Thank you very much to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing for bringing this bill forward. You have heard for the last 32 minutes how very important this is. I want to congratulate you and your team for bringing this to the closing line, Minister Clark. This is excellent work.

So why are we here? Because there is a critical shortage of shovel-ready industrial mega sites in Ontario, and this shortage places Ontario at a significant disadvantage when competing for high-value projects that we are seeing all around the world. Without immediate action, we risk losing the opportunity to compete and win these huge, transformative investments.

Think about other jurisdictions around North America, especially in the US. They have projects that are ready to go. They have land that is ready to go. They have a fulsome inventory all around North America, and we don’t. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs that will go with all of these properties around North America, and we’re not where we need to be. We need to show that we’re not just open for business, but that we’re ready for business.

So let’s understand why we got to where we are. I’m going to be very blunt: Years of mismanagement under the previous government cost Ontario 300,000 manufacturing jobs. In fact, I remember sitting in opposition and looking at the previous government’s final—thank God it was their final—report on the economy, and it’s very clear: They threw the towel in on manufacturing. They completely gave up. They did not think ahead and start to assemble land in Ontario, and you wonder why.

I’m going to read a quote now. This is from that government’s report on the economy: “The structure of the Ontario economy will continue to shift from goods-producing to service-producing sectors.” That’s their admission. They said “no more” to manufacturing. They went on to say that that will result in “shifting employment from goods-producing industries, in particular manufacturing, to” the service sector.

Speaker, they threw the towel in. They gave up on those 300,000 people who lost their jobs in manufacturing. The previous government just said, “That’s it. We’re throwing the towel in. We’ll give up on manufacturing.” Forget the fact that for more than a century, Ontario has been the manufacturing hub of Canada. We’re the economic engine of the country, and they said, “No, we’re going to give up.”

In fact, we heard even further—and I’ve said this in this Legislature many times—that the auto sector was starting on a downward spiral under the previous government. High costs, high taxes, high energy rates, red tape—all of those together were watching the auto industry spiral downward.

Sergio Marchionne was the former chair of what was then called Fiat Chrysler. He sat on a stage with former Premier Kathleen Wynne, and she mused out loud, “Would Chrysler be expanding in Ontario?” He looked at her with this quizzical look on his face and he said to her, “This is not what I would call the cheapest jurisdiction.” Then she pushed him and he went on to say, “You need to create the conditions to be competitive.” That was like a real gut punch to Ontario—that we have gone from this worldwide envy of manufacturing to this humbled loss of 300,000 men and women. Every single company in the auto sector was reducing production instead of increasing. Instead of fixing the mess they created, they just threw the towel in and gave up.

Enter Premier Ford. Premier Ford brought us together as a caucus and said, “We’ve got to do everything in our power to lower the cost of doing business in Ontario.” We visited every one of the auto manufacturers, and they all told us, “Your costs are out of control. You’re not business-friendly in Ontario. We’re not here.” He said, “Give us a chance. We’ll come back to you with a plan,” and we developed Driving Prosperity. That’s the name of the plan that was going to bring back the auto sector.

It started with a reduction of WSIB, workplace safety insurance—a 50% reduction in the cost to business of WSIB. That is a $2.5-billion savings every single year to the business community who reinvested that money—no reduction in the benefits of WSIB, just in the cost. It was so stuffed with cash at the expense of all these businesses with high WSIB rates that it was lowered. That’s a savings of $2.5 billion annually.

Then we put in what’s called a capital cost allowance. What that meant was that you can write off the cost of your brand new equipment. If you decided to invest in Ontario and bring in brand new equipment, you can write that equipment off in the first year. That’s a huge advantage to Ontario. It saved a billion dollars annually by businesses.

Then we had red tape reduction. We have our own Minister of Red Tape Reduction. Nine bills have come through the Legislature—two a year—that reduce red tape. It’s about a $500-million annual savings in red tape. A couple of them are very specific to the auto sector. We sat with them and we said to them, “Show us, tell us what red tape you need—that is duplicative with the federal government, or other reasons. Tell us what you need. Show us what you need to create new jobs.” And that’s what we did.

We lowered the cost of industrial and commercial hydro rates by an average of 15%. We lowered the provincial share of municipal taxes in every community of Ontario so that they all have the same low tax rate now: 0.88%. That’s a $450-million annual savings to the business community.

Add it all up—$7 billion a year in lower cost to do business in Ontario. That is this huge advantage.

We went back and started knocking on the doors of all of these auto companies that were abandoning Ontario and said, “We’ve done what you’ve said.” It immediately put the brakes on them leaving and began the accession. We first heard from Ford in Oakville, with a $1.8-billion announcement; then Honda in Alliston, with a $1.4-billion announcement; GM in Oshawa and in Ingersoll, with a $2.3-billion announcement; Stellantis in Windsor and in Brampton, with a $3.6-billion announcement; Umicore in Loyalist, with a $1.5-billion announcement; and, of course, the LG NextStar Energy battery plant in Windsor, with a $5.2-billion announcement.

Last week, Magna announced their half-a-billion-dollar investment at their six plants in Ontario. Half of that money—more than half of it—goes into Brampton for a brand new facility on EV battery decks, basically; they’ve also got Newmarket, Belleville, Guelph and Penetanguishene.

These are all communities that are adding, collectively, 1,000 new jobs in Ontario, and that brings us to $17 billion from zero—from worse than zero, if you could imagine, to $17 billion in announcements from the auto sector in two years alone.

But it doesn’t just stop at the auto sector. When you think about the other kinds of investments, we’ve done about 150 deals across Ontario in the last couple of years. There’s $3 billion from the life sciences sector, with companies like Sanofi, Roche, CCRM in Hamilton, Resilience and others. Billions of dollars in the tech sector—Telus announced $23 billion in Ontario; Nokia, in Ottawa, a $340-million investment.

Again, we’ve done 150 deals and five trade missions to eight countries, just since the last election. And we’ve heard the same two things from every single company—they love Ontario. This is their words. Think about the turmoil that’s created around the world, coming out of the pandemic. We have Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine. We have the whole China question. All of this turmoil is consuming the business world and families, and they look to Ontario as a sea of calm. They say, “That’s where we want to be. We want to be there.” They also say to us, “We also like Ontario because it’s a safe jurisdiction.” They know that it’s safe for their employees to be there. They know that it’s safe for their executives to go over. They know that it’s safe for families. They all said the same thing in the nine countries that we visited since the election—eight countries plus the United States.

The end result of all of this action over the last few years, since the day we were elected to a week ago: We’ve seen over 600,000 new jobs created in the province of Ontario—300,000 before the pandemic and 300,000 new jobs since the day the pandemic struck Ontario.

Interjections.

That is applause-worthy. It really is.

The auto sector accounts for 100,000 jobs throughout the province, and for the very first time in the history of the auto sector, northern Ontario will now be included. The auto sector now, because of electric vehicles, takes in critical minerals, the processing of critical minerals, the production of the parts for batteries, batteries, the production of auto parts—we have 700 parts makers in Ontario, and 450 tool and die and mould makers in Ontario. We’ve got 300 companies that are in the connected and autonomous vehicle business.

Think about the very first electric vehicle in Canada that came off the assembly line only a month or so ago, GM’s BrightDrop. It’s basically a FedEx delivery vehicle, the very first electric vehicle rolled off the assembly line. It was designed and engineered in Markham, Ontario, by GM. Seven hundred employees are there.

Ford has 500 of these types of employees in Ottawa. BlackBerry QNX has about 500 in Ottawa as well.

In Windsor, Stellantis has about 800 employees. They’ve put in almost a billion dollars and have two—two—North American centres of excellence, research centres. It is their head location for battery design and battery research.

That’s what’s happening in Ontario, and it’s because we’re competitive that we have this edge. We have a talented workforce. We have state-of-the-art research and development. We have award-winning manufacturing.

Look at Toyota. Toyota won the J.D. Power award for the best production plant in the world. This isn’t the best Toyota plant; it’s the best auto plant in the world. And because of electric vehicles, we now have this critical mineral part of it that’s added.

But we’ve also got a clean energy advantage. Speaker, if you bought an electric vehicle in the United States, you would think you’ve made a contribution to society by buying an electric vehicle. But in the US it’s made, sadly, with energy that’s made from burning coal. So if you buy a car that has a battery made in Kentucky, you’ve got about 6% clean energy. If you buy a car that has a battery made in Indiana, you have about 7% clean energy. You’ve got assembly plants that are made without clean energy. You’ve got steel in the doors and the hoods that are made with coal-produced steel.

Shift to Ontario for a second. You’ve got a clean energy environment—94% clean energy is what we build our cars with. Our battery companies will be able to buy an equivalent of 100% clean energy. At Dofasco and at Algoma, they’re now making steel not from coal, but from an electric arc furnace, which means we have green steel building our cars, with clean energy building our cars. So when you buy an electric vehicle, as they start to come off the assembly lines in Brampton and in Oakville and in Windsor, you will have a car that you can be proud of because it is not just an electric vehicle, it is a zero-emission—a green—vehicle, which will be the envy of the EV sector. That is a very, very big component. Think about Dofasco alone. You’re talking about the equivalent of taking a million cars off the road a year just by that one conversion alone.

The critical minerals are something that I think will be the sleeper story this year. I think it was the Windsor Star that did an interview and they asked, “What is going to be the exciting news this year?” And I said, “You watch. The sleeper story will be a lithium hydroxide plant for northern Ontario.” I genuinely believe that. I don’t normally overpromise because we don’t like to ever underdeliver, but I can tell you I really believe that we are going to see lithium projects in northwestern Ontario start to happen, and they’re going to need a lithium hydroxide plant. You need that liquid to make a battery, and we believe that the minerals of northern Ontario should be processed here in northern Ontario and tie the auto sector into the north for the very, very first time.

We have a real competitive advantage. Ontario is one of the very few jurisdictions that has every mineral necessary to make a lithium ion battery. We’ve got great, great new nickel finds around Timmins, if you can imagine—a gold town like Timmins. South of Timmins they have a fabulous new nickel find. Just north of Timmins, Canada Nickel is there with a great new nickel find.

In Sudbury, where we’ve seen Onaping Depth go down—it’s an old mine that couldn’t get any deeper because of the technology. Well, today you can actually send electric vehicles down there. You don’t need to worry about ventilation anymore because you’ve got electric vehicles doing the heavy work. They’re going to go deep, as deep as they possibly can. That’s because of the electric vehicle revolution.

Then we look at the Ring of Fire. Initially, the play was all about the chromite that is there. I think you’ll actually see them move the chromite out of the way to get to the nickel that’s there.

That’s why we’ve got this road to prosperity that we’re building. We’ve got $1 billion committed. We hope our federal partners will commit their $1 billion into that plan.

Bloomberg has acknowledged everything I’ve just said here today. Bloomberg ranked Canada as second in their annual global battery supply chain report. Think of where we were three years ago. We had zero—zero—electric vehicle production. Some $300 billion was invested in North America in electric vehicle and battery announcements. We got zero of it under the previous government—zero. We were able, through our Driving Prosperity plan, to put a plan together—$17 billion. I’ll be very frank: We have at least that much in the pipeline. We won’t win it all, but we’ve got a big pipeline of projects lined up for Ontario over the next two years. Bloomberg moved us from nowhere in sight of anybody to second in their annual global battery supply chain report. We’re first in North America, ahead of the US, second globally. That confirms that we have indeed created the right conditions to attract investments, create jobs and remain competitive.

That brings us to the one missing piece: why we’re here today. We are in fierce competition right now for large investments. As I’ve said, we have a big pipeline filled with projects, but we just don’t have the land. We need to assemble, very quickly, large pieces of land for large potential investments. Close to 40 US jurisdictions offer a certified mega site program—key competitors, all through the States. They have shovel-ready sites and an expectation of an investor locating there. That’s why we are laser-focused right now on securing large anchor projects in the auto and in the EV space, but this critical factor will be having a suitable site.

Timing is known. Costs are known. Project timelines are out there. We know we needed this land, and that’s why, in November 2019, we launched the Job Site Challenge program. This is Canada’s first challenge that went out where municipalities, economic development agencies and industrial property owners can put forward large tracts of land—500 acres, 1,000 acres, 1,500 acres—so that we can use them to support large-scale manufacturing operations. Just think about it. For context, 500 acres—that’s almost 400 football fields. That’s what 500 acres looks like. And 1,500 acres obviously can support three times that.

We need to immediately build an inventory of what we call mega sites. These are sites that are investment-ready. These are sites that would be owned, contiguous pieces of property, either serviced or ready to be serviced. We’ve seen the successes of LG Energy in Windsor. We’ve seen the success of Umicore in Loyalist township. There is a significant demand for shovel-ready sites.

Again, I’ve said we have a big amount in our pipeline. We’ve secured $17 billion, with several more announcements coming. We have about that much in our pipeline. But what we need is to give the investors and those potential companies the confidence in the future of Ontario—that we have land available for them.

This particular site in St. Thomas that we’re speaking about, and in Elgin county, is considered a highly attractive mega site. It has been identified as one of the very few potential mega sites in the province. It has a vast amount of acreage. It has close proximity to the major routes. It’s fully serviceable for electric, gas, water, waste water. And it has a high probability that it could be sold to one of these investors.

The site, as you’ve heard from Minister Clark, straddles two municipalities: the city of St. Thomas and the municipality of Central Elgin, which is in Elgin county. These two municipalities have very different steps in permitting requirements. They have different timelines for permitting. It creates confusion and complexity. You could imagine an investor who wants to buy a big hunk of land but has two municipalities with different rules and guidelines—a building that could potentially straddle two municipalities. We need to take the piece of one and join it to the other. There’s a lot of red tape that could come. There’s a lot of delay in meeting timelines.

Speaker, we need to unlock the full potential of this site, and that’s why the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing has introduced legislation that would change the municipal boundary so that site would be completely located in St. Thomas. It would reduce red tape. It would ensure that the St. Thomas site is truly shovel-ready in a very near term for a potential investment. This legislation would allow the city and the province to proceed quickly with permitting, proceed quickly in preparing the site to meet any potential investor timelines. It’s going to allow Ontario to remain competitive. It will allow us to position the province as an attractive place to invest and to grow.

These proposed changes have the potential to bring significant economic benefits to the people of St. Thomas, to the people of Central Elgin and all of the surrounding communities. We’re going to work very closely with the affected municipalities with respect to proposed legislative changes. We’re going to continue to consult with Indigenous communities about the St. Thomas industrial site.

And we will continue to work very, very hard to identify large-scale industrial sites throughout Ontario, where we know that we have so many prospects and so little assembled land.

We continue to say that Ontario is the ideal destination for manufacturers. We have a world-class auto supply base, we have a growing EV and battery-supply-chain footprint, we have reliable clean energy, we have northern Ontario’s critical mineral resources—we have an ecosystem in Ontario.

Certainly, we have one of the greatest auto ecosystems. We’re the only jurisdiction in North America with five different auto manufacturing companies. That’s unique in all of North America. We are the number two automaker in North America.

Speaker, we’re also the number two tech cluster in all of North America. When you look at the cars of the future, it’s basically going to be a computer on wheels. Well, as the number two tech cluster in North America, we have that tech ability, and as the number two automaker, we know how to attach them to wheels. That’s our expertise. We have absolutely great and spectacular days ahead of us in Ontario in the auto, in the EV sector.

But these mega sites can be for all kinds of projects, whether it’s in the tech field, whether it’s in the life sciences field, whether it’s in the aerospace sector, whether it’s in the chemicals sector. We have so much potential in Ontario, and I won’t say it’s untapped potential, because look at what we have achieved: 600,000 men and women went to work today in a facility in Ontario that they did not work at only four and a half years ago. This is a monumental shift in what was happening.

We saw the decline of Ontario’s manufacturing—the former government that threw the towel in and, in writing, gave up on the manufacturing sector.

Premier Ford came along, and Driving Prosperity was written. It was our blueprint for success. That’s why we have 600,000 men and women working today who weren’t working.

Thank you to the member for the question.

It’s interesting, in the auto sector—you always hear about these indirect jobs that are created. When I was mayor of the city of North Bay and my economic development team would say, “Well, they’re going to bring 10 jobs, but there are going to be 40 spinoff jobs,” I never understood and never acknowledged that that was actual. They were talking about a big stretch. But in the auto sector, they’re not talking about a stretch, because the auto companies assemble vehicles; they don’t make many of the components. So for every $1 that’s invested, for every job that goes to an auto plant, you can see about $7 to $9—some will say $12—invested in the other sectors. You will see seven to nine to 12 jobs created in the other sectors. They don’t make a tire. They don’t make a steering wheel. They don’t make a windshield. Somebody else makes that for them. So when you have an increase in a plant, you have an increase in jobs all around.

Because it’s critical minerals now from the north—no matter where you are in Ontario, you are now going to benefit from the auto investment.

We’ve got a number of other advantages that I did not have an opportunity to speak about. I talked about the fact that we have this ecosystem here in Ontario, but it’s supported by this beautiful talent that we have, which is rejuvenated every year by 65,000 STEM grads—science, technology, engineering and math—every year. We have this unique ecosystem that also includes trade deals with 50 different countries around the world. So when you are building something in Ontario, you have the opportunity to export that, tariff-free, to most countries in the world—an extremely competitive advantage.

When I have visited our prospects worldwide, we bring up the fact that Toyota was named the number one production facility in all of the world—again, not just the number one Toyota facility, but the number one auto plant worldwide.

And I have to say that the lowering of the cost of doing business in Ontario is a key factor—$7 billion. Premier Ford and I visited every auto plant, and they all told us, “You need to lower the cost of doing business in Ontario,” and you saw us do that by lowering the cost of business by $7 billion.

Plus, we have incentives that we have provided to every one of the companies I’ve mentioned. They tally about $2.5 billion. We have decided to put our $2.5-billion investment in the EV sector, into the plants, to hire these workers.

By reducing the cost of doing business in Ontario by $7 billion every year, we’ve shown that Ontario is open for business. We’re attracting record investments and record jobs—$17 billion invested in the auto sector; $3 billion invested in life sciences; billions of dollars invested in the tech sector.

And our support for Mississauga’s world-leading advanced manufacturing sector has never wavered.

Mother Parkers recently announced their $33-million investment in Mississauga. They’re a made-in-Ontario success story. They’re going to be producing private-label coffee and tea for the world’s largest retailers and restaurant chains. They will be creating new jobs, new markets, making cold coffee and tea extracts in a brand new manufacturing facility. We were pleased to support them with a $5-million investment.

Speaker, that’s what we’re doing to attract investments and jobs.

In addition, Mississauga’s Small Business Enterprise Centre receives $420,000 annually so they can supply entrepreneurs with all the tools they need to be successful, and that includes $112,000 to help students and young entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground.

We’re building Ontario, Speaker.