Legislature Wed Mar 7

Recently, on February 2, Noront Resources took bid proposals for a ferrochrome facility that they want to operate in northern Ontario. They asked four cities in the north to bid on the package. Those four cities were Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, Sudbury and Timmins. In the course of their seeking proposals, they were concerned about the impact of having a degree of community buy-in for this plant. I took it upon myself to initiate a commit-tee in my community that was referred to as the public relations committee. The public relations committee spe-cifically tried to address the environmental assessment processes that existed within the operation that Noront wished to pursue with respect to the ferrochrome pro-cessing facility that they wished to open in northern Ontario.

We sought to promote the incredible environmental initiatives that were being taken by Noront to ensure that their plant, if approved, would operate within the most stringent environmental assessment measures possible. We looked at similar plants in Finland and in South Africa that operate in an environmentally safe and friendly way. We took to the people of Sault Ste. Marie and we tried to show them how this environmental as-sessment process would work. There are a number of checks and balances and community engagement pro-cesses that occur in order to secure permitting for a min-ing operation or a processing facility of this nature. We had a number of environmental engineers we consulted with and spoke to in order to satisfy our community, specifically within Sault Ste. Marie, that we could have a ferrochrome processing facility within our community and that it could operate with the strictest of environ-mental standards and operate in a friendly way.
I was very proud of the work that our community put together in Sault Ste. Marie. The number of business owners and members within my community who contrib-uted to that was very substantial.

Of course, a ferrochrome facility will never be built in northern Ontario if we continue along the path that this government has been on with the respect to the Ring of Fire, which has been 11 years of inaction—
Mr. Todd Smith: Road to nowhere.
Mr. Ross Romano: To put it mildly.
They claim to be trying to consult with the impacted First Nations in a meaningful way. They claim to want to do it the right way. Yet, and this is really interesting, their most recent announcement in August of this year—the argument was, “We’re just going to build a road now with the communities that have agreed to do this, and the people who don’t want us to build it, well, we’re just going to go around them now.” That’s the new plan. Communities like Eabametoong and Neskantaga, who don’t feel like they’ve been properly consulted with—well, you know what? They’re just not going to get a say anymore. That’s the government’s plan, after 11 years. It’s rather unfortunate.
I started out this portion of the debate wondering why we aren’t talking about important issues, why we aren’t talking about meaningful issues, issues that are affecting us today, things that actually call for a solution, not more political games. Climate change is a very, very important issue. But when you’re not going to do anything about it and you’re just going to identify it and we’re going to waste meaningful minutes, I’m not sure why we bother.
At this time, Mr. Speaker, I’m going to move adjourn-ment of the House.