Earlier this month, I was able to make a Northern Ontario Heritage Fund announcement in the digital tech sector in beautiful Sault Ste. Marie. Village Media was a recipient of two separate grants, totalling nearly $130,000, that were used to upgrade their Sault Ste. Marie facilities and assist in the purchase of technology and communications equipment.

Ontarians may recognize names like SooToday, OrilliaMatters, StratfordToday and many other digital media platforms that are based at their headquarters on Queen Street in my hometown of Sault Ste. Marie.

And Village Media does not stop there. They own and operate local news sites in a number of markets and also provide technology, consulting and fulfillment services to strategic media partners.

Village Media has grown to become a worldwide media company, with outlets across Canada, the United States and even Nigeria.

I would like to congratulate Jeff and the entire Village Media team on the newest Village Media outlet based right here at Queen’s Park, the Trillium.

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.