There were a number of things I was going to say when I first stood up and talked, but I think I’m going to try to bring the temperature down a little bit on some of the things. Normally, when I stand up for these speeches, I don’t usually talk about some of the statistics on things, but I think that I’m going to make an exception today and talk about some statistics that I find rather interesting on it.

The Fraser Institute did a study back in 2014, and they looked at all the mining jurisdictions across Canada. Keep in mind, this was 2014, so some of the data is a little bit old, but there is an interesting thing on it. One of the things that they looked at was the change in time to get permit approval on mining over the last 10 years. Here’s where I want to go with it: In Ontario, up until that date, the length of time it took to get a permit either somewhat increased or considerably increased by a total of 68%—68% of mining companies who tried to get a mine approval, up until 2014, saw the length of time to get the approval increase 68% of the time. Where I find this interesting is that a neighbouring jurisdiction, Manitoba, in that same time period, saw “shortened considerably” or “somewhat” or remained “the same” 51% of the time. Why do I bring up Manitoba? The Canadian Shield represents 72% of the land mass in Ontario, and it goes through Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba. The only thing that divides the Canadian Shield is the imaginary lines that we draw for provinces So here we have Canadian Shield in Manitoba that has exactly the same mineral content as what we have in Ontario and Quebec, and Manitoba found a way to do mining permits 51% of the time either the same over the last 10 years or in a shorter period of time.

Quebec had a change after this report had been done, and their change started around 2015. They saw a significant increase in funding in the mining industry. They’ve had a reduction in the length of time it takes for a mine to be permitted in Quebec.

Again, the only difference between the minerals in Quebec and Ontario is the imaginary line that we draw between them. That’s it. What’s in the ground is in the ground, and it is almost identical in Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba. If you find lithium in Quebec, you’re going to find lithium in Ontario and you’re going to find lithium in Manitoba. It is the same mineral makeup: It’s the Canadian Shield. What’s the difference, though, between them? That is the administrative side.

Another interesting statistic that came from that report was that 38% of the time taken for a permit was considered administrative time. Simply having the request sitting on someone’s desk somewhere—38% of that time. The average time it takes to build a mine or to get the permits to do a mine is 12 to 15 years. More than a third of that is simply administration—four to five years of administration. Where is there value in an administrative delay? It’s not consultation. It’s not studies. It’s simply administrative delay. And one of the things that this bill will do is eliminate some of that administrative delay.

One of the things that is in this bill is a change so that, for closure plans, someone can sign off on them if they have one of the proper designations. We do this already in so many different things. If you look at the building permit process, if an engineer signs off on it, that engineer is putting their designation on the line for it.

I’m going to give a personal example of it, because I spoke to the chief building officer in the township that I’m in because I wanted to build another garage at my place. I said to him, over the course of this past winter, I had a number of pine trees that died. Some kind of a disease came through. I’ve got 34 of them on my property that have died. I’ve cut down about 26 of them so far. The smallest one is around 12 inches in diameter, and the largest is almost four feet in diameter. I said to him, “This is still really good wood, and I hate to just chop it up and burn it, because there’s a lot of value in it.” Some of those trees—the one in particular that’s almost four feet around is close to 60 feet long. I said, “What can I do if I want to use this to build a pole barn? Because it’s not milled lumber. How do I show it?” And he said, “Your property isn’t zoned as agriculture. If it was zoned as agriculture, you could just go ahead and build it. You could build a pole barn. There’s no problem with that. But your property isn’t zoned as agriculture. So what you can do is get an engineer to sign off, to say that those trees at those certain widths are strong enough to hold the weight.” We do that for building permits. I can build a pole barn on my property using the trees from my property if I have an engineer come in, evaluate the wood and say, “Yes, this is fine. This is safe,” because the engineer is putting their professional opinion on it and their professional record on the line. That makes sense. That’s why the engineer went to school—to do those things.

What we’re proposing in this bill is basically the same thing, on the closure plan. Instead of having to go through an administrative process on it, if we have someone who’s qualified to review the plan and say, “This is safe. This makes sense. This will improve the environmental perspective of the area or improve the land itself,” and they sign off on that, what they’re saying is, in their professional opinion, this makes sense. We do that with doctors. We ask a doctor, “What should I do about whatever ailment?” And the doctor says, “In my professional opinion, here’s what you should do.” I’m a type 2 diabetic. My A1C levels were increasing because the drugs I was on were no longer working. I went to my doctor and I said, “Doc, what can I do about this?” And he said, “In my opinion, this is the drug we should change you to.” And we accept that, because he’s a qualified professional. We’re asking his opinion. This is no different than what we’re proposing here, and yet if you listen to the opposition, not only is the sky falling, but the sun will never rise again if we do this.

It makes sense to cut down on administrative time if we have someone who is a qualified professional to stand up and say, “This is appropriate.”

The member from University–Rosedale made comments in the speech about not needing extra lands that we could do infill on. In Peterborough, in 2019, five single-family home building permits were issued. Six multi-unit buildings were put forward, and the NIMBYism blocked it. In fact, they’ve gone to the LTB. Three of those have already been heard and have been found to be in favour of the developer. The city didn’t actually send anyone to defend their position.

The argument that’s being put forward by the NDP is that there is enough land already for infill, that we don’t have to have any other land. Yet the example in my community is that there has been no development done, and the population has grown by more than 4,000 in the last four years. We have not had enough housing for 1,000 of them to actually be put in.

Why does the member think that status quo will work, when it is demonstrated over the last two decades that we’re not able to develop enough housing for the people who are coming to Ontario? The 100,000 new starts last year are 50,000 short of what we actually need. Why does the member believe that we do not need more land, that infill will work?