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?

Thank you to the MPP for Spadina–Fort York. I want to pick up a little bit on the theme that this Conservative government has not built confidence or trust when it comes to the environment. With this bill, they are actually undermining trust in this mining industry, particularly when it comes to the idea of watering down financial requirements.

You talked about a mine—was it Iamgold?

I thank the member from Brantford–Brant for the question. We did support that bill to expedite the development of the battery factory in St. Thomas. The big concern that we have is that governments in Ontario, governments in Alberta—Conservative governments in particular—do not have a good record of enforcing regulations so that mining companies leave the site clean and safe for local communities.

In Alberta, for example, they’ve got 170,000 abandoned oil wells that the taxpayer is now on the hook for cleaning up and sealing. We don’t want the communities to be left with a toxic mess and we don’t want the taxpayers to be left with millions or billions of dollars in cleanup costs. That should be part of the operation. That’s the concern we have.

The government has not created trust in their ability to be stewards of the environment for future generations.

I enjoy interacting with my friend from Spadina–Fort York. I’m curious, because I’ve heard this a couple of times about the hesitation that the opposition has about allowing the minister to expedite—not politicize, but expedite—some of these approvals for things because, just a couple of weeks ago, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing had a bill before the Legislature on changing the boundaries of St. Thomas and, I think, Central Elgin in order to expedite putting together a parcel of land so that we could do something really good for workers in the province of Ontario. It seems to me that this legislation does the exact same thing.

I guess my question is, why were you so comfortable supporting a minister expediting something there, on the one hand, but now have great hesitation on a minister being able to expedite something in the north to make life better there?

Thank you to the member from Spadina–Fort York. During his debate, he was talking about the auto strategy and all the things that are connected, and it reminded me that, in 2018, I had meetings with several of the larger car companies. More or less what they had told me, Speaker—it was during a time when the Conservative government was tearing up charging stations—removing charging stations and removing the incentive for EV vehicles. They said, “Look, the next Detroit is on the horizon.”

Ontario is very desirable because of our universal health care. We’re very desirable because of our post-secondary education—because these new cars are as much technology as they are physical machines—and very desirable because of the mineral strategy and the minerals that we have here.

You talked about several of those things. I’m just wondering: The member opposite was talking about the grades of the past government. What grades would you give this government when it comes to post-secondary education, when it comes to universal health care and anything else?

There’s a theory out there that business will do this and move in this direction on their own at some point, but I know factually that the reason we made this move was because over time, legislation forced less and less pollution to come out, to the point now where they’re talking about removing the Superstack because it’s no longer needed.

And so I’m just wondering, to the member: Do you think that it’s positive to have regulations that protect the environment or do you think that business will make these moves on their own?

My question to the member opposite—

Interjection.

One of the conversations we often have within the community is that a lot of people want to get into, say, a more environmentally sustainable vehicle, but there’s the ethics involved of the full life cycle of that particular car and that vehicle. And so many have been hesitant to opt into that market because they realize that if they look at the cradle to grave of the product, there are some really unethical labour practices that happen overseas.

In terms of having this particular expansion in our area, what are your thoughts on how Canada can now position itself as a very sustainable, ethical country? You know, we mine not using coal; we have ethical labour practices versus those countries overseas that are producing the same product but may not have the same practices.

First of all, I can appreciate the need for jobs in northern Ontario. One of the things that I would recommend doing is that if the government is working on a last-mile strategy for broadband—broadband is absolutely essential to northern and remote communities, and right now, the government’s standard for rolling out broadband is 50 gigs upload and 10 gigabytes download. That’s an old standard. The broadband that this government is rolling out is actually obsolete before you roll it out, and you’re going to be cutting job opportunities from future generations and from this generation of northerners.

I would highly recommend you go for one gig symmetrical for the broadband rollout. That would be one way that I would create jobs in northern Ontario and create opportunities for people in northern Ontario.

This Bill 124 wage-suppression bill that disproportionately targets women needs to be repealed. It’s actually already been declared by the courts to be unconstitutional, that it’s an infringement on the constitutional, fundamental freedoms of the health care workers, and yet this government is appealing that in court.

Our post-secondary education system: I would have to give them an F on that, but I’m out of time, so I’ll have to wait for a supplementary question to answer.

One of the things that drove me most crazy before I got into this House was that the Conservatives, when they were in power from 1995 to 2003, started to break up and sell off Ontario Hydro. Then the Liberals finished that off by selling off the majority share of hydro. Our hydro rates in Ontario used to be one of our biggest competitive advantages, at four cents a kilowatt hour. We’re now paying four times that, and we’re subsidizing a private, for-profit company that used to be Ontario Hydro: $6.9 billion a year.

We’ve got to maintain our competitive advantages—health care, education, post-secondary education—and somehow, we’ve got—

Just a quick question for my friend from Guelph—I have spoken to him about this personally. I so appreciate how supportive he is about our Critical Minerals Strategy and how we have to get this from Ontario because we can do this cleanly and greenly here. He knows and was actually educating me on how so many of the critical minerals that go into our batteries come through child labour and through horrible practices and environmental devastation in other parts of the world.

I do apologize, because I wasn’t listening as intently as I would like to, but I did want to ask him—and I think I heard that—will he be supporting this bill at second reading so that we can get it into committee and look at some of those things?

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.

Question?

You’re voting against it, Mike.

Point of order.

Question?

Further debate?

It’s always a pleasure to rise in this House and speak on the wonderful, important bills that we debate here. Before I start, I just want to talk about the only thing, in this House of responsibility—I say, the only thing certain is the uncertainty. When we talk about things today, I must start my debate with: What day is today? March 8, which is International Women’s Day. As we celebrate the remarkable achievements and contributions of women around the world, it is a day to recognize the progress we’ve made towards gender equality and to acknowledge a lot of work that still needs to be done. Together, we can create a world where every woman is valued, respected and empowered. Let’s choose to challenge the status quo and work towards a more equal and just society. It’s not just a word; we need to take action.

By the way, Madam Speaker, I want to mention—an honourable mention: Kudos to my wife, Aruna Anand, and daughter, Suvidhi Anand, two wonderful women, for doing a great job. I have to say this: Thank you for doing everything you do. I don’t know what I would do without you. So thank you, Madam Speaker, I just wanted to acknowledge this. Happy International Women’s Day. Now you guys can clap.

Over to Bill 71: I rise in the House today to speak on Bill 71, the Building More Mines Act, 2023, and the benefits that this bill will bring to our province’s economy, industry and its hard-working people. Canada is a source of many, many resources. It is a resource superpower. But years of neglect and red tape have been roadblocks for our mining sector. I think it is fair to say that it should not take 15 years to issue a mining permit, but that’s what is happening right now in the province of Ontario.

Mining in Ontario supports 28,000 direct jobs and approximately 47,000 indirect jobs. It is a big driver of our provincial economy. In 2021, the average median weekly wage in Ontario’s mining and quarrying sector was 60% higher than the average for all industries combined, according to the Labour Force Survey. That’s how important it is. By 2025, the mining industry will need to hire between 30,000 and 48,000 workers to fulfill its labour needs. These are immense challenges we must confront head-on, as part of this government’s strategy to address labour shortages in this province. On one side, when we talk about saying that there’s going to be a lot of immigrants coming to Canada, about 500,000 every year by 2025, and 300,000 of those are going to end up coming and choosing Ontario as their new home, we want to be making sure there are enough resources, there are enough jobs, there is enough structure in place to support them. This bill helps in that direction as well.

The Ontario Mining Association’s 2022 economic report said that in 2019, OMA member mines provided nearly 3,000 jobs with average earnings of over $87,000 to Indigenous community members. Indeed, these are positive figures, but our government is dedicated to further improve these numbers, so that we can share the prosperity with everybody.

In 2021, mining in Ontario directly contributed to an estimated total of $8 billion to GDP, $2.9 billion in wages and salaries. Additionally, the 2022 State of the Ontario Mining Sector survey said that the GDP contribution from the mining industry in Ontario will grow 25% in the next five years. Approximately 77% of Ontario’s mining company contributions stay inside Ontario. Look at it this way: When we create this economy, we actually have the benefit of income multiplier. When you create $1, that actually adds up, gives a job to someone else. There is a domino effect, and it creates an additional $8 to the economy. That’s what we’re doing. When we strengthen our mining sector, we’re strengthening our Ontario. These figures indicate that the mining industry is indeed one of the major drivers of our economy. That is why it is important for us to pass this bill.

Ontario’s rare minerals are used in products worldwide, not just for us. We are helping the world to grow as well. Our province sits on mineral reserves considered critical by many places for domestic and economic needs.

Madam Speaker, you must have heard this loud and clear multiple times from our caucus members: While the Liberals and the NDP like to burn bridges in our province’s economic prosperity, this side of the members is here to build, to make sure we have a strong Ontario, and we will continue to do that. We are building a supply chain bridge between southern and northern Ontario. Northern Ontario will boost mineral supply production and the south gets game-changing investments like the EV industry. This way, we’re able to help each other. This will build a resilient supply chain and will greatly contribute to the wealth and prosperity of our province.

Let’s look at what this bill is doing. If passed, the Building More Mines Act, 2023, would save companies time and money without sacrificing our world-class environmental standards or the crown’s duty to consult. Specifically, the act will approve mines faster by eliminating duplication, providing operational flexibility and reducing costs, and advance critical mineral projects by making it easier for companies to get a permit to recover minerals from mine tailings and waste. These are the materials left behind after a mine has closed.

Madam Speaker, think about a situation when, many, many years back, if there was a mine which closed and had the deposits sitting, back then, the value of those metals was maybe a fraction of what it is today. That metal today is worth way more than when it was there. It may not be economically feasible at that point in time to regenerate or recollect that mineral, but today, that makes it easier, makes it financially better, and when we recover those metals, they’re actually taking less from our Mother Earth so we’re able to accomplish a better economic benefit without even going back to our Mother Earth to ask for more. This is what we’re doing through this bill, Madam Speaker.

It will improve closure planning by having more qualified professionals available to certify plans and allow companies to conditionally file a closure plan while deferring certain documents to a later date, and allow more flexibility in the techniques used to rehabilitate mines once they’re closed, again, without changing anything related to Ontario’s world-class environmental standards and duty to consult.

We’re doing this as we create more options for companies to pay financial assurance. Instead of paying financial assurance upfront, it could be paid in phases tied to the project’s construction schedule so they can invest more, they can invest better, into these mining projects.

Madam Speaker, as you can tell, this act has nothing to do with cutting corners. It is all about making sure government is acting in the most efficient way possible.

But I do want to talk about what this bill doesn’t do: This bill will not compromise our world-class environmental labour or Indigenous consultation standards. We’re not going to compromise on the environment. We’re not going to compromise on labour standards, and we’re not going to compromise on our Indigenous consultation standards.

This is about improving the ministry processes and making sure that we are able to attract more investment into the mining sector. This is what we’re doing through this bill, Madam Speaker.

Every time you talk about prosperity, we can’t do it without the people of Ontario. In order to service and sustain the mines, we are promoting careers in the mining sector. We’re encouraging enrolment in the skilled trades and mining-related training programs. We are targeting funded apprenticeship programs to help skilled trade workers and get them working in well-paying positions in the mining industry.

We are accomplishing all of this while being committed to our strong environmental standards. Madam Speaker, Ontario has exceptional mineral potential and environmental governance fundamentals, which will ensure that we create jobs while minimizing any impact to our environment.

With the continued work and collaboration between ministries and our partners in the mining sector, we will continue providing opportunities to our workers and continue on the path of growth for our province.

Madam Speaker, I’d like to share something very important. I want to talk about the Mining Act, R.S.O. 1990. The purpose, it states—

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.

I’m really enjoying the conversation this afternoon. I appreciate all the members, I appreciate the support on second reading—oh, I still have a few seconds there where I can ask this question. I always appreciate having a conversation with my colleague from Guelph. It’s always profitable for me.

The comment was made by the member from Sudbury that we need government regulations in order for the companies to do the right thing, and I can’t disagree with that. That is often the case. Yet, talking about ESG goals for companies, I don’t think there’s any government involvement in ESG. This is something that companies are doing entirely on their own because that’s what investors are looking for.

So, is there room for companies to figure things out, to innovate to find those solutions without government overreach?