, start-ups, research and development firms. As part of this week’s event at PDAC, the Minister of Mines announced the first recipients of that fund.

As I begin to wrap up my remarks here today, I really want to hammer home the magnitude of mining opportunities in Ontario.

The Ring of Fire region has long-term potential to produce chromite, cobalt, nickel, copper and platinum. Critical minerals like these play a role in the future of low- and zero-emission vehicles and transportation, and they help support the transition to a cleaner, sustainable global economy. We are able to mine, refine and manufacture here in Ontario, here in Canada, where we have some of the most stringent regulations in the world—where we’re not relying on countries like China or Russia to be mining, refining and then shipping, exporting these into the areas where they’re actually manufactured.

The world will continue to increase demand for these minerals as we move forward through the 21st century. We have a chance to lead the way with world-class environmental standards, like I mentioned. These are opportunities that Ontario cannot afford to lose. After years of missing out under the Liberals, we are finally back on track.

As we continue our work to land historic investment in new technologies, such as battery manufacturing, we need to support mining in the province as well. So I commend the Minister of Mines for his steady commitment.

As I said, I am very, very proud to support this bill. I cannot wait to see what it’s going to do for communities in northern Ontario, like the community that I came from, that I left when I was in my 20s, just like many other people in my age bracket who could not find a quality job. Too many jobs were chased out of the province, whether it be through manufacturing, whether it be through the forestry sector or through the mining sector, under the previous Liberal government. I am glad to see this progressive Conservative government stand up for not only the people of Ontario, but more importantly, the people of northern Ontario.

F?

What else is new?

Questions?

It is unfortunate that the member opposite would use a situation like that for what I, at least, perceive to be political gain.

On June 2, 2022, I think the people of Ontario spoke pretty loud and clear as to who they trusted to actually move forward with better jobs, a better economy, better schools, and better health care. I certainly won’t be taking any lessons from the members opposite when it comes to those types of things.

I will say, just on the issue of consultation, I think it’s very important that we continue the good work that has been done. Certainly, the Minister of Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development and the Minister of Mines have been consulting as they’ve moved forward through this process, and it’s really great to see that so many things are going to happen for northern communities.

When you look at the benefits that these types of jobs can create in small northern communities, it truly is exponential. It has so many great opportunities to spin off, just from those jobs within the mine. I heard someone bring up earlier how communities often will spring up around these mines. Quite frankly, that’s how we got several of our northern communities.

It will be really great to see investment come into northern Ontario to be able to provide good-paying jobs. It is, quite frankly, going to benefit the community greatly.

Thank you very much for the question.

I think that there’s some misconception here. This bill doesn’t mean that all checks and balances are just thrown out the window. What we’re looking at doing is figuring out ways that we can remove redundancies, remove red tape, remove regulation that impedes the overall opening of these mines. It doesn’t necessarily say that just because you want to open a mine you get to just do it. It still has to go through all of the procedures that would be in place.

What we’re trying to make sure of is that we look at ways that we can expedite some of those things. Obviously, there will be more that will come in regulation with this bill, just as with any bill that has been passed through this House for many, many years. What we want to do is make sure that we’re able to provide certainty for folks who are looking to come in and make investments into our mining sector here in the province. This is a good way of doing that.

I think that’s really what we’re looking at here—what do these changes mean? The member from Burlington hit the nail on the head—to pull from my remarks earlier. When we look at the—I don’t want to use the term “brain drain,” but there have been a lot of people from northern Ontario who have almost been forced to move south, because there just aren’t the jobs there. Quite frankly, I am a by-product of that; I’m thankful. We’ve been in Waterloo region 10 years now. We love it and still get a chance to get back home to North Bay every now and then. We still have quite a bit of family up there.

At the end of the day, we want to provide good-paying jobs to the people of northern Ontario, and we want to make sure that we’re mining sustainably and that we’re able to then bring that product to southern Ontario, so that we can have, really, a whole ecosystem when it comes to—almost from farm to table, if you will, when we look at the things that we’re going to be doing with critical minerals and auto manufacturing here in the province. A cyclical economy is a great thing for everyone.

Thank you to the member.

I would like to offer your government a failing grade when it comes to your obligation under Treaty 9, as a signatory to Treaty 9 to respect Indigenous rights and the right to be consulted—free, prior, informed consent.

A failing grade for Conservatives when it comes to the treatment of Indigenous communities is not new. You said that you’ve been around provincial politics all your life, so you certainly will be familiar with Ipperwash. Ipperwash was a confrontation that ended in the death of Dudley George. There was a long inquiry, and in that inquiry, the Premier of the day, Conservative Premier Mike Harris, said that he wanted the bleeping “Indians out of the park.”

So what do you have to say to people who have absolutely no trust—why should anyone trust Conservative governments to do the right thing when it comes to Indigenous communities in this province?

Thank you to the member from Kitchener–Conestoga for his comments.

He started out his comments by saying that an open-pit mine shouldn’t take 15 years, but a lot of what’s being addressed in this bill is hard rock mining. I’m just learning about all this myself, but from speaking to mining executives and people like my seatmate here, who is very experienced in mining, 15 years was a very reasonable amount of time to open a mine; the communications from your party seem to suggest that it wasn’t.

I’m wondering how, specifically, this bill allows a mine to be open in less than 15 years.

Thank you to the member from Kitchener–Conestoga for his presentation—I have to admit I’ve never been so excited about the mining industry until what I’ve heard today.

Could you provide us an overview of the top five changes that we can anticipate and what the goal is, what we’re looking to achieve, with this act?

As I mentioned before, we continue to consult with First Nations—not only that, but they’re partners in many of these projects. It is really important to understand that, at the end of the day, the Indigenous partners we have and First Nations people of this province and of this country are the ones who are going to benefit from these jobs. They are going to be able to stay in their communities, and certainly that’s very important. I’ve had many conversations with Indigenous leaders across this province, and that’s one of the things they have come to me and said—that they have so many young people who want to be able to stay in their communities but just can’t find good enough jobs to be able to do that, and then they have to move to places like Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and, typically, Sudbury just to be able to be close to their family, which could be a two-hour flight.

So it’s really important, of course, that we continue with consultation, but it’s also really important to keep the finish line in sight and make sure that we’re able to provide good-paying jobs to the people of Ontario.

This bill is going to lead to more investment, more streamlined regulations and, hopefully, good jobs for the people of Ontario.

Thank you to the member from Kitchener–Conestoga for his very thoughtful information.

Ontario has a responsibility to expand on the critical mining industry. We were talking about the 10 to 15 years for approval of a project, but that’s before a shovel starts to dig.

Given the future of our province, the jobs, the global positioning, will the member from Kitchener–Conestoga comment on what this act will do to ensure we are the number one jurisdiction for mining globally?

Question?

Before I begin my formal remarks, I just want to acknowledge that it is International Women’s Day. On Saturday, I was marching in the International Women’s Day parade, and I was speaking with some women from the Equal Pay Coalition. They were telling me a little bit of the history there. In 1970, there was a federal commission that recommended equal pay for work of equal value, and the Pay Equity Act was passed in 2017, 47 years later. It was actually enacted in 2020. So it took 50 years to get from the recommendation for equal pay for work of equal value to actually having the act enacted, and still, today, women make 69 cents on every dollar that men do. So there are actions this government can take, and I would say the first action this government should take in respect to International Women’s Day is to repeal Bill 124, which suppresses the wages of nurses and other health care professionals, which are professions where the predominant number of employees are women. I just wanted to start with that.

I heard the member opposite talking about his love for northern Ontario. I also have a love for northern Ontario. I lived off and on in Geraldton for four years, in the 1980s. Geraldton had a silver mine at one point. At that time, it was a logging town. And today, there’s a giant open-pit mine in Geraldton, so it’s another mining centre.

There are 37 active mining operations in Ontario. They generate $11 billion worth of minerals every year. They contribute $8 billion to the GDP. There are 75,000 jobs in mining and related fields, and they paid $2.9 billion in wages and salaries last year. The mining sector is a vital sector to our economy, and it also creates the opportunity to not only mine the minerals here, but to smelt the minerals and to build the cars and other products from the minerals that are mined.

I will speak to this partly because I’m from Oshawa. Everybody in my family—my brother works at General Motors, my father, grandfather. My great-grandfather was building horse carriages when they converted over to building cars.

Interjection.

The member from Sudbury was saying today that if you take a car and remove everything that is mined from it, the only thing you’re left with are plastic bumpers, the windshields, and the vinyl and foam on the seats—the rest of it is all mined, it’s all aluminum and steel.

The mining sector is vital to all of the things that we enjoy in our modern lives. So we need to support the mining sector.

That’s why, generally, we want to support this bill, but there are some flaws with the bill, and I’ll get to the flaws in a little bit.

I mentioned that I lived in Geraldton. Most of my work was in the logging sector, but I did have a job through one winter cutting line for a mining company. I was a sub-sub-subcontractor for a mining company. The idea of cutting line is that you cut a grid pattern through the bush, and, every 100 feet, you put up a marker. Then somebody comes along after you with a magnetometer and measures the magnetic readings in the land, they create a map of the magnetic readings and, from that, they can determine where they think the iron is, and, from that, they can determine—and this was a gold prospecting operation—where they could send down test drills to see if there’s gold in the ground. My job was to take a chainsaw and cut these lines through the bush and mark every 100 feet. It was often minus 40, and I was doing it in four feet of snow. I tried doing it with snowshoes on, but I couldn’t operate a chainsaw with snowshoes on. I’ve got to say, maybe it’s because I’m a southerner, but I was not that great at it. I didn’t make that much money. There was another guy from the area, though, that I knew—his name was Sonny Gagnon; he actually became the chief of Aroland later—and he could cut one and a half to two miles a day. I think, if I remember right, we were making $200 a mile for what we were cutting. If I cut three quarters or one mile a day, that was a darn good day for me.

Anyway, the thing about it is that the mining sector is really vital to the north.

The other experience that I have with the mining sector is that I used to teach a course at York University on the history and economics of Ontario. We did it through an equity lens. One of our guest speakers one year was the CEO of Detour Gold. Detour Gold is a large mine northeast of Timmins. He talked about how that mine had been developed. They had made agreements with five Indigenous communities. They were providing good-paying jobs, and they had money set aside for a cleanup fund. He told me and the class that they had invested $2 billion before they got an ounce of gold out of that mine. That really speaks to the amount of investment that has to go in. And they’re so far off the grid that they created their own hydroelectric dam to generate electricity for the mine site. The scale of these mines is astronomical, absolutely enormous.

I want to talk about one of the concerns that we have with this bill, and that’s the cleanup fund. The CEO of Detour Gold talked about the cleanup fund, and that’s absolutely vital.

When I lived in Geraldton, across the highway from where I lived there was a field of mine tailings. These mine tailings contained mercury that was leaking into the local lake, Kenogamisis. So even though Geraldton was built on this beautiful lake, they couldn’t use the drinking water from that local lake. They had to pipe the water in from a lake farther north because of these mine tailings. Another guest who came to my class, Michael Power, was the mayor of Geraldton at the time. He actually organized the community, and they sealed in those mine tailings and they built a golf course over it. For decades, those mine tailings had been leaking into the local lake. He was actually able to organize a project to restore that land.

We’ve got to make sure, when we are building mines, that we don’t leave the next generation or local communities with a toxic mess to clean up. There have been a number of times when this has happened.

There’s the Kam Kotia mine disaster—this is a mine that operated from September 1943 to December 1944, so it operated for a year and three months. It left behind 200,000 tonnes of waste rock and six million tonnes of mine tailings on the site. This was a toxic mess that the community had to deal with for decades afterwards. Finally, the government—which means us as taxpayers—had to contribute $28 million to clean up the site.

Part of this bill is about the cleanup. It’s about extracting minerals from existing mine tailings. This is a really good project because those mine tailings—the technology has changed over the decades.

The previous mine in Geraldton, the silver mine, closed in the 1960s. It operated, I think, from the 1940s to the 1960s and it had left these tailings. Those tailings were actually quite mineral-rich, but they didn’t have the technology to extract the minerals that we do today. Some of those technologies are biotechnologies, and they can extract the minerals in environmentally friendly ways, and then they can leave the site cleaner than it was.

One of our concerns with this legislation is that, currently, the Mining Act states that when you’re going into mine tailings to extract additional minerals—the wording is, “The condition of the land with respect to one or both of public health and safety or the environment is improved following the ... remediation, as determined by the director” of mine rehabilitation. This means that if you’re going to go into those tailings and you’re going to remove some of the remaining minerals that are in there, you have to improve the site; you have to leave it in better condition than what you got it in, and this is going to be determined by the director of mine rehabilitation. The director of mine rehabilitation is an expert in the area, and they are a public servant. The new language, and what the government is proposing with this bill, is that the condition of the land following remediation must be “comparable to or better than it was before the recovery, as determined by the minister.” There are two concerns in this new language. One is that instead of saying you have to improve the site—you have to leave it at least comparable, and the measure, the scorecard for this will be determined by the minister.

My colleague from Sudbury, when he was making his opening remarks, said he has great respect for the Minister of Mines, but the Minister of Mines doesn’t necessarily have the expertise that the director of mine rehabilitation has. The Minister of Mines—and it’s not just this minister, but in future governments, because when you change the act, it’s not just for today; it’s for the future. The future ministers may not have that expertise, and they will also be under political pressure. They will be under pressures from their government members, maybe from their Premier, to potentially not bring the site up to snuff, not bring the site up to an improved state of condition, and that leaves the communities to deal with the toxic waste, the toxic mess, and it also leaves the taxpayers of Ontario to deal with the additional cost of rehabilitating that site in the future. So, these changes are deeply concerning. It’s the politicization of this process, and that’s a danger. There’s a reason that we have public servants and we maintain some distance between the ministers and the ministries, between the public servants—so that you can have processes like this where the public good is protected and not subject to political influence.

The other thing I wanted to talk about with the mine tailings is that it’s a good project. As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, we need mining. It’s an essential component of our economy. This mining of these tailings, or the re-mining of these tailings, to extract the additional minerals, is a good thing, because not only do we have biotechnologies to remove some of those minerals—and so we remove some of them, and some of them are toxic in themselves—but we also save the energy of removing the initial rock. So if it’s much cheaper and much more environmentally friendly to look at mine tailings, to extract minerals from mine tailings, than it is to dig a new mine—because if you dig a new mine, you’ve got to go into the ground, you’ve got all the energy, all the environmental damage of doing that. So it’s actually environmentally friendly in a number of ways.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, there is incredible potential in our mining sector. We can build electric cars. I was actually at three different events a year ago in my—well, one was outside my riding but two in my riding. One was a tall timber building at George Brown College, down on the waterfront in downtown Toronto. This is not related to mining—I’m diverting a little bit—but it’s good for northern Ontario, because we’re finding new ways to utilize lumber in Ontario, and it’s environmentally friendly, because the carbon in that wood is being sequestered in the building. So this is actually an exciting project. If you’re driving along the Gardiner, you can see the frame of that building going up right now.

It’s also good for our northern communities, because where I lived, in Geraldton, the next town was Longlac. They had a big pulp mill, and pulp mills across northern Ontario got closed down over the last 15 years. Those communities need—we need new ways to use the lumber industry.

The other event in my riding was the launch of Canada’s first electric ferry. The Marilyn Bell ferry goes across the channel between Toronto and the Toronto Islands and to Billy Bishop airport. The electrification of this ferry was designed and built in Ontario by Ontario companies, and now it has set the standard. The city of Toronto is looking at electrifying all of the ferries that go out to the Toronto Islands. So there is incredible potential here for building electric vehicles, even ferries.

The third event that I attended, and this one was outside my riding, was at Daymak. It’s a company in Scarborough, and they make electric bicycles and scooters and things. They launched just over a year ago what they’re billing as the world’s fastest three-wheeled electric car. Now, I got to sit in it; I didn’t get to drive it, so I can’t verify that it’s the fastest in the world, but it did look pretty slick. It looked like the Batmobile, I’ve got to say—the new Batmobile, not the 1960s Adam West Batmobile.

Anyway, we have the potential here in Ontario to have the entire supply chain, from minerals to smelting to building the cars and the vehicles, the electric ferries, the batteries that we’re going to need for the future. But in order to do this, we also need to build on our competitive advantages, and we’ve got many competitive advantages. We’re talking about the mines. We’ve got the minerals here. We’ve got the technology, and we’ve got the people who can actually smelt that here. We’ve got the factories to do that. We’ve got the factories to build the cars here.

We need to build on our public services because our public services are some of our biggest competitive advantages. I’m thinking in particular, in this context, of our public colleges and universities. I toured Laurentian University and Cambrian College in Sudbury a few years ago, before the pandemic. That college and that university have close links to the mining industry in Sudbury. A lot of the technology that they use in the mines is being developed in partnership with our public colleges and universities in Sudbury, and our public colleges and universities make business partnerships across this province to develop our technology here and give us a huge competitive advantage, and we need to invest in them.

This government cut tuition fees by 10% four years ago, which was a good thing because we had the highest tuition fees and the highest student debt levels, but it was an unfunded tuition cut. It meant that the colleges and universities lost somewhere—well, it wasn’t a full 10%, but they lost a huge percentage of their income and the funding has been frozen since then. Government funding for our public colleges and universities has been frozen for almost a decade. We need to unfreeze that because that’s almost a billion-dollar cut.

The other competitive advantage that we need to maintain in this province is our public health care system. When companies are deciding whether they’re going to locate in Canada or the United States, one of the factors they look at is our public health care system because our public health insurance is far, far cheaper for employers in Canada than it is in the United States. So the government’s current drive to privatize our public health care, to profitize it, to convert it into a private, for-profit industry is actually undermining one of our big competitive advantages.

I’m going to conclude with a few concerns, like we need to support the mining industry. It’s absolutely a vital component of our economy in Ontario. But there are concerns with this bill, and we’re hoping that we can work out those concerns in committee.

The concerns are that the government is replacing the duties of the director of mine exploration and the director of mine rehabilitation with the minister, so they’re politicizing this process, and that politicization of that process can leave communities stranded with toxic waste that they can’t deal with, and it can leave taxpayers dealing with billions or millions of dollars in cleanup costs for future generations. They’re weakening the environmental requirements. It’s not the right thing to be doing at this time.

The third concern that we have on this side of the House is the Indigenous right to free, prior and informed consent. The Neskantaga First Nation is deeply concerned and expressed their opposition to the Ring of Fire.

I look at what’s happened. This government has to start building trust with our First Nations communities. When he and I were elected in 2018, the first question my colleague from Kiiwetinoong asked the government was, “Will you help provide clean drinking water to remote First Nations communities in the north?” The Minister of Indigenous Affairs at the time, his response was, “Well, actually that’s federal jurisdiction. We’ll help you write a letter.”

If the government had actually cleaned up the drinking water and provided clean drinking water over the last four years to all First Nations communities in this province, you would have built some trust, so that when you’re dealing with the extraction of minerals in the north, you would have a framework of trust to start those negotiations.

Speaker, with this bill, once again, the government is not going through the required consultation with the First Nations rights-holders on whose lands most, if not all, of the exploration will take place and where former mine sites are.

We also have learned now from the chief of Neskantaga First Nation—he has said that no development will proceed without the prior consent of his and other First Nations who will be directly impacted by the development.

So my question to the member from Kitchener–Conestoga is, why is the government avoiding their duty to consult with First Nations and essentially going down the wrong path with this bill?

Thank you to the member for Spadina–Fort York for your presentation. I’m referring to what the member from Kitchener–Conestoga was saying, how at the age of 20 he had to come from North Bay to another place to develop his career and his future. I heard this very, very often when I was at either ROMA or AMO, that the problem is that a lot of the next generation has to go either to Toronto or to the south to find jobs. The problem is the seniors, the older folks, will stay behind and they have all sorts of social problems.

I still can’t understand why the opposition is voting against this act, when members from the party are clearly in favour of industry—

Question?