Could our precious announcement be months away????

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Our plan is to get preliminary construction started in 2019, and that will be great......

We will continue to do that work and continue to speak about it in the months ahead as we move towards environment-al assessment for these all-season roads.

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When one speaks specifically about the Ring of Fire, there’s no question—

Mr. Gilles Bisson: He’s driving the bulldozer.
Hon. Michael Gravelle: There are two key aspects to the Ring of Fire, Mr. Speaker: Regional infrastructure—
Mr. Gilles Bisson: He’s driving the bulldozer.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paul Miller): Are you finished?
Mr. Gilles Bisson: I’m just helping.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paul Miller): Thank you.
Continue.

Hon. Michael Gravelle: Regional infrastructure is certainly key to building roads into the Ring of Fire. We’ve committed $1 billion towards making that happen; neither of the other two parties have made that commit-ment.
But the other really important part of moving this pro-ject forward together—a major resource development project, in a remote part of the province that has never seen development before—is the partnership with First Nations. My colleague across the way referenced the fact that the Conservative leader spoke about bringing bulldozers in there. That shows an utter lack of respect for the work that’s going on with First Nations. I mean, this is a partnership. It’s is important that we get this right. In fact, we are making real progress in getting a road agreement in place.

Last August, Premier Wynne was in Thunder Bay with a number of First Nation leaders, announcing the fact that we are moving forward on road construction to build an all-season road access from the communities of Webequie, Martin Falls and Nibinamik through to the public highway network and into the Ring of Fire. That work has continued apace and is crucial, but to think that we would go ahead without that kind of negotiation is rather appalling, from my perspective. I can’t imagine that the Conservative leader would continue to speak in that manner, nor any of the people in his caucus who understand how important those negotiations are.

Speaker, this is not just about the minerals. It’s huge; it’s a huge development—$60 billion in minerals in the ground and great opportunities from an economic point of view. We want to make sure we get it right.

In fact, when the Premier made the announcement last August in Thunder Bay, she spoke about, obviously, moving forward on building the all-season road access. Alan Coutts, the CEO and president of Noront Resour-ces, said that this would be a real game-changer. Well, it is a game-changer. It’s not just about the minerals, but it’s a game-changer in that sense. Creating these new economic opportunities in First Nations will significantly improve the quality of life, but it also gives us an opportunity to talk about other issues as well, which we are doing on a regular basis with all nine Matawa First Nations.

The next phase for our government and for the com-munities will be the environmental assessment work, with initial baseline studies already under way. There are discussions going on between a number of ministries and the communities that are speaking about building that all-season road access. That’s very important, and it’s something we’re very excited about. Our plan is to get preliminary construction started in 2019, and that will be great.

Again, the key here is to make sure that we get it right. We are working long and hard with our First Nation partners to make development happen. That certainly has been one of my top priorities as Minister of Northern Development and Mines. It does worry me that the opposition, the Conservatives, have no plan to involve local partners or consult with First Nation communities or handle any of the other complex challenges associated with the Ring of Fire. From my perspective, they’re long past being in a position to properly handle this file.
What we’re doing is what we need to be doing, which is carefully laying out the groundwork to make sure all Ontarians benefit from this incredible opportunity. We will continue to do that work and continue to speak about it in the months ahead as we move towards environment-al assessment for these all-season roads.