Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise in this House to deliver my inaugural speech today. I’m honoured to represent the people of Timmins.

I want to recognize the historical connections of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit nations to this land. I was the first mayor of Timmins to acknowledge the traditional territory before the council meetings in Timmins, and today I would like to acknowledge the people of Mattagami First Nation who are part of Treaty 9 and have traditional territory in Timmins.

I would like to start, Mr. Speaker, by thanking my family for their support and encouragement throughout my journey to become a member of provincial Parliament. Thank you to my loving wife, Debbie; my children, Shaelah and Stewart, and their spouses, Lance and Alicia; and our grandchildren, Ella, Alivia and Charlie.

I’d also like to thank my campaign chairman, Gaetan Malette, who was the architect of my campaigns as mayor for Timmins, and certainly the architect during the campaign for MPP here.

I have deep roots in Timmins. My father was born in 1920 behind the mill of the Dome mine, very close to a place called Little Italy. My father’s parents arrived in Porcupine to farm, not to mine. Both the Stewart family and the Pirie family were farmers from the Ottawa Valley. The Piries arrived in Canada in the late 1800s, and the Stewart family arrived in the middle of the 1700s—both families from Scotland.

My grandparents came up north from the Ottawa Valley to farm; they, however, were not the first. The TNO railway was constructed to get to the farming areas of the Lesser Clay Belt and Great Clay Belt of northeastern Ontario. The TNO, you may not know, but it’s now called the ONR. The railway was built to join the trans-Canada rail systems in Cochrane. It was envisioned that Cochrane would grow to be the size of Winnipeg, with good reason, as there are 10 million acres of arable land in the Great Clay Belt, more than Manitoba.

Cochrane has been a rail centre for quite some time. You may not know this—everybody knows that Tim Horton is from Cochrane, but his father was a railway man, and he worked along the railroads. It may be of a little bit of interest that Conn Smythe started his career before the First World War—I guess he was rebelling, with his father—and he had a homestead just to the west of Cochrane. He gave that up; it was a bad idea. He sold that, and the individual he sold that farm to, unfortunately, died in the great 1916 forest fire. So I guess we’re very lucky that Conn decided to move out of Cochrane.

Cobalt: As the railway was being developed, they found silver in what is now Cobalt. Cobalt was by far the largest silver camp in North America, making the bonanza deposits in Nevada small, in comparison. These deposits in Cobalt at their height produced 40 million ounces of silver a year—a huge production. These discoveries quickly led to the rush of exploration in Gowganda, Elk Lake, Larder Lake, Swastika, Kirkland Lake and the Porcupine.

Cobalt was the reason why the Haileybury School of Mines was established, which is still one of the campuses of Northern College. These campuses also include Kirkland Lake, Porcupine and Moosonee. Moosonee is the only campus on a saltwater coast in Ontario. Yes, we have a saltwater coast in Ontario.

Moose Factory was established by the Hudson’s Bay Co., which was formed on May 2, 1670. For a time, James Bay was a flourishing centre of international trade. The trade went north to the coastal communities and from there to Europe.

I have maps from the early 1800s, where northern Ontario is far better-mapped than southern Ontario. Lakes in my area, like Night Hawk Lake, Frederick House Lake and Porcupine Lake, are well-mapped and have the original Indigenous names. They were the original trading routes that the Indigenous people used to get into the coastal areas.

Early mining maps show clearly the trail from Fort Matachewan and the very upper reaches of the Montreal River. This was one of the original ways the Indigenous people travelled to get to the northern coastal areas from the Ottawa and Montreal river systems to the Mattagami and Moose systems to bypass Abitibi River, which was treacherous through the Abitibi Canyon. Those sites now, of course, have all been harnessed by hydro and are generating millions of kilowatts of power a year.

An Indigenous man by the name of Stephen Lafricain was the last factor of Fort Matachewan, and he was instrumental in the discovery of gold in Porcupine. Stephen’s father was Jamaican, and his mother was Inuit. He was born in Labrador around 1830. An interesting anecdote is that he served with the Union forces in the Civil War. In that time, well-to-do individuals could buy out of their services, and Stephen took up that opportunity. He ended up working in the fur-trading industry with Hudson’s Bay, and his earliest trips in Porcupine were around the 1880s. As you could expect, he knew the region very well.

While wintering in the Night Hawk area, Harry Preston came to know Stephen over a couple of winters. In that period, Stephen told Harry where to find gold in Porcupine. Harry Preston was a member of the Wilson party, which discovered the Dome mine—the Big Dome, as we call it. The Dome mill is still operating and will continue to operate for quite some time. It is where the ore from the Borden mine, Canada’s first all-electric mill, is being processed.

There is L’Africain Avenue in Matachewan, and perhaps someday we’ll have a street in Timmins named after Stephen in the Porcupine. But I digress.

By 1920, my grandparents had left farming because mining was simply the best economic opportunity in the region, with mines being found on a regular basis. My grandparents raised five children: four boys and one girl. The youngest, my Uncle Bill, lives in London with his lovely Jean. Jean will be 88 years old soon. My Aunt Jean was also Jim Prentice’s aunt. Jim was, in my opinion, perhaps the best Prime Minister we never had. Mr. Prentice’s career intertwined with mine somewhat, particularly with Indigenous affairs, and he and I became good friends.

Mr. Prentice’s father was Eric, or Doc. At 17, Eric, or Doc, was the youngest individual ever to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs. He was the older brother of Dean. Dean, in the off-season, used to come and visit his dad and mom who were the custodians for the Dome public school and lived in the school. Dean played for the New York Rangers, and it was a thrill for all of us young kids when Dean showed up.

My dad started to work at the Dome after he finished his grade 13 at 16. He did not see much need to advance his education as, in 1936, thousands of men were lined up for jobs in mines out of Porcupine and, quite frankly, he did not, nor did his family, have any money to go on to university. He often told stories about thousands of men lined up for one job at the Dome. So he stayed at the Dome and worked there. He started at 16 with the kid bull gang; you couldn’t work underground, but you could work on the surface. He married my mother before leaving to go to war, and the only place he ever lived outside of a mining village, up until he retired, was during his tour of duty in the Second World War.

My mother’s family was British. They weren’t English—my grandmother was very strident on that—they were British. My grandfather was born in London. He was 15 when he joined up to join the First World War. He decided—when he got into France and he was in the trenches, he thought that wasn’t such a good idea. He told his commanding officer that he lied about his age. The commanding officer said, “You’re out of luck. You’re going to stay there,” and he had to stay there. So he survived the First World War.

He met my grandmother while he was going through the discharge process. My grandmother was one of 28 children—not all of them survived, as you can imagine. Both grandparents were Roman Catholic. Because of the number of kids in my grandmother’s family, she was raised by an uncle, as my grandmother used to say, who had some means, and she was raised in Bath, England.

When my grandparents got married, they flipped a coin to see if they would immigrate to Australia or Canada; Canada won. They started their life in Canada, living outside of Guelph on a farm. Again, better economic opportunities appeared in the form of a job in an auto plant in Oshawa, and that is where my mom was born, one of five girls and two boys.

The Depression arrived in 1929. My grandfather would not go on the dole, as he called it, so when he lost his job, they simply closed the door, leaving everything as it was. They moved north to a little place called Larocque, which was on the ONR line. My mother would tell us how she felt when they left their house in Oshawa, containing her bedroom with her dolls and her dollhouse, with only their suitcases and just simply shut the door behind them, leaving her, as a six-year-old little girl, devastated. They spent the first winter in a sod hut on the side of a hill, attempting to earn a living farming. He realized quickly that there were better opportunities in Porcupine, and they moved there.

Again, life was very tough. They found a place to stay in an old bunkhouse at the Little Pet Mine south of the Dome Mine, in the bush with only a dirt floor. Again, my mother used to tell us stories: They had to strip the moss off the rocks to seal the cracks between the timbers to try to stay warm in the winter and keep the bugs out in the summer. I cannot imagine what my grandmother thought about that, as a young woman who was raised in Bath, England. My grandfather worked in the boiler rooms in Oshawa and, as such, he found work in the powerhouse at the Dome and was given a house in Dome-Ex, and that’s where my dad lived as well. Life began to get a little bit easier.

My parents started to date, and if you can imagine this, because my grandparents on my mother’s side were Roman Catholic and my father’s grandparents on his side, of course, were Protestant, they would get into fist fights, once again proving that children are smarter than their parents, if for no other reason than they are able to leave the parents’ bias behind.

My dad and mom married before my dad entered the navy and learned his trade as an electrician there, serving as a chief petty officer on a corvette. My father worked for the Dome for 47½ years and was the chief electrician there. My parents never owned their own home, but they raised seven children, two of whom were born during the war—my older brother and older sister. All of them were successful.

My father, mother and all of my siblings felt very, very proud of the fact that they, obviously, spent their early days in these little towns called Dome and Dome-Ex, which revolved around mining. Our lives just simply revolved around that. Our outdoor rink was right beside our house. We literally lived on the outdoor rink during the winter. We skated across the laneway to the rink in the morning, and we kept our skates on over lunch as Mom put carpets down over the kitchen floor. In the summer, we had tennis courts, ball fields, soccer fields.

Mining was intertwined with our lives on a daily basis in these villages. In the wintertime, while playing hockey on outdoor rinks, we counted the skips of ore hoisted to the surface, and in the summertime the doors were opened to cool the big hoist room motors, and as such we could actually see the Lilly controllers spin and hear the signals calling out indicating what levels the men wanted to go to. We had an elementary school, Dome Public School, and a grocery store and curling rink.

We kept time by the Dome whistle, which was a steam whistle that announced shift changes and noon-hour. Once a year at New Year’s, at 12 midnight, it rang for two minutes. It also used to ring every November 11 just before 11 o’clock, just to announce to all the workers that, of course, there was Remembrance Day. It also rang when there was trouble in the mines, a sound which caused the hair on the back of your neck to stand on end.

We and everyone who ever lived there felt that it was the best place in the world. Mining was just great. The career was a great way to live. My son feels the same, and he is now the fourth generation to work in the mining industry, in Porcupine at the Dome site.

So with this description of the mining life in Porcupine, it was a real shock to find out early in my career that the mining industry were the bad guys. I lived in a mining community that did progressive reclamation well before there were any regulations to do so. We were excellent corporate citizens with full social licence from the communities to operate, and yet we were the bad guys. In the movie Avatar, the mining guys really are bad guys, but they had no resemblance to the mining guys I knew of. We all seemed to be tarred with the same brush, and it troubled me.

In my career, I was lucky enough to travel all around the world, taking part in every facet of the mining process, including exploration, mine development, front-office activities and as an executive. The mines of the world are never found in resorts; they are found in the middle of countries, and that’s why I’ve travelled to the interiors of many countries across the world. I’ve seen the grinding poverty in South Africa and in Manila. I have worked through the political instability of Latin America and Venezuela. I have worked in developing countries like Papua New Guinea. We operated mines in Tunisia, and we closed mines there as well. But in every community that we operated in, in every country, we saw how mining elevated the standard of living, including Indigenous communities here in Timmins and in Canada. Whenever I arrived back home in Vancouver or Toronto, I felt blessed that we lived in a country like Canada that was democratic, and also a country of peace and prosperity. I was proud to work in the Canadian mining industry.

Mr. Speaker, I saw how through using industry-leading practices like revenue-sharing agreements, the five signatory nations of the Musselwhite agreement lifted the standard of living in all of these communities, to the point that other Indigenous nations were asking us to explore in their territory. I know the tremendous potential of revenue-sharing agreements and the power of economic reconciliation.

I’ve worked with Wahgoshig Resources, the economic development arm of Wahgoshig First Nation, and formed a diamond-drilling company building capacities and competencies. As the WFN lifted their standard of living, they built better housing and health clinics, all because of the development on their traditional lands and taking advantage of the mining opportunities then.

I know how enlightened the Critical Minerals Strategy is, with its promise of economic advancement and transformation to a green economy, matching the mineral potential of the north and the economic might of the south. We cannot achieve our climate goals without developing these critical minerals. We are no longer the bad guys; as I said, we cannot be green without mining.

I know this government believes in mining for all the right reasons, and its actions to make things happen have been proven by Côté Lake, which languished for 17 years despite the backing and support of the local Indigenous partners prior to this government appointing a senior environmental officer to steer this project through. It’s a critical mass of ounces, 20 million ounces—that’s a world-class deposit.

That’s why I felt so grateful to walk into the chamber in the magnificent homage to democracy and peace here in Ontario. I will admit that when I walked through the doors in this Legislature, it was an overwhelming experience. My brothers and sisters felt the same way because of our family’s rich history with mining in Ontario. The fact that I was walking down these stairs was an honour because of what Canada and Ontario has to offer.

Our country is blessed with solutions to the problems we experience in our communities, but I know things still aren’t perfect. We have 41,000 people in Timmins, and I know that number was on the downward trend. I’ve seen how economic challenges can lead to poverty, as well as mental health and addictions crises. At any given time, 95% of our homeless in Timmins are from the coastal communities. From my experience in the mining sector, I know the mining sector can provide solutions to our most serious problems by building communities and creating career paths that lead to prosperity.

Developing mines provides opportunities for Indigenous communities to participate and become leaders as we develop the green economy. Just last week, I participated in an honouring ceremony with the Chief of TTN, Bruce Archibald; RoseAnne Archibald, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations; Alison Linklater, Grand Chief to the Mushkegowuk; and Victor Linklater, Deputy Chief of NAN. These are the leaders of the TTN community, a community that is fully supportive of the Canada Nickel project just to the north of Timmins and is participating as an owner.

This is how you achieve economic reconciliation. This is a green project, and the ore is hosted in serpentine which absorbs CO₂. The TTN own the power transmission and, as such, I said during the ceremony that TTN is helping in solving the climate crisis. Mining is the solution to the climate crisis. I’ve always said you can’t go green without mining. Additionally, every parent wants their children to have a better life than they did. These projects allow this to happen.

Timmins is a vital economic engine of northeastern Ontario, but we can do better. We need to continue to open more mines and create opportunities for all people to enter the workforce and succeed, and for the Indigenous people to participate in economic reconciliation. We have to keep developing our agricultural sector to support our Mennonite community, who are rapidly redeveloping dormant farmland.

We have a government that is going to build the infrastructure we need to support new mines and resource development, including building roads to the Ring of Fire. That’s exactly what we have in Premier Ford’s government.

I look forward to serving the people of Timmins in my capacity as MPP and serving the entire province as Minister of Mines.