SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
May 29, 2023 09:00AM
  • May/29/23 10:10:00 a.m.
  • Re: Bill 91 

My thanks to the member for Whitby, someone who is a strong advocate for his community and someone who understands the importance of getting it done when we build our economies and the value that that has for families to put food on the table, send their kids to university, have a good life, pay for a home. That really comes down to ensuring that we have a strong economy.

I’m born and raised in the Niagara region. I absolutely love the area that I call home, and I love the people who I have the pleasure and privilege of representing. But I remember for 15 years, when the Liberals were in office, that feeling of hopelessness that often I would encounter when I spoke with young people my age who were worried about being able to get into a good well-paying job, people who said, “I see manufacturing in Niagara leaving. I see high unemployment in the Niagara region,” and they were saying, “Where are we going to go?” Some of them had to perhaps move into the GTA in order to be able to get work.

Speaker, over the past five years, I’ve seen that change. I see people—young people, new Canadians, those who are moving to Niagara because of its opportunity, and that’s directly because of the measures that we’re taking in this legislation and in the nine previous packages.

This legislation is really about reducing the amount of time and energy that people have to spend in being able to do regular business practices. But if the member opposite is interested in bringing forward legislation to decriminalize more drugs—I don’t know about other members in this House; for myself, I think we’ve seen in BC the impact of those policies that the New Democrats brought forward, and we’ve seen the impact of those policies on the streets of downtown Vancouver and the east side of Vancouver. I’m not sure what that has to do with the legislation today.

Today what we’re talking about is legislation to ensure we’re building good jobs, that people have hope and opportunity, that they’re able to put food on the table for their families. That’s what we’re focused on doing.

I appreciate the member speaking about the impact that it has on agriculture, because the member is absolutely right. When you don’t have access to good high-speed Internet, it becomes increasingly difficult to do the work of a farmer in the 21st century, especially with the high-tech requirements that farmers today have and especially when it comes to their ability to update crop data, to be able to have their GPS systems in place and build off that work.

We’re taking actions to reduce the time that it takes to get approvals to get those broadband projects moving, and we’re doing that in collaboration with the Minister of Infrastructure—with our rural municipalities as well, who have been fierce advocates for these kinds of investments. And really what we’re saying is we shouldn’t have to wait months and months and months for the approvals in order to be able to drive that broadband through the ground and to be able to expand it to more areas. So we’re cutting the timelines that are required and associated with that, to make it faster, easier and make sure that we’re getting more people connected when and where they need to be.

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