I’m so glad the member from Kitchener South–Hespeler provided such a picture of her thoughts on the process in communicating what she did. She talked about a qualified person being there to certify the plans involved and the investment that a company has to put forward even before an operation gets one shovel in the ground.

Would the member please advise on new innovations in this act that will help ensure that the mining industry is responsibly developing resources?

I listened intently to my regional colleague from Kitchener South–Hespeler. Some of the language that she used I found very interesting. She said that all these projects offer everything to First Nations communities—that in and of itself indicates a power imbalance.

When you have a selective consultation process, you end up in court—and this government is very well acquainted with ending up in court. They just lost a very big court case this week again, on election finances. The judge determined that that piece of legislation undermined the right of citizens to meaningful participation in the political process and to be effectively represented. The government is fighting this court case that they’ve lost.

You’ve lost 15 court cases now. You have a pattern which is very disturbing and also wasteful, and so the trust is not there, particularly with consultation with First Nations, Métis, Inuit folks in Ontario. Why should anybody trust this government?

As I said in my reference to the Vogons, a lot of this is about making sure that we are modernizing the act, that we are streamlining a very antiquated and overburdened by bureaucracy process. So I criticize the current system by which mine closure planning is done. Right now, we are talking about significantly improving that system so that we have progress timelines, we’ve got lower upfront expenses for opening a mine—and simplifying the process by which we prepare that closure plan, and allowing phased financial assurance in order to fulfill that obligation which is not currently available. In many ways, we are, as I said, tackling those bureaucratic inefficiencies head-on.

I will go back to what I was talking about before, which is the benefits.

I would encourage any First Nations that feel they have more to contribute to, by all means, reach out and share that.

However, I believe that my example of the $40 bag of flour and the $32 can of coffee actually came specifically from one of the First Nations that is indicating that it has some objections, which seems an odd position to take.

At this point, my response remains that this is going to offer untold benefits to communities that have not been able to benefit from their own resources.

I really appreciated, first of all, your use of classic literature, with your references to the Vogons.

My question to you is, I will say, one of timing—through the Speaker, of course. We heard that it takes 15 years to get a mine up and running. I come from an IT background, and I’ve seen the changes and the progress made and how technology keeps on moving forward and changing. If we have to wait 15 years for that next mine, do you think the technologies that are being explored across the world will actually have moved beyond what is currently planned? Do you think that timing is appropriate for the evolution of our green technologies?

As I’m listening to the debate, I have to say that what’s most interesting is that there is so much innovation going on in the mining industry. That’s something I’ve been hearing over and over, and it’s leading to what we are looking for as a province to develop our mining base.

So my question to the member is this: Are there any new innovations in this act that will ensure the mining industry is responsibly developing our resources?

You have communication with two First Nations, but I’m wondering what your plans are for the five other First Nations in the region who are opposed and who are very, very upset that announcements have been made about the Ring of Fire without their free, prior and informed consent.

Questions?

I always very much appreciate the speeches that we hear from the member from Nickel Belt. She makes it very real and very personal, and I appreciate that.

My question to her is, what would it do for Nickel Belt to be able to see more quick, safe expansion of mining in that area, to provide more jobs—not just for the north, but for all of Ontario?

We have been mining in Nickel Belt for over 100 years. We know how to mine in a way that is respectful of the environment, respectful of the people, and respectful of the treaties that exist with First Nations and Métis people.

In order to move projects faster, you need to engage with the community, because we are activists in Sudbury. If a mining company wants to do something that does not respect First Nations, that does not respect the environment, expect us to block the highway like we did on Highway 144 before, because we won’t take this.

You want to move things forward faster? Be respectful, talk to people, have established relationships. This is how success comes.

If we want our society to have access to every kind of mineral from nickel to copper to precious metals—we have them all in Nickel Belt. In order to mine them, you have to have support from the population, and you have to have a relationship with the First Nations territory that those mines go on. It’s as simple as that.

I can assure you that the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, Mattagami First Nation and Wahnapitae First Nation were not consulted before Bill 61 was put out.

Ce qu’on demande, ce que la Première Nation demande, c’est que lorsque les terres de la Couronne deviennent vacantes et qu’il n’y a plus de « mining claims », qu’il n’y ait pas droit d’en mettre un autre, surtout quand c’est quelqu’un qui n’a aucune intention de jamais ouvrir une mine là. Ils ont seulement l’intention de peut-être faire l’argent à un moment donné, mais pour la Première Nation, ça veut dire que, eux, ils continuent d’avoir 78 familles qui veulent venir dans la Première Nation qui ne peuvent pas venir parce qu’ils n’ont pas de place.

I want to say to my colleague from Nickel Belt, that was a very interesting 10 minutes of talking about your community, and I learned a lot about it.

I try to listen to everybody here, but I listened to the Conservatives here, and they’re saying that First Nations were consulted. You’re saying First Nations—and you listed the First Nations and Indigenous communities that weren’t consulted. Which one of you is telling the truth? I’m a little confused.

I’m very pleased to stand in the House today representing the wonderful people of Hastings–Lennox and Addington and in support of this legislation which supports the mining industry. This, of course, is especially noteworthy in my own riding. As the previous speaker was talking about, my own riding is actually the original epicentre of mining in Ontario, even in Canada, starting as early as in the 19th century.

Some 204 years ago, in 1819, there was a blast furnace erected in Marmora township in Hastings county. The ore was obtained from the nearby Blairton mine. Iron production began in Marmora in 1822. I would also note the first discovery of gold in Ontario at the Richardson mine was at Eldorado in Hastings county, which started Ontario’s gold rush. The Deloro gold mine is believed to have started in about 1868. In 1881, gold was discovered at Kaladar and iron ore was discovered at Coe Hill and Mayo/Carlow. In 1883, actinolite mining began in Hastings county. In 1890, more gold discovered in Marmora township; fluorite discovered near Madoc.

On an interesting note, the Canadian talc mine located in Madoc, Ontario, was one of the oldest continuously producing mines in Ontario. Mining operations began in 1896 and continued until 2010. It was at that time one of only three mines on the planet that had operated continuously for more than 100 years.

And there are many more. The mines in Eldorado have iron and copper and, of course, gold; fluorite in Madoc; marble quarries in Dungannon and Faraday. Cobalt; silver; stellite, a cobalt-chromium alloy; fluorspar and magnetite—and in 1949, there was the discovery of uranium ores in Faraday township near Bancroft. Production began in 1957, and a total of four uranium mines were operated in that area in Bancroft until 1967. Faraday, the last one to close, has actually since reopened as Madawaska Mines and currently produces uranium for the world markets.

Madam Speaker, my riding certainly knows mining. Suffice it to say the counties of Hastings, Lennox and Addington have a long mining history that goes back over 200 years, and that was a major pillar in the original development and successes of this province. We know what significant economic drivers these facilities can be.

It’s fair to say that the opening of the railroads across this country led to an awesome period of economic growth and the literal development of this country. It’s also very fair to say that those railroads were developed because of the availability of iron from these mines. The big buildings here in Toronto, the economic centre of the country, are still standing in many cases because of the iron from those mines. It’s quite possible that the skeleton of this very building we’re standing in has iron ore from Marmora.

Mining provides the minerals that have been the backbone of this country, and it is the critical minerals that this bill will enable to get to market that will be the backbone of the next wave of the green industrial revolution. As mentioned, there is still mining in the Marmora and Bancroft area, but the greater focus of the bill, as has been talked about, is about the mines coming on stream in a reasonable amount of time and, most often, in the northern parts of the province that have unfortunately too often been ignored by past governments.

While these new mines will be geographically located in the north, the impact and the economic drivers will provide a tremendous benefit for all of Ontario, for our environment and for the whole world, in fact. The world needs these critical minerals for that next wave of green technologies.

Last July, there was a major announcement in my hometown of Loyalist township: a new battery plant that will bring 1,000 new jobs. For a community of 18,000 people, that’s just absolutely a once-in-a-generation fantastic injection of economic growth. This firm will build battery components that will go into all types of batteries to support the technology that is driving our world, and it will use minerals that this bill will help to open up. These minerals and these batteries could be used for grid-level battery storage.

These installations will help offset the missing component that the previous government didn’t figure out. The Green Energy Act imposed alternative energy electricity generation facilities on areas that didn’t support them, and it paid more per kilowatt hour than they were selling the electricity for. We all know their plan was to keep increasing those prices so that we’d all pay through the nose.

But they also forgot that while these generators do make green electricity, they’re intermittent generators and therefore can only be a small part of the solution until we manage to catch up to the storage-of-power requirements that this province truly needs. Battery and kinetic storage are part of the plan that the Ministry of Energy and the minerals in these mines will make possible.

These batteries will also be used for the future of the electric vehicles that will drive the automotive sector here in Ontario. With the Premier’s leadership and the amazing work by Minister Fedeli, we are reversing the job losses that dominated the last 15 years under the previous government and gaining tremendous ground, bringing in hundreds of thousands of jobs across Ontario and ensuring the future economic prosperity of this province. We’ve seen new plants in Windsor, in Essex, in Brampton.

These vehicles are also a major element in our plan to protect the environment. We know that the internal combustion engine is a major contributor to greenhouse gases. Being able to move an entire worldwide industry to newer, greener methodology is a massive undertaking.

By supporting mining here in Ontario, we’re encouraging that critical mineral extraction here in Ontario, where we have respect for the environment, where we have respect for the human rights of our workers and where we have respect for the First Nations that partner with us in these mining regions.

The last few years, the COVID pandemic and the invasion of the Ukraine have shown us just how sensitive our supply chain is. It taught us that we should never again allow these minerals to be only available from jurisdictions around the world that have little interest in human rights, have little interest in environmental protection. Right now, these jurisdictions have a stranglehold on the supply of the very minerals so critical to the entire world moving forward with high-tech green technologies.

Here in Ontario, we have a stable government environment, and we have the resources to not only provide for our own future but to support the world during this climate crisis. The minister, in his comments earlier, made the point that governments don’t create mines, companies do. And companies are made up of people, made up of mining engineers and geologists and materials scientists—the best and the brightest. We just heard that 40,000 of them are down at the conference right now. They’re here in Ontario, in Canada from around the world. These are the people that will actually get this done.

Most of you know I am no geologist or engineer, so I’m both fascinated by and excited about the new technologies that are being developed right here in Ontario. I was recently made aware of a new innovative process that’s being developed by one of our companies. The company is working on the extraction of lithium—no surprise—in support of our battery and electric vehicle industries. But they’ve also developed a technique that can use the waste rock from that mine as sort of a sponge to permanently absorb and sequester carbon dioxide. So not only are they preparing to provide the very important minerals for the latest technology; they’re also helping to solve an existential threat to the world. Creating this new, innovative material will aid all of us in our attempts to achieve net zero.

When smart people—people smarter than me, certainly—are provided with the flexible environment to be innovative and successful in their fields, the province and the whole world benefit. This bill will modernize and simplify the application process and provide regulatory certainty to those innovative technology geniuses who are doing this. And in doing so, they will bring us greater prosperity and they will provide benefits to the province and the whole world.

I’ve heard that they will, and I do hope that all members of this House will want to see strong environmental protection in mining and not the dangerous and damaging processes that we see overseas. I hope that all members of the House want to see Ontario build its sustainable—

The member from London North Centre.

I’d like to thank the member from Nickel Belt for her eloquent speech about how this government’s changes deliberately exclude Indigenous people. Members on the Conservative benches, earlier this afternoon, seemed to suggest that the burden should be on Indigenous people to reach out if they have concerns.

My question to the member is, is this Conservative government moving backward in terms of reconciliation?

I appreciate what the member opposite has been discussing. But what I’d like the member opposite to appreciate is that the world is going to keep spinning regardless of what Ontario does, which means—the numbers are out there. Russia and China have a stranglehold on the market right now. So 10 to 15 years to get a project complete is going to change the economic hold of these locations. We are actually strangling these communities if we don’t allow this to happen.

My question is, does the opposition think that China and Russia are viable trading partners for critical minerals?

Merci à la députée de Nickel Belt. J’apprécie la leçon sur le secteur minier de votre circonscription. C’est plus ou moins intéressant pour moi parce que j’ai de la famille dans ce coin-là.

Quelque chose qui m’a fait réfléchir à ce que vous avez dit exactement c’est que les peuples des Premières Nations réclament des terrains, à ce que j’ai pu comprendre, puis ce qui arrive, c’est qu’ils ne réussissent pas à avoir ces terrains-là par rapport à, je ne sais pas, quelques ententes qui se produisent avec le gouvernement ou—je n’en ai aucune idée.

Mais une affaire que j’ai pu constater avec des membres de la famille qui demeurent au bord du lac Wanapitei—je suis allé visiter la place, puis j’ai réalisé qu’il y a beaucoup de terres qui appartiennent au gouvernement dans ce coin-là, beaucoup de « crown land », comme on l’appelle, même dans le coin du lac Nipissing. C’est quelque chose qui m’a frappé parce que je n’étais jamais allé dans un endroit où il y avait autant de terres qui appartenaient au gouvernement.

Puis je me demandais, comment est-ce que ces terres-là pourraient jouer un rôle pour remplacer les terres qui peuvent être utilisées pour l’exploitation minière?

Thank you. Questions?

Thank you to the member from Hastings–Lennox and Addington. One of the things I love about afternoon debate is you get to learn about different ridings and their backgrounds. I looked very quickly at the history, and I hope I have the right place, but apparently there was a cheese factory. It was one of the first industries that came in.

The member from Essex.

I was wondering if the member thinks that it is okay for a community like the people who live along Long Lake to have to wait so long for remediation? The changes in the law will make remediation more questionable.

I have a letter from the Honourable Greg Rickford, Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines: “Remediation work will begin in late summer of 2019, with project completion by autumn 2022.” Nothing has been done and arsenic has been leaking into the lake since 1970. Do you think that loosening protections of site remediation will make this more acceptable to people?