It’s always an honour to speak in the House. Today, I wasn’t planning on speaking. I’m surprised that the government doesn’t want to speak to what they claim to be their fantastic political record.

Bill 146, Building a Strong Ontario Together—a great title.

I would agree that the MPP for Waterloo is the best finance critic that we have ever had—and considering that I was once finance critic, even I agree. She brought up a lot of good points.

I’d like to start with a few things that are supportable in this piece of legislation—some particularly for northern Ontario.

Flow-through shares aren’t a new thing. They’ve been around for a while. They actually do encourage exploration and investment. It’s a pretty straightforward concept. Specifically, when you’re in the exploration business, it’s risky, but flow-through shares actually—I don’t know if it lessens the risk, but it does encourage investment. I think people in the mining industry and particularly the exploration industry have been pushing for flow-through shares for a while. I think that’s a supportable part of this legislation that actually will help the mining sector.

Believe it or not, although the Conservative government tries to say that the NDP doesn’t support mining because we didn’t support their last changes to the Mining Act—the reason we didn’t support the last changes to the Mining Act is because what the government is trying to do with the Mining Act is very similar to what they did with the greenbelt changes, because they’re trying to take regulations away and put them in into the political realm.

I’m not trying to disparage the Minister of Mines’s experience in mining—not at all. But when you take the planning out of the actual civil service and put the approvals of those plannings into the political realm, you actually might end up slowing down development instead of speeding it up.

Now, I don’t think the current mining minister believes that, and I respect that, but I think there would be a few developers in this province who are now questioning the help they got from the Ford government, because actually it shone a huge spotlight on some of the problems that the Ford government is creating for those developers. And I hope, I sincerely hope—because no one wants to support good mining projects more than I do. Mining is a huge part of the north, a huge part of my riding, and I hope that the government’s meddling in the approval process doesn’t actually slow down, actually jeopardize the mining sector.

The one thing that the mining sector has done a really great job at, probably better than any other sector, is—and I know this from where I live—100 years ago, mining was incredibly damaging to the environment—it was—and we’re still dealing with those damages in places like where I live, close to Cobalt. We’re still dealing with it, and in other places, like close to the minister’s area, Kamiskotia Lake.

But now, because of strict regulations, because of a very good planning process, mining in Canada has, rightfully so, a very good reputation. Some of the same companies don’t have the same reputation in other areas, but in Canada they do. It’s largely because of a very strict regulatory process, and I sincerely hope that the meddling of the Ford government doesn’t actually hurt the mining sector.

Now, I’ve often heard members say, “Well, it takes way too long to approve a mine and way too much red tape.” I don’t think we have an issue. The length of time it takes to approve a mine—I think we could make changes there to actually add certainty for mining companies, for the investors that when they do things right, there’s an actual timeline that they can—I look at other jurisdictions, like Nunavut, which actually has stricter regulations than the province of Ontario, yet a much quicker approval timeline. I know that because one of the mining companies I talked to, Agnico Eagle, told me that. So it’s not a case of more political meddling; it’s a case of having a better, more stable approval process with timelines.

It’s not that we’re anti-mining, not at all. And it’s not that—mining is going to play a more important role, actually, in the future—as important or more important than it has in the past. I’m just going to say it once more: I’m incredibly concerned that meddling from the government and trying to do things quicker politically is actually going to slow things down and hurt the reputation and hurt the profitability and hurt the long-term viability of the mining sector. So flow-through shares are good, some of the other moves maybe not so much.

It’s often been brought up: the gas tax refund. You know what? I come from a place, northern Ontario—I have one community that has public transportation, the municipality of Temiskaming Shores, and also, they partner with Cobalt. But that’s the only community I have that has any public transportation. Everything else is by car. There is no bus; it’s car. And we are very sensitive to gas prices, 100%. Gas prices are always more expensive in Timiskaming–Cochrane than they are in Toronto. I know that. I know that because I drive it every week.

Actually, it’s kind of around Gravenhurst, and right in there, a little bit north of Barrie, it seems cheaper than anywhere else—lots of times. It’s kind of weird, because they’re always telling us that gas prices are dependent on transportation—how much it costs to transport. That doesn’t make any sense to me at all, because it has nothing really to do with the routes.

Getting back to the gas price or the gas tax reduction, I guess the biggest question we have is, what certainty do we have that the reduction actually gets passed to the gas pump? I don’t know what that certainty is. They will say, “Okay, the law of economics and the law of competition”—I understand that, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed but gas prices in towns seem to follow each other pretty closely. Then, you will drive through the next town, and all of a sudden, they’re different. So what proof does the government have?

The government may be very well-meaning with the gas tax refund or rebate. I’m not questioning that. I’m questioning, how do we know it’s actually getting to the consumer? I don’t know. When I drive, when I do the six hours—depending on traffic; it took me eight hours yesterday. Yesterday is Monday, right?