I’m incredibly proud to recognize and celebrate the achievements of some of Oakville’s most innovative businesses and successful entrepreneurs at the 28th annual Oakville Awards for Business Excellence. The event was organized by the Oakville Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club of Oakville West.

I would like to extend my congratulations and recognize the award recipients, the recipients of:

—the RBC Large Business of the Year award, Reunion Coffee Roasters;

—the Bell Community Builder award, the Oakville Community Foundation;

—the O’Connor MacLeod Hanna Professional Services Provider of the Year award, Wellness for the Body;

—the Cogeco Entrepreneur of the Year award, Star Quality Private Investigations;

—the Henderson Partners Mid-size Business of the Year award, Ultimate Pool Service;

—the Visit Oakville tourism award, Paradiso Restaurants;

—the CN not-for-profit excellence award, the Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides;

—the Media Resources Service Industry of the Year award, Soccer World;

—the KPMG Small Business of the Year award, On The Spot carpet cleaning;

—the Sagen young professional of the year award, Rebecca Pointon of Spinco Oakville; and finally

—the Business Icon Award, Siemens Canada, which proudly has its Canadian head office in Oakville.

Congratulations, once again, to all the award recipients. Your passion and dedication to your businesses and our community is inspiring.

Thank you to the great member from Chatham-Kent–Leamington for that great question.

Speaker, our government has a responsible plan to ensure that our province remains on a strong and steady economic path forward. Our economic plan to build Ontario is grounded in our commitment to supporting families, empowering our workers and strengthening our business partners. We have laid a strong fiscal foundation on which our government will continue to build Ontario with a plan for recovery.

We eliminated licence plate renewal fees as well as licence plate stickers and refunded the past two years’ fees for eligible vehicles.

We extended the current gas tax and fuel tax cuts until December 31, 2023.

That puts real money back into the pockets of Ontarians. This is what the people of Ontario expect and deserve from their government.

We are making transit more affordable by eliminating double fares for most local transit services in the greater Toronto area for commuters and also those who use GO Transit services. Our government is also working to expand this initiative to support more people commuting into Toronto.

For low-income seniors in Ontario, these uncertain times are even more challenging. That is why we temporarily doubled the Guaranteed Annual Income System payments for eligible seniors until December 2023 to ensure more seniors who need financial help will get it. And we’ll be introducing legislation to expand the GAINS program, starting in July 2024, to see about 100,000 additional seniors be eligible for the program, for a 50% increase in recipients. We are also proposing to adjust this benefit annually so that it will increase with inflation.

Our government continues to support the people of Ontario.