I am the MPP for Nickel Belt, and I’m willing to bet that I have more mines and abandoned mines in Nickel Belt than in any of your ridings. So right now, whether you talk about coal mines; Copper Cliff north; Copper Cliff south; Creighton, the deepest mine, where the neutrino laboratory is; Frood mine; Garson mine, an over-100-year-old mine; Murray mine; Craig mine; McCreedy mine; Totten mine—Totten is one of the new ones from Vale, where everything is electric underground. It’s pretty cool. We also have Fraser and Nickel Rim South mine, which are Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations, Glencore—also, a new mine in my riding, very high-tech, very different from the old mine, Chester mine, Côté Lake. I could go on and on, Speaker, but I just wanted to give you an idea that mining is doing well in Nickel Belt.

I attended the PDAC conference, and I must say that I was quite pleased to meet the chief from Wahnapitae First Nation, Larry Roque. Some of the band leaders were there with him—Councillor Craig Tyson, and many more. Do they want change to the Mining Act? Yes, absolutely.

Wahnapitae First Nation is on the side of Wahnapitae Lake, a beautiful, huge lake in the city of Greater Sudbury. When the treaty was written, Wahnapitae First Nation was to have a six-mile-by-six-mile reserve on the side of Wahnapitae Lake. For some reason—I won’t go into the details, but it’s nothing good—they ended up with a two-by-two piece of land on the side of Wahnapitae Lake. They had to go through years and years and years so that everybody agreed that Wahnapitae First Nation has a treaty right to a territory of six miles by six miles on the side of Wahnapitae Lake. Move forward and say, “Okay, the government finally agrees. How do we change the territory?”—because they are full to capacity. They have a wait-list of 78 of their members who want to move back to their reserve, who want to move back to Wahnapitae First Nation, but they can’t, because they’re stuck in a two-kilometre-by-two-kilometre square on the side of the lake. That has been going on for decades. Have we seen the government make changes to the Mining Act so that we can—do you know why they cannot gain the territory that is justifiably theirs? Because there are mining claims all the way around. And when some of those mining claims expire, somebody anywhere in Toronto clicks on his mouse and says, “Well, I’m going to put a claim here.” You don’t have to come to Nickel Belt. You don’t have to stake. You don’t have to do anything. You click with your mouse, and that’s it. Wahnapitae cannot expand. Why isn’t that in the act?

Wahnapitae First Nation’s leadership has met with the government multiple times. The government agrees that they are allowed six miles by six miles on the side of Wahnapitae Lake—but yet, it’s not being done, and the 78 families who want to move back in have nowhere to call their own, until they can.

Wahnapitae is always at the forefront—if this doesn’t work, they put alternate ways of doing things forward. They said, “Okay, well, if there are mining claims all the way around, how about we take”—they did the math. They own 20,000 acres. “Okay, we’ll take our 20,000 acres on crown land elsewhere, and we’ll make it work one way or another to have”—but we need the government to listen, and they’re not willing to listen to First Nations. They’re not willing to listen to First Nations who have gone through the courts, who have won all their cases, who are being very reasonable as to what their rights are—their rights that were taken away from them. And they’re still waiting. That’s not right.

Wahnapitae First Nation deserves to be heard. They deserve to have their 20,000 acres of land given back to them. They deserve to have a government who realizes that when a mining claim expires, you put a big X on it and you say, “No, this goes to Wahnapitae First Nation, because this was their traditional territory, and it belongs to them.” But the government is not willing to do this. The government is not willing to change the Mining Act in a way that would respect First Nations—much to the contrary. The government is willing to change the Mining Act so that the director of mine rehabilitation will be no more, and the provision for a closure plan respecting advanced exploration may be filed even if it does not meet the act or the regulations.

Let me tell you what that means.

I have abandoned mines throughout my riding. I will talk to you about Long Lake gold mine. Long Lake gold mine was abandoned—because it’s always the same: They come, they make millions of dollars, then they declare bankruptcy and disappear, but the mess stays. Long Lake gold mine has been leaching arsenic into Long Lake. Long Lake is a beautiful lake in the city of Greater Sudbury, with lots of people who enjoy drinking it, fishing in it, swimming in it—and now there’s arsenic leaking in it since 1970. I have been writing to ministers after ministers after ministers to say, what is the plan to rehabilitate the old gold mine so that it stops leaching into Long Lake—and then it goes all the way to Lake Panache. It affects the fish; it affects the drinking water. They have been working at it—I actually pulled out some of the letters that I sent. I look at my picture on my letterhead and say, “Who is this woman?” because it was so long ago that I wrote those letters. I get answers and everything—same thing.

The last time, I got an answer from this Minister of Mines telling me that the Long Lake mine rehabilitation project is at the top of the list, that they have the money for it, that it’s happening. But it’s 2023, and nothing is happening. The leaching from the abandoned gold mine into Long Lake is still going on, and nothing is happening.

So when you tell people who live close to those mines—“I don’t work in a mine, and I have no intention of working in a mine, but they are all around me.” When you say that you’re going to change the Mining Act—yay, there are lots of things we want changed in the Mining Act. But when you tell us that the change that you’re willing to do is that they won’t have to have money put aside to do rehabilitations of their mine site—when we have hundreds of abandoned mines, like the gold mine in Long Lake, that are polluting the environment? Would anybody like to have arsenic in their water? Does anybody go to a lake in the summer to swim, to boat, to fish, to—whatever you’d like to do in the lake—and know that there’s a mine a couple of hundred feet up that is leaching arsenic into your lake? This is what we are living with throughout Nickel Belt, because there are hundreds of them. You travel through the bush in Nickel Belt—and all of a sudden, there’s a big fence. Don’t cross the fence, because there’s a good chance there is a mine shaft in the middle of that fence that will send you down 200 or 300—a couple of miles down; we’ll never see you again. This is the reality of Nickel Belt. This is what we live with, and we’re okay with this, but we are not okay with a government who puts forward changes to the Mining Act without talking to Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, without talking to Wahnapitae First Nation, without talking to Mattagami First Nation.

Let me tell you about a new mine that just opened. Premier Ford was there, for the grand opening of Côté Lake gold mine. Côté Lake did their homework. Côté Lake is in Treaty 9. They sat down with Mattagami First Nation; they sat down with Flying Post First Nation; they sat down with Treaty 3 Métis. They made sure that they had a solid relationship with them, a sharing agreement in writing. All of those people were there for the opening of Côté mine—not this fall, but the fall before. They were all there, because the mining company—at the time, it was Iamgold. They’re now in partnership with—I forgot who the partnership is with. It will come to me. Anyway, they were all there, because the mining company knew that in order to be successful, they needed to have a strong relationship with the people who—this is their territory. This is Mattagami First Nation and Flying Post First Nation; this is Métis territory. They did their homework. They were welcome. They were supported. They were there at the opening.

The mining companies know how to do this. The government has to respect First Nations.

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.