Members will please take their seats.

To reply, government House leader and Minister of Long-Term Care.

The supplementary question: the member for Windsor West.

Restart the clock. Member for Windsor West has the floor.

That concludes our question period for this morning.

The Minister of the Environment has a point of order.

The division bells rang from 1146 to 1151.

MPP Bell has moved private member’s notice of motion number 27. All those in favour, please rise and remain standing until recognized by the Clerk.

Motion negatived.

There being no further business, this House stands in recess until 1 p.m.

The House recessed from 1155 to 1300.

Does the member wish to make a brief statement?

Debate adjourned.

It’s very interesting, because of all this new technology and where we’re headed into the next century and all of that kind of stuff, yet we can’t get drinking water in Brantford. Six Nations have no drinking water. Up north, they have no safe drinking water. Maybe we can invest in safe drinking water for our First Nations in the province of Ontario. Let’s do that first.

But my question is, the Conservatives continue to take credit for saving the auto sector like Oshawa, Windsor and Ingersoll. It’s why this Bill 71, Building More Mines Act, 2023—so my question to you, I think, is fair and reasonable, seeing you’re from Oshawa. Do you think it was the Conservative government that saved the auto sector in Ontario?

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—

It was a pleasure listening to the member from Hastings–Lennox and Addington talk about the incredible benefits that are going to be derived by the citizens of his riding as a result of amendments to this act and the fantastic investments attracted to this province by the government that’s bringing so many jobs and so much investment that are helping the people in his riding.

I’m excited about it because the same thing is happening in the riding of Essex. I know that the member from Windsor–Tecumseh is very excited because the same thing is happening in his riding. I know members from Brampton are excited because the same thing is happening in Brampton. The excitement being developed and created in this province is infectious, and I was wondering if the member would talk about what’s happening in his riding as a result of these remarkable developments and the changes that are being made and the investment that’s being brought to the province by the Premier and the Minister of Economic Development. Tell us about that excitement.

Oh, there are several cheese factories.

All of these investments, whether it’s Brampton or Essex, Windsor or Loyalist township in Hastings–Lennox and Addington, bring jobs and they bring all of the secondary industries that come to support all of those jobs. As I mentioned in my speech, 1,000 jobs in a community of 18,000 is massive. It is absolutely massive. But on top of that, there’s going to be another 2,000 to 3,000 spinoff jobs for the entire region. So, not only does this support my riding, but it supports the ridings on either side of me and all around that area.

“The purpose of this act is to encourage prospecting, registration of mining claims and exploration for the development of mineral resources, in a manner consistent with the recognition and affirmation of existing Aboriginal and treaty rights in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, including the duty to consult, and to minimize the impact of these activities on public health and safety and the environment.”

Madam Speaker, nothing in the bill proposed today changes that part of the original Mining Act.

No, I don’t think that they should have to wait further, but I also don’t see anything in this bill that will actually reduce the environmental protections involved.

Part of the Critical Minerals Strategy is making sure that we do it right and we do it right here in Ontario.

Report continues in volume B.