MARATHON — The federal government could do more to streamline getting mines up and running, Marathon’s mayor said after two days on Parliament Hill.
As president of the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA), Mayor Rick Dumas participated with the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM) in Northern Ontario Hill Days, described in a news release as “a coordinated advocacy mission” for the two associations’ 147 member municipalities.
“Basically, what we presented to the government was, seriously, that we live in the north, we’re a resource-based economy — we have the critical minerals, we have the trees,” Dumas said Wednesday in a phone interview.
“We’re saying, ‘Hey, listen: What can we do to make sure our economies are strong and how do we get the ore out of the ground quicker and faster?’”
Ottawa could learn from province’s “one project, one process” model to speed up approval for new resource projects, he said.
“We asked the federal government for the same thing — to look at that and try to get the regulations put in place for the environmental assessment so that projects can get done quickly.”
Northern Ontario has “lots of areas we can develop for housing, immigration and resource-based industry,” he said. “We’ve just got to focus on how we get it going, right?”
NOMA and FONOM met with government MPs including Thunder Bay-Superior North’s Patty Hajdu and opposition MPs including Kenora-Kiiwetinoong’s Eric Melillo, as well as non-elected officials, and Dumas said he hopes both sides in the House of Commons can help.
“We wanted to make sure the opposition was fully aware of our meetings with the government so that they can bring it up in the House, talking about northern Ontario,” Dumas said.
“I mean, we’re talking representation from FONOM and NOMA and how do they bring the message back to the floor of the (House) and have discussions around the impacts that we see in our part of the world.
“So that was the main reason to talk to Eric: to get him on the same page pushing for these kinds of policies.”
Dumas said the “key message” of the two-day mission was that NOMA and FONOM represent a “a big part of the country” and Canada’s governments “should all be sitting at the same table talking about how we can make our economy strong.”
Another issue highlighted during Northern Ontario Hill Days, he said, was continuing investment in the Trans-Canada Highway.
“The Trans-Canada corridor through our region is the most vulnerable stretch in the entire country, and without real federal investment in redundancy, expansion and safety upgrades, the national supply chain remains at constant risk,” Dumas is quoted as saying in a NOMA news release.
“At the same time, our communities are facing historic labour shortages across every sector. We made it clear in Ottawa that northern Ontario is ready to grow, but we need the workers — and the safe, reliable transportation infrastructure — to support that growth.”
