Oh. There you are, brother.

As Premier Ford always says—with the critical minerals we have up north, people say, “Well, let’s export them. Let’s sell them abroad.” And he says, “No, no, no.” Minister Pirie also says, “No, no, no. Let’s use this critical infrastructure, these critical minerals and opportunities and advantages to our own good use.” And you’re seeing it pay off in dividends. I’m not sure what the investment is going to be yet, but if it has anything to do with automotive, I’m sure the Ring of Fire will be a big part of that success.

Thank you for the job you’re doing. You’re a great Minister of Mines.

In total, this government has lowered the cost of doing business in Ontario by over $7 billion. Think about it. That success has paved the way for this Premier and this government to attract billions of dollars in new investment.

As Minister Clark stated, our government is taking concrete action to build on our record of attracting jobs and investment. We are taking a collaborative approach across the government and with our municipal partners to cut red tape and ensure the benefits of economic growth are enjoyed right across Ontario.

Since the last election, Minister Fedeli has been on five trade missions to eight countries. He’s a world traveller. He’s a pretty capable guy. I’m excited to see the benefits that continue to flow from his great efforts and his great salesmanship.

I’ve said this before in the House: I’m a great believer in “well done is better than well said.” I think this government is putting those words to good use.

As the Premier says all the time, his best salesman is Vic Fedeli. I would second that motion. As it’s been said, I think the best closer of deals is Premier Ford, and I would also second that motion. But I also have to give a shout-out to Minister Clark. What he’s doing today by creating the environment, bringing these lands together, bringing these municipalities together—he is the best facilitator we have in this government. Thanks to this facilitation, when we bring these lands together and bring this site together, we are poised for greatness in southwestern Ontario.

Simply put, the facts speak for themselves. Ontario is not only open for business; Ontario is attracting and closing new and significant investment, more now than ever, and than in any province in Canada. Consider the amazing performance in Ontario in just four and a half years: 600,000 jobs have been created; 300,000 before the pandemic and 300,000 after. The auto industry was once a dying industry in this province and we’re now moving again, forward to greatness.

Indeed, Speaker, Ontario is open for business. The proof is in the pudding. I believe it is results that count, and our government, with our Premier and his capable cabinet team, supported by an amazing caucus, continue to get it done for the people of Ontario.

With all the success experienced across Ontario, I am very excited about creating an investment-ready mega-site right here at home in Elgin–Middlesex–London. Again, all surrounding communities will share in the benefits of this abundant and exciting opportunity. With mega-sites available in St. Thomas to compete against these 40 states, we’re going to do well.

Speaker, change is never easy. I want to take this opportunity to thank our municipal leaders in Elgin county, all of them very focused on their constituents’ needs. They are very well represented. They need to be commended for their support thus far in this process. I want to work closely with them and this government to ensure all municipalities share in the greatness.

But most importantly, I think it’s going to help strengthen our educational institutions. It will attract people abroad to want to come. And I know we’ll be working closely with whether it’s Fanshawe, Western University or other colleges, and University of Guelph as well, in terms of some of the training centres they’re looking at. We have the abundance now and the ability to really focus on where the jobs are going to be. We’ll train people properly, both in post-secondary education and in skilled trades. It’s going to work.

I’d also like to congratulate the three municipalities that came together to make sure that we do have a prosperous southwestern Ontario and grow our automotive industry.

I want to read from my BlackBerry here. This is a possibly familiar quote the member could remember, because he alluded to this as well: “American industrial giant Caterpillar is closing its locomotive plant in London and putting 460 workers out of their jobs just over a month after they were locked out for rejecting pay cuts of” up to “50 per cent.”

My question is to the member. The government is obviously going to have some investment in this megacity project. I’d like to know what strings are attached so that we can guarantee that good jobs are coming to southwestern Ontario—good-paying union jobs—and this company is not just going to take the government’s money and then leave to go to Illinois, like they did with Caterpillar.

I very much admire the tenacity of the member who spoke so well about the opportunities this is not only going to have for his region but all of southwestern Ontario.

He talked about the next generation of people coming to this country. Of course, in his area, he has many colleges and many universities. What does that mean for the next generation of students who are going to those colleges or those universities, the economic opportunity for them and also for the college and university sector?

I’ve enjoyed listening to the member speak. We met early, and since your election, I appreciate the expertise you bring to the table. But I’m wondering if you could help us help your government. Because as I was saying earlier in a previous question, our experience working with you so far is that in 2019, you ordered Metrolinx to remove EV charging stations from GO Transit. That sent a bad signal to the EV industry.

The EV industry is coming soon, of course, here to the great city of Toronto. The big automotive show—the 2023 automotive show, first one since 2020—is coming. The headline story leading into the motor show says, “Electric Vehicle Numbers Have ‘Exploded,’ But Too Few Charging Stations in Ontario, Experts Say.” So the capacity we’re going to be building here has to be sustained by infrastructure elsewhere in the province. It’s not just a construction facility, a manufacturing facility; it has got to feed into a network of charging stations.

I’m wondering about the conversations—I just learned about this legislation this morning. I’m wondering about the conversations going on in the government right now to make sure that we respond to the demand from the industry here to rapidly increase our EV charging capacity and to make sure that we can increase the electrical load in a sustainable way so these cars can actually get from point A to point B.

This legislation, if passed, will continue building on the government’s efforts to reduce red tape and to show the world that Ontario is open for business and ready for global investments.

Over the past four years, we’ve seen this government support and attract investments in every region of our province. My own Loyalist township, where I was previously the mayor, attracted one of those very large industrial projects through the efforts of this government, through the efforts of the minister and the Premier. I’m sure that the people in the entire region that this legislation applies to will benefit from the jobs and the economic activity that will come as a result of these investments.

Can the member explain how the past investments are now setting the stage for the increased demand we’re seeing for shovel-ready lands?

It’s a pleasure to be back in this place, debating important issues once again, on behalf of the people whom we represent in our communities. As a representative of southwestern Ontario, the member for London West, I certainly appreciate the importance of economic development tools and strategies, policy changes, legislative changes that support that very tightly interlinked regional economy that we have in southwestern Ontario, and similar regional economies exist across the province.

I do want to raise, however, Speaker, a couple of process concerns regarding this bill, Bill 63, the St. Thomas-Central Elgin Boundary Adjustment Act. Some of us were sitting in this chamber yesterday at shortly after 3 o’clock, I believe, when the Minister of Municipal Affairs rose and announced that he was going to be introducing a bill, this bill. That was introduced yesterday. There was no government media release explaining why this bill, why now, what’s in this bill.

We got an electronic copy of the bill. We requested immediately a briefing from the minister’s office, so that we could understand the context for this bill being brought forward; we have yet to receive that briefing. Some of the comments that I heard just now from my colleague from Elgin–Middlesex–London were helpful, certainly, in understanding the context for this bill, but it is frustrating—as you can imagine, Speaker—when you are expected to meaningfully participate in debate on legislation that literally has just come off the printer.

That being said, I just want to say that on this side of the House, from an initial analysis of the bill, we don’t see any major red flags. It is something that is very much supportable, especially when you consider the rumoured uses of this mega-site for an electric-vehicle-battery manufacturing plant and the as-many-as-2,500 jobs that would support. This is positive legislation. It has the potential to be very beneficial to southwestern Ontario—to London, St. Thomas and Elgin county in particular. It is something that we don’t have any major objections to at this point. We will certainly be consulting with people who have had a chance to think about some of the implications of this bill, and we will raise any concerns that we hear as we move forward.

I did want to emphasize, however, to the government that there are many things that this government could be doing to support economic development in our province. One of the issues that I don’t think has been addressed so far throughout this debate is the need for child care spaces. Child care is a fundamental economic development priority, to ensure that workers have access to high-quality, affordable child care so that they can go to work and feel that their children are safe.

I want to share an email that I received from a constituent, Kathleen Tevlin, who told me that she has been actively seeking daycare for her 17-month-old and her three-and-a-half-year-old so that she can return to work after her maternity leave. She says daycare spaces for even one child in the west end of the city of London are non-existent. She says, “I have been on the centralized waitlist for centre daycares since the moment my pregnancy was considered viable (April 2021), yet nearly two years on the waitlists have proven to be fruitless.” She says that she is in the position where she sees her only option is to have to quit her employment, an employer that she has worked for for the past 13 years, because she cannot get access to a child care space.

What we have not seen from this government is a strategy such as my colleague the member for Parkdale–High Park has been calling for to deal with the workforce challenges in the child care sector. We know that without any new measures, the province will be short 8,500 registered early childhood educators by 2026. This shortage of spaces that we are experiencing in the city of London and other communities across the province is really a reflection of a shortage of ECEs and child care professionals to work in child care spaces.

We understand—actually, the government’s own documents show that the child care sector has been experiencing a staffing crunch over a number of years. The number of registered early childhood educators in licensed child care decreased by 7% between 2019 and 2021. I have to commend the sector who have been working diligently at trying to get this government to develop this strategy that’s necessary to ensure recruitment and retention in the sector.

Just as we see in health care, we know that wages are an important aspect of recruitment and retention. I’ve participated in Zoom meetings with child care workers who are weeping because they love their jobs, they love working with small children, they love supporting children—

Further questions?

Oh, point of order? I recognize the member for London North Centre.

Thank you to the member from Elgin–Middlesex–London for his comments. As I mentioned in this House the other day, I was born and raised in Elgin county, so the economic prospects of people in Elgin county are certainly not far from my heart. Having said that, I think when we’re talking about jobs and opportunities for people, it’s important that we don’t put arbitrary barriers in the way of creating them.

What the government has done here is put forward a bill with no time for consultation, no clarity on who the investor is, no opportunity to consult with anyone. We’ve seen this happen before with government legislation, that the government’s utter refusal to actually listen to people and engage with people has led to the government being forced to backtrack a week later and repeal legislation that they just introduced. It has led to the government losing court cases that people warned the government that they were going to lose over the fate of that legislation.

My question is: Because this is so important, why not be as open and transparent as possible? Why not share as much information as possible with the opposition, with the public? Isn’t it better to have everybody on board and everybody supporting economic development in our province?

It’s a great question. As I believe I said in my talk, and maybe should have added that as one of the links of infrastructure, with an investment like this and other investments, mega-site investments, throughout this province, infrastructure is needed. Whether it’s electrical charging stations—we’re going to need more grid; we’re going to need more capacity with our electricity. If you listened to the Minister of Energy speak, we’re on that. Whether it’s small modular reactors—we’re going to be ready, and we’re going to have to get ready quickly. It’s going to take big-time investment in infrastructure—big time.

I agree totally with you. We’re going to get it done, but we need to continue to grow the economy so we can afford to do it and invest in it, and not take on burdensome debt so the people of Ontario are protected now and in the future.

Whether it’s northern development, whether it’s in eastern Ontario, the Ottawa valley or points beyond, I think you’re going to see continued investments. Why? Because this government and this minister down here is the best salesman for Ontario in the world, and he’s getting it done.

Really, what this bill is about is creating a site for if and for when. As such, again, obviously, the government, the minister, the Premier—nobody is talking about potential suitors, because, quite frankly, the deal or deals are not done. What we’ve done is created an environment for success: new jobs, good jobs, sustainable jobs.

Again, I don’t think, whoever this investor or these investors end up being, whether it’s in the automotive sector, the food sector or whatever it may be, they are not going to invest millions of dollars—maybe billions when all is said and done—on a mega-site to just willy-nilly go about hiring just a few people. They’re going to be good jobs, good-paying jobs. They’re going to be sustainable jobs with benefits, and this is really good news, so help us prepare—

Point of order. I recognize the member for Barrie–Innisfil.

I will do that, Speaker. I do feel that—I listened to half an hour of remarks by the Minister of Economic Development and Trade who positioned this bill very much as an economic development tool, and so I am just reminding the government that there are important issues that have to be addressed if we are to be serious about economic development in this province and ensuring that people are able to take advantage of all of the potential new jobs that are going to be generated by this bill. Sustaining a child care workforce is fundamental to that work.

Another issue that is very much tied to economic development is ensuring that people can find affordable places to live if they are to take advantage of all of these new jobs that are potentially going to be generated by this mega-site that will be formed by this bill. In London, and similarly in St. Thomas—although I don’t have the data right at my fingertips. London is experiencing an intense housing affordability crisis, much worse than anywhere else in Ontario and most of Canada. Rents in London have doubled and have become beyond unaffordable for at least 60% of the residents who live in the city of London.

Affordability, of course, is measured by how much of a person’s income rent represents. So if you’re paying more than 30% of your income on rent, then that rent is not considered affordable for you given all of the other costs that you have to make in a year.

A London household needs to make $59,000 a year or more to keep shelter costs below 30% of their income, but only 40% of London households make at least that much. So we have 60% of households in the city of London that are paying more than they should on rent if they were to meet that affordability threshold.

The CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., that recently released the report on housing affordability in London noted that it is particularly acute in London compared to the rest of the country. We have a 1.7% vacancy rate, which is the second-lowest level since 2001. Homes are hard to find; in particular, affordable homes, and that is what the NDP has consistently pointed out to this government. The huge missing piece of the government’s housing plan is that there is nothing there to support affordable housing, deeply affordable housing, supportive housing—all of those housing options that are so desperately needed in our communities.

We also, in London, have been having a homelessness crisis, and once again, homelessness—the desperation of people who are experiencing homelessness—is not good for economic development in the city. As merchants in downtown London will tell you, that has been very challenging for them, and particularly since the pandemic. In London, we have lost more than 200 residents of our community who were experiencing homelessness and who have died over the last couple of years. Currently, there are an estimated 2,200 people experiencing homelessness in our city. That actually brought the city together in a series of summits. More than 60 social service agencies, business owners, municipal officials, a wide diversity of individuals and organizations came together over the course of three summits to develop a made-in-London housing and homelessness plan.

One of the things that the city of London has called for in its pre-budget submission to the government is support to enable the city to move forward with that health and homeless system transformation. Fortunately, our community has a philanthropist who came to the table with $25 million—

Point of order.

Thank you, Speaker. I do believe that housing affordability is a key piece of economic development. I am just basing my comments on what we have heard from members on the other side: that this is an economic development bill; that the purpose of this bill is to facilitate investment-ready land for a potential electric-vehicle-battery manufacturing plant. I am just pointing out to the province that in order to be successful with this project, they’re going to have to do more, as I said, to make sure there’s access to affordable, quality child care and to ensure that workers have access to housing that they can afford.

The other concern I wanted to raise—and this is an email that was shared with my office—is the government will also need to make certain that there is that skilled workforce available to take advantage of those new jobs. This is an email I received from Brett Gundlock. He says that three years ago, he began a career transition into the carpentry field to gain his Red Seal certificate. It took him a while to find an employer to sponsor him for the program, and now he estimates that it is going to take as much as two years in order to get into a classroom to complete the classroom requirements of that apprenticeship program.

He says that he was told by the Ministry of Labour that it looks like it will be next fall before he can begin the classroom aspect. Three other carpenters in his company are also waiting to hear about schooling. They were last in the class 12 months ago and haven’t heard anything.

He says it looks like it will take him up to seven years to finish his Red Seal since he began working as a carpenter.

Making the investments in those kinds of opportunities for skilled workers, the kinds of skilled workers who will be needed by economic development projects, such as the one that will be facilitated by this legislation, will be very important if that project is to be successful.

Speaker, I did want to make a couple of other comments before I close, and one is to echo some of the questions that have been asked already about this bill. It is rather ironic that we have a government whose first order of business when they were elected back in 2018 was to rip out electric vehicle charging stations. And now, the government claims to be a champion of electric vehicles. That is the other work that will have to be done by this government if this site is actually successful in recruiting this investor. The rumour is that it’s Volkswagen who is going to access the site to manufacture those batteries, but if that is to happen, the government has a long way to go on its electric vehicle strategy and a long way to go on its climate action plans to deal with the carbon footprint that we have in this province and try to prevent some of those once-in-a-lifetime severe weather events that we are seeing with horrifying frequency across Ontario and around the world.

It’s good to see the government trying to move forward to facilitate this investment in electric vehicle battery manufacturing, and I encourage them to take a holistic look at what is needed to ensure the success of an electric vehicle sector in the province of Ontario.

What I did say is that we received the bill yesterday. We have not yet had a briefing from the minister’s office. We are going to be doing some talking to stakeholders, which is what every MPP in this place should do when legislation arrives. But at this point, we do not see any major red flags in this bill and have not raised any objections to this legislation.

We were able to do a little bit of investigation to understand what this is really about, but there are all kinds of questions that we would appreciate answers to. Why this particular site? We don’t have a map showing exactly which lands are proposed for annexation. We don’t have any detail about what environmental attributes those lands may have. We don’t know how invested the proposed investor is in this site. There is lots of information that—

I’m going to remind the member to make these remarks relevant to the bill that we’re discussing, Bill 63. Tie them back into Bill 63.

Thank you to the member opposite for her speech on multiple topics. I’m going to bring it back a bit to the bill we’re talking about.

Our government is on a mission to build Ontario and create good-paying jobs for workers in Ontario. I know you mentioned the good-paying jobs quite often in your speech. We know that the majority of planned EV and battery-related investments are expected to take place in the mid- to late-2020s, meaning the window of opportunity to secure these investments for Ontario is now. These investments will bring countless jobs, well-paying jobs, economic opportunity and significant growth to regions across the province, but these investments require land.

The member opposite’s speech mentioned almost every excuse in the book for why we should not be doing this. Why won’t the opposition support our plan to bring more good-paying jobs to Ontario?

I would like to thank my colleague from London West for her speech. This bill basically is adjusting the boundary for St. Thomas and Central Elgin so that we can have a mega-site ready for a potential employer. It has been suggested that it is possibly an EV battery manufacturer.

On this side of the House, New Democrats support manufacturing jobs. We support good, green jobs. However, we would like to get more information from the government on exactly what is going on. We got no heads-up about this bill. We don’t know what kind of public investment is going to go into this. And we also don’t know if there will be conditions attached to the investments so that the employers who are coming in will stay in Ontario and ensure that the jobs that the people need and rely on will also be here for the long term.

I would like to ask the member if the government has shared any of this information with us and what else do we have in terms of questions that we’d like to know from the government?

As my friend from Oakville just said, this is a discussion that we have to have and the member from London West has said it very clearly: The government made a decision in 2019, through Metrolinx, to cancel the project. I remember the early days of this government. To those of us who were here, it was like, “anything Liberal, Hulk smash.” It was just this impulse to destroy anything that the previous-to-them government had done.

I had a lot of criticisms of that government, but Metrolinx made a terrible decision. You don’t build charging stations—member, I’m asking you to react to this—in 2019 to pilot them and think about them—it was a three-year pilot—in a single year. There are people who lived close to those charging stations, not just people using the GO stations. There are communities that we want to hub around them. Having four or five chargers at ONroute stations doesn’t meet the need.

Member, don’t you think we need mandatory changes to the building code to get condominium buildings to put in EV chargers? We need EV chargers in communities. We need them to be affordable and accessible to support the cars this government wants to build. I’m just wondering if you could elaborate on that for my friend over there.

I was very proud of our party’s initiative in the last election to launch the Green New Democratic Deal. This was a bold, ambitious, detailed plan to bring jobs and protect climate in our province and get us where we need to be, with a 50% reduction by 2050.

We do support an electric vehicle strategy. That was a big piece of our Green New Democratic Deal. One of the things that we are committed to is a financial rebate for consumers to purchase electric vehicles. We know from other jurisdictions that financial assistance to purchase not the Teslas, not the luxury EVs, but the growing number of mid-range electric vehicles that are coming onto the market—if we want to really jump-start that market, we have to provide the financial assistance to consumers to purchase those vehicles.

Further questions?