Always nice to hear Noront mentioned....

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I spoke yesterday about the ferrochrome processing plant that Noront Resources wants to build in northern Ontario. This plant will create, just to build it, about 400 jobs; to operate it, about another 400 jobs; and an indirect spinoff of approximately 3 to 1, so potentially another 1,000 to 1,200 jobs within a community in northern On-tario. Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, Sudbury and Tim-mins have been asked to put proposals in.
I’m sure the member from Thunder Bay–Superior North, the minister, would be very happy to see 400 jobs in his community, and another 1,200 potential, indirect jobs. I know my community would be very, very happy to have those. I know Sudbury would be very happy, and I know Timmins would be very happy to see those jobs, but we’re not going to be able to do it if we can’t get the Ring of Fire development done. They can operate in an environmentally safe and responsible way. Those oppor-tunities exist right within the north, to be able to grow jobs and still have it done in a safe and responsible way.
Let’s imagine that Noront cannot develop the proper infrastructure. Well, they will still mine the resources, and those resources will be shipped off to China or other locations, like in South Africa, where there’s a significant ferrochrome market. Those plants will turn that ore into ferrochrome and produce stainless steel. We will not see the benefits that those plants would provide to the en-vironment if they operated within Ontario, within our en-vironmental restrictions here in our province. If they are operating in some of these foreign markets where those restrictions do not apply, that carbon footprint is felt by the world. Whether you produce ferrochrome in Ontario or whether you make ferrochrome in India or China or

South Africa, the carbon footprint is felt around the world. If we really want to do something to help the environment, let’s make sure that business is here in On-tario, so that at least we can control the carbon that is emitted from these places.
What do they need? They need a road. They also need some help on energy rates. Let’s promise them that we’ll give them six cents a kilowatt hour. Let’s do something to incentivize these businesses to operate in Ontario, if we want to reduce their carbon footprint around the world. These are the types of the initiatives we can take.
It’s unfortunate that we’re here spending valuable time discussing a motion with no teeth, no solutions, no plan, while we have important things to address, very import-ant matters that matter to our economy and matter to the environment—