I did not hear an answer that responded to the Terrace Bay situation, but I’ll continue.

Speaker, this government is failing to use all the tools at its disposal to keep people working at the Alstom plant in Thunder Bay. American manufacturing contracts must have at least 70% American content, yet you lowered local content rules to a mere 10% and gave the Ontario Line to a Japanese corporation—$9 billion paid by Ontario taxpayers, with not one of the trains built in Ontario.

We have the expertise, facilities, skilled workforce and supply chain. What we’re missing is a commitment from this government to keep people in northwestern Ontario working.

Premier, will you commit to the maximum possible local content in all future contracts?

Speaker, my question is to the Premier, through you: Last week, the Premier told reporters that the Terrace Bay mill is not likely to reopen. That’s an awful way for the people of Thunder Bay–Superior North to hear that the government has given up on the mill.

Forestry experts are telling you sustainably produced forest products are climate-friendly, in demand and can provide a much greater contribution to Ontario’s economy than they do now. The closure not only affects all the families and businesses in Terrace Bay and Schreiber, it affects workers and families throughout the entire region: about 10,000 people.

Is this government giving up on the pulp and paper industry?

The people of Terrace Bay, Schreiber and the entire region of northwestern Ontario want to know: Why have you given up so easily?

Thank you. And I’d like to say, the biomass projects have nothing to do with helping the workers in Terrace Bay. There has been no communication with the workers in Terrace Bay whatsoever.

The owners of the mill, the Aditya Birla Group, received nearly $130 million from the province with an expectation that, when they purchased the mill, they were in for the long hail and the community could depend on the jobs. The town, the workers there and all the surrounding communities don’t have two years to wait until maybe another multinational thinks they can get a good deal on a mill that actually produces some of the best pulp in the world.

There has been no communication with the workers and almost no communication with the town leadership, so everybody is waiting to hear something.

So I want to know now, today, with workers who have travelled all the way here from Terrace Bay, what is the government doing, specifically, to bring back jobs for the workers at Terrace Bay, to bring that mill back to life?

Interjections.

I would like to welcome Tanya Baker, who is here from Thunder Bay, representing AdvantAge Ontario.

I would also like to welcome, from OPSEU: Noah Freedman, Simon Chateauvert, JP Hornick, RM Kennedy and Simran Ghuman, who are all here to represent the interests of forest firefighters.

To the Minister of Natural Resources, through you, Speaker: As you know, the mill in Terrace Bay has been idled since January. I have met with the union leadership, mayors, First Nations chiefs, our provincial and federal representatives and small business owners in Terrace Bay and Schreiber, and nothing has happened to slow down the potential social and economic collapse of these communities. There are 500 direct lost jobs but 1,900 jobs at risk throughout the region.

Given that the owners of the mill won’t communicate beyond saying they will entertain offers of purchase, I’m wondering what update the government can share with these workers about their plans to address this issue.

Who is going to ensure that the company does not get away with leaving a huge cleanup liability for a potential buyer or the community of Terrace Bay?

I would like to welcome Carlos Santander, Matthew Roy and Gordon Robitaille, who have come here from Thunder Bay. Gordon had to do an extra hour to get here from Nipigon. Welcome.

Boozhoo. Remarks in Ojibway.

Bonjour. Je voudrais remercier les citoyens de Thunder Bay–Supérieur-Nord qui m’ont envoyée ici pour être leur représentante dans cette Chambre.

Greetings, Mr. Speaker. My name is Lise Vaugeois. I represent Thunder Bay–Superior North. I would like to congratulate you, Speaker, on your re-election to this important position and would also like to congratulate new members of the assembly and those who have been returned. And I want to thank and send my best wishes to my predecessor, Michael Gravelle, who served this riding for an amazing 27 years.

I would like now to offer a land acknowledgement for Thunder Bay–Superior North, which is on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg and the Fort William First Nation, signatories of the Robinson-Superior Treaty of 1850. In addition, there are two communities that are signatories of Treaty 9, known as the James Bay Treaty. Regardless of which treaties each one of us falls under geographically, we are all treaty partners, and it is important for every member of this House and, indeed, all Ontarians that we learn what is in the treaties and how they came to pass. We are all represented in these agreements, and despite the deception and skulduggery enacted by various governments in the negotiation of these treaties, we have the opportunity today to learn from Indigenous elders, scholars, teachers and activists to adjust our notions of what constitutes prosperity. The time is now to move in new directions to achieve respectful nation-to-nation relationships as we do the hard work of learning to move forward together.

I must add, though, this is not just a matter of including Indigenous peoples in our projects but a matter of rethinking everything from the ground up: putting environmental stewardship at the forefront and thinking ahead to the effects our actions will have on the well-being of the seven generations that follow us.

I raise this here because climate change and its effects were invisible in the throne speech, and I believe addressing climate change needs to be at the forefront of every decision every government undertakes. This refusal to even name climate change as an issue, let alone responsibly address climate change, is a failure that is actually contributing to the mental health crises so many young people are experiencing.

Before I go any further, I would like to thank my partner, Maureen Ford; my mother, Yolanda Hall; my sister, Paula Vaugeois; my Kam family; my friends such as Diem Lafortune; my fantastic campaign team; and the people of Thunder Bay–Superior North for supporting me in this election and bringing me to this Legislature. It’s an honour to be here and I look forward to repaying people’s trust in me by representing the interests of our northwestern Ontario riding at every opportunity.

We had a fantastic campaign that brought people together from so many different constituencies, including teachers, students, social workers, professors, office staff, cleaning staff, health care workers, geological engineers, construction workers, environmental activists, carpenters, members of First Nations communities, artists, people living with disabilities, queer and straight activists, musicians, anti-poverty activists, seniors, teenagers, local business owners, people from small resource towns, and people from the more urban city of Thunder Bay.

I also want to take this moment to pay tribute to Miriam Ketonen, who was such a key member of our riding association—so smart with numbers and money, so funny, and above all, so kind. Miriam died almost a year ago from lung cancer that seemed to come from nowhere. It took her very quickly and we are still mourning her loss. Thank you, Miriam, for being such a good friend and anchor to so many in our community.

For those who don’t know much about Thunder Bay–Superior North, I want to offer a short geography lesson. People are often deceived about the distances in the north because when you flip a map of Ontario over, the scale is completely different. I’ve met more than one traveller who mistakenly thought the distance between the Soo and Thunder Bay was merely four hours. In fact, it is a good 16-hour drive from Toronto to Thunder Bay, and it’s eight hours from the Soo.

Thunder Bay–Superior North covers 92,928 square kilometres of beautiful and challenging country. Along the spectacular North Shore of Lake Superior—Highway 17—the communities include Thunder Bay, Red Rock, Nipigon, the Red Rock Indian Band, Schreiber, Terrace Bay, Pays Plat First Nation, Marathon and Biigtigong Nishnaabeg First Nation. But that’s only the places on the North Shore of Superior. Along what we refer to as the northern highway, Highway 11, there are seven First Nations communities: Rocky Bay, Sandpoint, Poplar Point, the Lake Nipigon Band, Long Lake #58, Ginoogaming, and further north, Aroland. Municipalities along Highway 11 include Beardmore, Geraldton, Longlac, Nakina and Caramat. These are all now amalgamated as the township of Greenstone. And throughout the entire region, there are long-standing and vibrant francophone communities. Finally, along the west side of Lake Nipigon there are Gull Bay and Whitesand First Nations, and the town of Armstrong.

In fact, there is so much distance covered and there are so many distinct communities involved that when the men’s a cappella chorus I directed for the last six years did our own version of the song I’ve Been Everywhere, we could not fit in all the different place names. We had a lot of fun trying, though.

Thunder Bay–Superior North has people living and working in urban spaces, on farmland, producing lumber, pulp and paper, involved in mining, tourism and, as well, many who are engaged in traditional, land-based Indigenous economies.

The city of Thunder Bay itself has a college, a university that includes a school of education where I taught for many years, a law school, a school of nursing, a school of forestry and a medical school. We have a professional theatre company and dance, theatre, musical and visual arts collectives, both community-based and professional. The Ahnisnabae Art Gallery, owned by Louise Thomas, is a fantastic business where it is possible to buy the works of many esteemed Indigenous artists.

The Thunder Bay Community Auditorium is a fully professional facility that produces touring as well as community shows. In fact, the auditorium was originally built to house the wonderful professional Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, and it was this orchestra that brought me to Thunder Bay in the first place. I was a member of the orchestra for 13 years before pursuing my PhD at the University of Toronto, where I studied the relationship between colonization, culture and systemic racism, returning in 2011 to teach educators at Lakehead University.

What has become apparent to me after living for 30 years in northwestern Ontario is that this region is often an afterthought for people living elsewhere in the province; yet Thunder Bay–Superior North generates an incredible amount of wealth that benefits the rest of the province. The people of northwestern Ontario need and deserve access to the same services needed in all other parts of Ontario. Advocating for the people of the region and speaking loudly and proudly about the significance of northwestern Ontario is what I intend to do in my role here.

There are, of course, other issues that I hope to address.

Thunder Bay is the home of the first injured workers support group in Ontario, where I learned just how badly injured workers have been betrayed, first by the 1995 Conservative Government and Mike Harris, then by subsequent Liberal governments and, most recently, when the Ford government took money that should have been going to injured workers and returned it to employers. This was a complete betrayal of the original purpose of the Workmen’s Compensation Board, as conceived of over 100 years ago by the Conservative minister, Sir William Meredith.

The WSIB, formerly known as the Workers’ Compensation Board, was meant to be a no-fault insurance plan to benefit both employers and workers. Today, the WSIB is a travesty. Almost all applications from workers with permanent injuries are denied compensation, forcing them to enter an appeal process that can take years to complete. In the meantime, injured and unable to work, workers often lose their homes and wind up on ODSP—a fast track to becoming homeless. And please note, when workers are forced to go on ODSP because their employers and the WSIB have chosen not to meet their obligations, it becomes a public problem to solve—a public expense. This is contrary to everything that the original Workmen’s Compensation Act was intended to address.

This brings me to the rates for ODSP and OW. It was the Conservative government of Mike Harris that slashed Ontario Works and ODSP rates by 21.6% in 1995. The Liberals raised the rates by small amounts, and at the end of their mandate they suggested a small increase of 3%—not close to the rate of inflation; however, that was still too rich for the Ford government that cut that increase in half the moment they were elected. The Conservative minister of the time characterized this increase as compassionate. Well, I beg to differ.

So Mr. Speaker, when members from the other side of the House talk about an historic increase of 5%, they are forgetting the previous Conservative cuts and the failure of subsequent governments, including this one, to increase ODSP and OW to at least meet the rate of inflation. In other words, the amount has been effectively cut for the last 37 years. If we wonder why there is so much homelessness and suffering evident in communities all over the province, we need look no further than the policies of previous Conservative and Liberal governments. In a wealthy province like Ontario, this level of deep poverty is cruel and, frankly, completely unnecessary.

Now to health care: Let’s also go back again to the Mike Harris government, which fired 6,000 nurses, cut 28,000 health sector jobs and closed 28 hospitals. The Harris government also opened the door to long-term-care privatization that he now personally benefits from. Flash forward to the pandemic, and these same privately owned long-term-care homes became the site of thousands of lost lives due to poorly run and insufficiently regulated homes. And yet, in spite of all the evidence telling us that privatized long-term care puts profits over people, at the end of their first mandate, the Ford government sold 35-year licences to the same egregiously run for-profit long-term-care homes. It’s very hard to understand how this could even be remotely acceptable to members on the other side of the House.

So what about today’s health care crisis? I remember vividly the assault on public services initiated by massive cuts and an aggressive campaign to destroy unions that began in their earnest with the Mike Harris Conservative government. The Liberals did little to nothing to reduce the damage and indeed made it worse by instituting even more cuts and privatizing a significant portion of hydro.

I would like to recall the incredible admission made by a former Conservative Minister of Education, John Snobelen, who was overheard stating that the government should create a crisis in order to create public appetite for private alternatives. In the mid-1990s, when Minister Snobelen stated that a “climate of panic” would be necessary to mobilize public support for cuts to education, the strategy was described by Snobelen as “creating a useful crisis.” These machinations were followed by brutal cuts to Ontario classrooms and attacks on the professional standing of teachers.

Those of us who are old enough to have long memories have been watching the destruction of our public systems develop over the last 37 years, with the most recent attack being the removal of collective bargaining rights and the repression of wages brought about through Bill 124—this at the same time as encouraging for-profit nursing agencies to charge hospitals two and three times the wages paid to the front-line health care workers. In other words, wage repression has nothing to do with saving money and has everything to do with breaking unions by creating crisis conditions for patients and for health care workers. In fact, I suggest that Bill 124 was designed to create exactly the crises we are experiencing today in our health care and education systems, with people quitting the fields they love because they can’t take the overwork and abuse from this government anymore.

I worry when the government finds ways to pay its own members extra wages by creating new ministries and positions, costing taxpayers far more money at the same time as it supports excess spending on for-profit nursing agencies while refusing to acknowledge the sound recommendations of health care workers, those who provide the front-line work. Yes, the government is saying that people will continue to use their health cards to access services, but where will our public dollars be going? Will surcharges be allowed? What regulations will be maintained? What kind of job security will be available to workers once unions have been beaten down, and how much will be sucked out of public resources to be wasted on private profits?

Clearly, the NDP has a very different analysis of which government policies have brought us to the housing, health care and education crises people are experiencing across the province. In spite of our cross-party differences, however, I come here with hope and optimism, because I believe that many, if not the majority of members of this House, want to see change that will allow health care workers, teachers and all public sector workers to do what they signed up to do: serve the interests of the public.

I agree with the Premier when he says that the status quo cannot go on. The state of crisis instigated by the imposition of Bill 124 is in fact the status quo, manufactured and delivered by a Premier determined to turn public dollars into private profits. This status quo, the disenfranchisement of current health care workers, is what must end.

The government can talk all it wants about what it is doing, but clearly what it is not doing is showing existing health care workers that they are wanted. These are the people working in our hospitals right now who are being ignored, who are being disrespected, being kept from having decent wages and kept from having the right to actually bargain.

The current status quo, with its goal of privatizing health care and education, goes right back to the Mike Harris government of 1995. We know this. I believe the government knows this, and I hope that the people of Ontario come to know this as well.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak.