Yes. I’ll tell you a little story about Emo. When I was on the board of Dairy Farmers of Ontario, we did the whole northern tour. There are eight committees, and we took a week and did them all. Myself and the fieldman stayed at a motel in Emo, a really nice place. This was a few years ago. We wanted to upload something or download something, so I went down to the front desk to see if we could hook up to the Internet. They looked at me and said, “Well, if you want to make a long-distance phone call, let us know.” They had no clue what we were talking about regarding Internet. But the sad thing is—and I’m taking the government at its word, that by the end of 2025, everybody will have Internet; I sure hope that’s the case, because it sure isn’t the case now. It really isn’t.

When we talk about agriculture research, you need stable Internet. So if you’re going to run—the Minister of Mines has a few robotic barns, one for sure, and one in mine. But for robotic dairy barns, you need stable Internet, not just satellite Internet that cuts out once in a while when one too many people hook on. That’s not what we need. And I’m not sure that that’s going to be able to be the case by the end of 2025, because if all we get is satellite, there are still going to be all kinds of places in the province that aren’t going to support the modern types of agriculture that we all know are what we need. It’s really important. I can’t stress that enough. We talk about it, and I don’t think any of us disagree. We all need it, and we all know we need it. That’s not a point of disagreement; it really isn’t.

Just as an example, there’s the interactive map where you can see where the projects are going in your riding. So I look at my riding and I have, where I live outside the town—I don’t know the term, but anyway, I can see the tower from my house, and that’s the kind of Internet I have. It works great. We also have a bit of a hunt camp where we would like to work a lot more, but there’s no Internet there. So now, on the infrastructure map, they’re putting fibre optic cable to my house, where I already have Internet, but to that lake where the hunt camp is, where there are many people who live full-time, there’s no project on the docket. What they’re going to get is satellite, likely. And I’m not dissing satellite. I’m not dissing anything, but it has its limitations. If that’s what’s promised, that’s not what people think they’re going to get. So if at the end of 2025, “Hey, discount on Starlink”—everybody is ready, and that’s not exactly what was promised—it wasn’t—and the deadline is coming very quickly. It’s 2024 now, and this is all supposed to be done by 2025.

One of the issues with the way the internet program was rolled out, and this is pertinent to a lot of things: By dividing Ontario up into 40—I think it’s 40—and then saying, “Okay, so you have to bid on the whole region,” what you’re doing is eliminating a lot of the small players who are actually the ones who were trying to provide the service in the first place. I believe Bell won our region, but Bell had no interest in providing it in the first place, so now the locals who were trying to get it from Bell, to get it from their trunk lines—now Bell is directly competing with them with subsidized dollars.

I got a call from my local recycling guy. He has got a good little business. He recycles. Lo and behold, the government is changing how recycling is done in Ontario. That’s great, but they’re doing the same thing. He has to bid on a region bigger than he can ever service. What does that do? That eliminates the little guy and puts the big guy in control.

This government believes that the big private sector guy, the big private sector companies, can do things more efficiently, and all that happens is the big private sector bids on those contracts and then they take their cut, and they still farm them out to the people who are actually doing the work, over and over again.

I can remember—this was before this government took power—the same thing happened with school buses. They made the areas for school buses much bigger, so you no longer could bid on three bus routes in your local town; you had to bid on half a district, and that shut out all the little school bus companies, every one. Now we’ve got three or four big school bus companies, and a lot of school bus runs can’t find drivers. That’s part of the problem, because they’ve totally lost the local touch. This government has done this on steroids. Every time, it’s bigger, bigger, bigger.

I took a little bit of a detour there by Emo. The next one is Huron, and Huron is just north of Centralia, with 125 acres of crops. For research, it focuses on weed control. Good.

I know quite a bit about the next one, New Liskeard. It’s not quite my hometown; I farmed just a little bit north of New Liskeard. The experimental farm in New Liskeard used to have dairy, used to have beef and had crops. Now it focuses mainly on crops, rightfully so.

There is a bit of a backstory, though, to the experimental farm in New Liskeard. This is how politics are supposed to work, and I give credit where credit is due. We heard a rumour that the University of Guelph, when I first got elected, wanted to get out of New Liskeard and do all the research at Guelph, kind of à la beef cow, and shut New Liskeard down. The local community heard this, and at the time it was a Liberal government. The Minister of Agriculture was Minister McMeekin, and we arranged—our office, the office of an opposition member—a tour of that centre for the minister. We got all of the players in agriculture, the 20 movers and shakers in New Liskeard, and we organized a dinner.

We came to an agreement to put a hold on that for two years, while local people could come up with some kind of accommodation to keep ag research in New Liskeard. That deal was the reason that the Northern Ontario Farm Innovation Alliance was created, and it’s still a body that has a big impact across the north. During those two years, people realized how big the future was in agriculture in northern Ontario, and it became more of a focus.

But we did cut a deal. They sold part of the experimental farm and built a new crop research station across the road, one that was more modern. But that was the way we moved forward, and that’s something that I’m pretty proud of. I’ve said many times to the minister, there hasn’t been an official opening yet of that centre. I’ve told the minister this, if and when the minister comes to Timiskaming, we will treat her as a minister of the crown should be treated, with respect, and we sincerely hope that I’m invited to that—and it wasn’t me; it was our community.

But there’s one more step that needs to be taken—well, there are a few more steps, but one more that needs to be taken as soon as possible, on the part of the agriculture station that was sold, there is something called the SPUD unit. The SPUD unit does work with potatoes, garlic and strawberries, and what the SPUD unit does is they take the seeds—potato seeds and whatever seeds—and they break them down so there are no viruses on those seeds. Then they reintroduce those seeds back into the commercial market.

There was something that went through PEI—I believe potato wart, potato scab or something. It’s to stop things like that. The reason that it was built in New Liskeard 40 years ago is because of the way the climate works, and the jet stream, and all the viruses and stuff. You southern guys have all the viruses; we’re nice and clean where we are. But it’s 40 years old. It’s worn out, and they’re spending a lot of time and effort just keeping the lights on. Everyone agrees: the potato growers, the garlic growers—all the people use it. What we need to do is move it across the highway—move a new SPUD unit across the highway next to the new ag research station, where it can keep doing its job for Ontarians for the next 40 years. Talking about this bill gives me a chance to talk about that.

While I’m talking about highways: Highways are important for moving agricultural products and moving a lot of stuff. My colleagues from northern Ontario and the people of northern Ontario will know that we spend a lot of time talking about highway safety. The member from Mushkegowuk–James Bay is putting forward legislation—I believe it’s Toby’s Law—to make it illegal to pass on a double line. It’s great legislation. Every chance we get, we talk about highways in this House. Today I’m talking about highways’ importance to agriculture, but highways in general.

On February 1 and 2, the Ministry of Transportation, the Kirkland Lake police detachment and the detachment in New Liskeard and Temiskaming Shores held a highway blitz of commercial vehicles. They pulled over 75 commercial vehicles that they did a full inspection on. Thirty-six of the 75 were pulled off the road for safety infractions—36 of 75. I’d like to thank the OPP and the MTO for that blitz, I really would, because everybody noticed, everybody was happy. But my question to the House, my question to the Minister of Transportation is, what about the other 363 days? If in those two days half the commercial trucks that were inspected were taken off the road for safety infractions—half—there’s a problem.