It’s with some excitement that I’m here this morning to provide some words of congratulations to our Sault Ste. Marie Sault College Cougars women’s hockey team who, on Saturday, March 16, won their second national title in consecutive years with a 3-0 victory over the Assiniboine Community College Cougars at the American Collegiate Hockey Association Women’s Division 2 national championship in St. Louis, Missouri.

During the championship game, Emma Lee paced the offence with two goals, with Materia Land adding an insurance marker in the third. The Cougars goalie, Farrah Farstad, stopped 22 shots for the shutout.

There is a history between the Cougar squads, as the Brandon-based Cougars team had handed Sault College their only loss this season in a 4-1 setback at the Northern Community Centre in Sault Ste. Marie on January 20, breaking the team’s one-and-a-half-year winning streak. That is correct; they had a one-and-a-half-year winning streak. The Brandon-based team did defeat them and break the winning streak, but ultimately, our Cougars still managed to come out on top in the finals and won their second national title.

The Cougars had gone 31-0-0 in winning their first ACHA title last season and started this season with 16 wins and a tie through 17 games, until that loss that I referenced. The Cougars went 3-0 in division pool D, with wins over Mercyhurst University, the United States Naval Academy and Northeastern University. I just want to offer them great congratulations for their second-year-in-a-row victory.

Shocker, Mr. Speaker—Sault Ste. Marie is getting all the love today. I’m loving it.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I have a very, very important question on behalf of the people of Sault Ste. Marie for our wonderful Minister of Energy. Many individuals and families, particularly those in northern Ontario, rely on fuel to heat their homes. Unfortunately, residents in rural and remote parts of northern Ontario face additional barriers in heating their homes due to the lack of viable alternatives.

Families and businesses in Sault Ste. Marie are telling me that they already feel the carbon tax’s impact on their energy bills every single month, and quite frankly, this has been a pretty warm winter in Sault Ste. Marie and throughout the province. It’s unfair and unjust for them to bear the burden of this regressive carbon tax, yet the Liberals and the NDP are content to see the costs related to the carbon tax raised even higher.

Minister, please let us know how our communities in the north are suffering more because of this unaffordable carbon tax.

Mr. Speaker, I did not get a chance to do this earlier, but I’d like to be able to introduce a party and welcome to the House today Katie Blunt, CEO, and Allyson Schmidt, chair of the board of Habitat for Humanity in Sault Ste. Marie. I know they were just in the room and left a little bit early, but I just want to thank them for being here and look forward to seeing them later today.

Good morning, everyone. Today, I want to congratulate a local Sault Ste. Marie business on their 20th anniversary. Loplops Gallery-Lounge is a fixture of downtown Sault Ste. Marie and our local music scene.

Owners Stephen Alexander and Jennifer Bellerose have seen ups and downs during the last several years with our economy, especially the last few years when COVID was happening. Over the last 20 years they’ve really been able to see a bit of it all, but they’ve remained strong through adapting their business model with the changing of the times.

It is great to see the fun holiday-themed event, the 12 Musicians of Christmas, is back after a five-year hiatus, and I just want to offer my congratulations to both Steve and Jenn on the very many great memories that we’ve had at Loplops over the years. I’m looking forward to another 20 years ahead.

I’m going to go for the hat trick here: I also want to welcome, from Sault Ste. Marie, our former MPP and now president of Sault College, David Orazietti.

I also want to introduce Sherri Smith, the vice-president of academics, innovation and student services at Sault College; Rachel MacDonald, the director of communications and stakeholder relations at Sault College; and a very good personal friend of mine, Don Mitchell, the chair of the board of governors at Sault College.

Welcome, everyone, to Queen’s Park.

My community of Sault Ste. Marie has endured quite a lot over the course of the last six weeks or so—as many of you know, recent events. It has been a very, very difficult and trying time.

On September 5 of this year, Constable Orrette Robinson, a Soo police officer, was killed in a traffic accident.

The very next day, on September 6, Mikayla Ouellet was involved in a traffic accident. She was 27 years old. She passed, along with her unborn child.

On September 7, the very next day, a horrific stabbing incident occurred. An individual took the life of 22-year-old Taylor Marshall in a horrible stabbing incident, and then he proceeded to our boardwalk, where he attempted to murder another.

The community as a whole did not know how things could get any harder. We are a small city of just about 75,000 people. Those three days felt like the worst three days we could have imagined.

Then, October 23 happened: Angie Sweeney was murdered—41 years old. Then, the individual proceeded to the residence of his ex-partner, where he proceeded to shoot her and shoot his three children and then himself. We held a vigil last week on Friday. We had about 1,000 people arrive, including Angie’s father. Our community is mourning. Our community needs to heal. Our community did an exceptional job of coming together in solidarity to attempt to heal. I want to thank everyone here for all of their kind words that I’ve received to date. We appreciate that you’ve been thinking about us. It’s something that has been helpful.

I know I’m over time here, Mr. Speaker, but I want to quote the words of Shirley Marshall. She had me read a letter. She was the mother of Taylor. She said, “Sault Ste. Marie: small city, big heart.” We really are that community. Then, the father of Angie Sweeney spoke at the event and said that in times like this, it’s everybody’s love that’s making it easier to get through. So please share that love. Continue to share that love. It doesn’t cost a thing. It’s free.

Applause.

I’m proud to share the news that the Northway Wellness Centre has officially opened in Sault Ste. Marie.

On September 19 earlier this year, I joined the team from Sault Area Hospital and many community partners at Northway to share with the public that the 20-bed residential withdrawal management facility centre would begin accepting patients on September 25.

Northway Wellness Centre is the home to the residential withdrawal management and safe beds program and will be offering services such as comprehensive assessments, medical support, counselling. They will be able to refer patients and families to all of the related services and offerings within our community.

The new facility will provide treatment options to people in our community who are suffering and their families by complementing the significant investments that have been made to build out-of-hospital services and numerous community wraparound supports and services that support vulnerable persons in crisis before they end up in a hospital. These supports are all critical and will help people to heal and to thrive.

Northway will be staffed by a mental health and addictions team including doctors, nurses and social workers.

I want to say a special thank you to the Ministry of Health and to Sault Area Hospital and all of the various community organisations and leaders for making this a reality and for bringing this incredible new facility into our community. It is going to help so many.

This weekend, we had a very, very significant scare in Sault Ste. Marie. On Friday, May 12, a grade 6 class from Holy Cross Catholic School in Sault Ste. Marie had a day planned at St. Kateri Outdoor Learning Centre. St. Kateri is located on the outskirts of Sault Ste. Marie near Nettleton Lake. Myself, my kids and just about every single kid in Sault Ste. Marie has visited St. Kateri. It used to be called Camp Korah. It’s a place where all classes go for field trips in those younger elementary school ages.

Eleven-year-old Ruby Kerr was one of those grade 6 students on Friday. At 11 a.m. that day, she went missing from St. Kateri. An intense search effort began immediately. I even had occasion to deal with it in some capacity as a result of having coached against her in soccer. I was involved with family and coaches with respect to—there was just a massive search, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have a lot of time to go through it but to say that it impacted us all in our community greatly.

I was on the sidelines of the soccer field coaching my oldest son and middle son when her coach came to me and stopped me on the sidelines at half-time to tell me, thankfully, that Ruby had just been found. I really want to place a huge thank you to Sault Ste. Marie Police and the Ontario Provincial Police, especially their aerial helicopter pilots, who helped discover Ruby by just the miraculous finding of a footprint, which became the lead that located her almost 10 kilometres away from Camp Kateri, where she walked through the night.

Beyond the blisters on her feet and scrapes all over her legs and a very, very long, scary night, she was able to be reunited with her mom and dad almost 24 hours after going missing.

Mr. Speaker, my favourite time of the year is the spring. I love the changing of the weather. I love seeing the sun come out and all the snow melting. Obviously, in Sault Ste. Marie, we do get our fair share of snow. It’s such a wonderful time of year, such an exciting time of year. This past week, our constituency week, was an absolutely glorious spring week in so many communities across the province. And Sault Ste. Marie was just outstanding. We had the snow melting. Kids were all outside playing. I couldn’t get my boys to come back inside by the middle of the day Sunday as the weather actually started to turn. Patios were open for business again. Things were outstanding.

This past week was a really great week in Sault Ste. Marie, with our brand new Northern Community Centre, which is a new twin-pad hockey arena that just opened a month ago. Already, we’ve had a few tournaments hosted in this new hockey arena that I’m really proud our government was able to help with the construction of. It was a really special tournament we hosted this past week, where our Soo Jr. Greyhounds under 15 AAA—northern Ontario hockey league champs, actually—hosted the Ontario Hockey Federation U15 AAA Ontario championships. We had teams from across all of Ontario that travelled to the Soo for this five-day round robin tournament. We welcomed the York Simcoe Express, the Sudbury Nickel Capitals, the Thunder Bay Kings, the Vaughan Kings, the Elgin-Middlesex Canucks, and the Upper Canada Cyclones. Unfortunately, we fell short in the finals. But I’m really proud of the work our team put in, and I want to congratulate them on their success.

My question is for the Minister of Northern Development and Indigenous Affairs. In my riding of Sault Ste. Marie and in communities across the north, people are eager to take advantage of opportunities that will help to create jobs and support their economic growth and prosperity. Under the previous Liberal government, rural, remote and northern communities were overlooked. The strengths, the assets and the abilities found in so many of our communities were ignored. As a result, their full potential was never realized.

Our government respects the people of northern Ontario and we respect that we must remain committed to investing in programs and projects that will keep northern Ontario competitive and current. Can the minister please explain how our government is supporting prosperity and opportunities in the north?

My question is for the Minister of Northern Development and Indigenous Affairs.

Under the previous Liberal government, so many opportunities for fostering economic growth across northern Ontario were missed. They were ignored—quite frankly, they were squandered.

Unlike the previous Liberal government, our government must recognize the value and the potential that is present in rural, remote and Indigenous communities. The people of my riding and all the other communities across the north are counting on our government to deliver on the commitments that we made to invest in meaningful priorities that strengthen our local economies.

Can the minister please explain how our government is building a stronger and a more inclusive Ontario?

It is evident that under our leadership—the leadership of our Premier and this minister—investments made by our government through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. are resulting in positive, tangible outcomes for the people of the north.

Our government’s respect for the people of the north and our well-thought-out plans are a sharp contrast to the pattern of neglect that was evident under the previous Liberal government.

Speaker, I’ve knocked on thousands of doors throughout Sault Ste. Marie and other northern communities, and when you just speak to the average person in northern Ontario, the message is always the same: They felt ignored by the former Liberal government. They felt like they didn’t matter. And now, they’re seeing a government that’s putting them first and putting a lot of attention on the north.

In order to remain current and competitive, our government must continue to focus on addressing the needs and the opportunities that will advance prosperity.

Can the minister please elaborate on how this funding will contribute to economic prosperity for communities in the north?

Thank you again, Minister, for that wonderful response. It is welcome news to hear that our government is focused on supporting the north and investing in communities like mine, in Sault St. Marie.

Mr. Speaker, let me say, through you to this House: Our government has been so incredibly committed to communities like mine across the north. Just in my own community—I can say the minister has been in my riding I can’t even count how many times; the Premier has been to the riding I can’t even count how many times. It’s such a welcome thing for our community to see these investments and the real attention that this government is putting in our community and throughout northern Ontario—unlike the previous Liberal government—because our government is optimistic and it does recognize that funding is very, very critical to contributing to building our local and regional economies.

Can the minister please explain how investments by our government will continue to help businesses in my riding to prosper?

Earlier this month, I was able to make a Northern Ontario Heritage Fund announcement in the digital tech sector in beautiful Sault Ste. Marie. Village Media was a recipient of two separate grants, totalling nearly $130,000, that were used to upgrade their Sault Ste. Marie facilities and assist in the purchase of technology and communications equipment.

Ontarians may recognize names like SooToday, OrilliaMatters, StratfordToday and many other digital media platforms that are based at their headquarters on Queen Street in my hometown of Sault Ste. Marie.

And Village Media does not stop there. They own and operate local news sites in a number of markets and also provide technology, consulting and fulfillment services to strategic media partners.

Village Media has grown to become a worldwide media company, with outlets across Canada, the United States and even Nigeria.

I would like to congratulate Jeff and the entire Village Media team on the newest Village Media outlet based right here at Queen’s Park, the Trillium.

I would like to give a special shout-out to one of our pages from the great riding of Sault Ste. Marie. Grace Curran is with us, and I really want to say a special thank you to her.