Good morning. Let us pray.

Prières / Prayers.

Mr. Clark moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 63, An Act respecting the adjustment of the boundary between the City of St. Thomas and the Municipality of Central Elgin / Projet de loi 63, Loi concernant la modification des limites territoriales entre la cité de St. Thomas et la municipalité de Central Elgin.

Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for petitions.

Resuming the debate adjourned on February 23, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 63, An Act respecting the adjustment of the boundary between the City of St. Thomas and the Municipality of Central Elgin / Projet de loi 63, Loi concernant la modification des limites territoriales entre la cité de St. Thomas et la municipalité de Central Elgin.

It’s a great pleasure to get up today and talk about a very important bill that is obviously going to be of great benefit to my riding and to the ridings around. In particular, I look across the floor and I see my three colleagues here from London—London West, London North Centre and London–Fanshawe—and me, with Elgin–Middlesex–London. It is indeed great legislation that we’re putting forward, with the potential of greatness in southwestern Ontario.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak before this Legislature to Bill 63, which, if passed—and hopefully passed—will not only strengthen Ontario’s competitiveness by consolidating a new investment-ready mega-site in St. Thomas, part of Central Elgin now, but will also attract large-scale manufacturing investments that will ultimately create thousands of jobs in southwestern Ontario—hundreds, yes, perhaps thousands of jobs in our region.

When I announced my candidacy last year for Elgin–Middlesex–London, part of my pitch, I would say, is that economic growth, number one, is the engine that will ensure our region creates good-paying—and I want to keep emphasizing “good-paying”; not gig-paying, good-paying—and sustainable jobs. A job is still the best social program there is in the world.

With economic growth comes more investment in our health care system, in our schools and in infrastructure. I want to point out—and it’s what I truly believe and I said that then—yes, we need to cut red tape and make government more efficient. Yes, we need to lower the cost of government. But ultimately, you can’t cut your way to prosperity. You have to grow the economy. By growing the economy, we will have the needed funds in this province to invest back in health care, schools, hospitals, doctors, nurses, teachers and support workers alike.

Number two: Creating the best possible environment for major investment is crucial—very crucial—for our province to attract potential investors financially capable to compete on a global scale right here in southwestern Ontario. That’s the key, folks: global scale. You need critical mass to compete today. Without it, you’re not competitive. You’re going to hear me talk a fair bit about competitiveness and the fierce competition we are facing for investment in Ontario.

Finally, to succeed, we need the collaboration, I think all would agree, between industry, who are going to invest, and the provincial and federal governments, as well as our municipal partners, which I will talk about today.

Speaker, Bill 63, the St. Thomas-Central Elgin Boundary Adjustment Act, builds on the province’s efforts that came through the Job Site Challenge, which has proven to be a great initiative which was designed to attract impactful critical mass pertaining to investment, new job creation and spinoff, or tertiary, economic development. As Minister Fedeli stated, “Creating more shovel-ready mega-sites will help Ontario remain competitive as the province competes for major global investments.” Again, the word “competition” comes to mind. We have to compete if we’re going to be able to grow our economy.

With Bill 63, if passed, we will have created a world-class competitive advantage for southwestern Ontario and, indeed, our entire province. You could call it an unfair advantage. We are very blessed in this province, very blessed in southwestern Ontario, and I truly believe we have an unfair advantage compared to many jurisdictions throughout North America. We have to take advantage of those advantages right here in my riding and in southwestern Ontario, London in particular.

What Bill 63, the St. Thomas-Central Elgin Boundary Adjustment Act, ultimately accomplishes is a genuine opportunity proving Ontario is open for business on a global scale. Again, we come back to critical mass. By creating an industrial site in Elgin county, our region, our province and our country are creating the economic conditions for sustainable job creation—again, long-term, good-paying jobs—and economic growth, using the magnificent resources we’ve been given, all here in Ontario.

To attract major investors or an investor, we as a government need to ensure we reduce unneeded red tape. We need to reduce our costs. We need to make sure that any and all potential suitors only have to deal with one municipality. That’s what we’re up against throughout North America in this competition. Again, competition is fierce—I’ll use the word “fierce”—which is good; it makes us better. Competition is fierce throughout North America for mega-investments, such as we are preparing to attract.

All residents of Elgin county will share in the future prosperity of this glorious opportunity, as will people in Middlesex and London and surrounding communities. I want to make sure that everyone understands that, and I will repeat it.

The proposed site requires municipal boundary adjustments. Why? Simply put, efficiency and speed. If we’re going to attract a mega-investor to a mega-site, we can’t have red tape and multiple government red tape initiatives getting in the way or hampering progress in bringing them to town. The key is many of our competitors throughout the States are shovel-ready now. We need to get ready and be ready when this investment opportunity presents itself.

There are three municipalities affected by this bill: the city of St. Thomas, the largest city in the county of Elgin; Central Elgin, which borders to the east, north and south of St. Thomas; and, indeed, the county of Elgin itself. A potential investor needs assurance we can move with more stealth and speed to compete with other states south of border who are, frankly, already targeting the same investors we are here in Ontario.

County infrastructure investments —and we’ll talk about that today—will be required: power, roads, site preparation, waste water, storm water. Transportation hubs need to be developed as we go forward. We need to create a potential investor’s choice easier, accommodating and welcome.

Speaker, allow me to make one point abundantly clear: Again, all of Elgin county and surrounding communities will benefit from any and all future mega-site investment. Whether it’s West Elgin, Dutton Dunwich, Southwold, St. Thomas, Central Elgin, Aylmer, Malahide, Bayham, Thames Centre, South Middlesex or, indeed, all of London, all are going to benefit from this wonderful potential investment once we get the mega-site in place.

The city of London—and I talked with Mayor Josh Morgan yesterday—is also very excited about this investment, as are all the mayors in Elgin county, and all have worked closely with the province to make this happen.

Again, all communities will experience job growth, and again, great, sustainable, long-term jobs and tertiary spinoffs—that we all know will happen whenever an investment such as we are speaking of, and can attract to secure, will bring to all of southwestern Ontario.

I think back to the Ford plant in Talbotville, outside of St. Thomas and outside of London. I remember that it closed, and it caused great economic hardship and pain in our region. We are replacing that and more as we go forward in this promise. I’m sure whoever ends up on this site is going to bring hundreds of thousands of jobs that we can all appreciate and all enjoy and benefit from, whatever walk of life we enjoy.

A few points: There’s no time to waste when it comes to securing major industrial investments that will employ generations of Ontarians working in good-paying jobs.

Again, Speaker, Ontario is in a fierce competition with other jurisdictions. When you talk to Minister Fedeli, you hear that loudly and clearly. He has travelled the world. He sees what we’re up against. When companies consider making large investments such as this in manufacturing and industrial operations, including multi-billion-dollar transformational projects, we have to make sure we are ready and ready to win.

Throughout my career, I can say—not on this scale—having invested in businesses and plants and people in industry, it’s not easy. Competition is tough, and if you’re going to compete on a global basis, or even on a local basis, you better have the right assets, including your plant, your equipment, your infrastructure. But most importantly, you have to be able to attract the brightest and the best people. I think preparing a mega-site such as this creates an opportunity for success, an opportunity to attract the brightest and the best, because this isn’t small potatoes. This is a really, really big and significant investment, and I think everyone is going to enjoy the advantages of that.

We’ve got clean energy in southwestern Ontario. We’re close to markets—think about it. We’re close to two American borders pretty quickly. We’re close to major hubs in terms of airports and rail, transportation and truck. We are close to millions and millions of people in southwestern Ontario that we enjoy because of being in the Golden Horseshoe. So whether it’s clean energy, close to markets, our people, educational institutions—we are open for business. And we cannot take for granted—I mean this sincerely—we cannot take for granted the wonderful advantages we have in Ontario, especially southwestern Ontario. Government needs to create the environment for these advantages to help our economy grow and to perform and succeed, and that is again what we are going to do.

Ontario is currently in contention for several major manufacturing investments that require large sites with specific sets of requirements. Again, partly why we tabled this legislation is to set the table for a great investment. A critical factor for securing new investment or expansion opportunities is having a suitable place to go, an industrial site where timing and associated costs are already known and streamlined to meet project timelines. With close to 40 jurisdictions—and, again, I think if you were here this morning, you’ll have heard Minister Fedeli say there’s close to 40 jurisdictions in the US offering some type of certified or mega-site program, and it’s become an expectation among potential investors that sites are shovel-ready for development. That’s big competition. A lot of states are vying for these types of investments, and we are right in the mix trying to compete.

Again, I think we have some natural advantages in Ontario that we need to take advantage of when talking to suitors or potential clients to invest, and our municipalities need to think that way. They are thinking that way, and that’s why we have to end up with one municipality holding the mega-site to attract the investment, so site-preparation and infrastructure can be put in place.

Unfortunately, there’s a critical shortage of shovel-ready industrial mega-sites in Ontario needed to house these projects that the province is pursuing. St. Thomas, frankly, folks, right now as we sit, is the best of the best we have in Ontario. I’m biased, I know, but it is the best of the best, and we need to take advantage of it.

Without immediate action, we risk losing the opportunity to compete for and win these transformative investments, along with the hundreds of thousands of jobs that come with them, to other jurisdictions that have a more fulsome inventory of fully serviced industrial parks, lands and shovel-ready sites. We need to get ready and get ready fast. Speed, speed, speed is imperative—again, a very competitive process.

That is why, through this proposed legislation, we are taking steps to ensure that Ontario can continue to compete with other jurisdictions, both in Canada but mostly in the United States, to secure these investments with shovel-ready mega-sites that allow businesses to set up shop quickly and easily and in a welcoming way. With a general shortage of quality industrial land, Ontario has to show we are not just open for business. We have to demonstrate we’re ready for business with an investment-ready site, and the St. Thomas and Elgin county mega-site proposal, again, is the very best we have to offer today in the entire province of Ontario.

Ontario is the ideal destination for prospective investors, thanks to our world-class automotive and manufacturing sectors, reliable clean energy, critical mineral resources and, of course, the availability of a world-class workforce and an R&D ecosystem.

Our focus on securing these large-scale anchor projects is indeed paying off. As a result of recent success in landing multi-million-dollar investments like LGES, Stellantis and Umicore, there is significant demand for shovel-ready sites. Investors are confident in the future of Ontario—we are seeing this—and they want to be part of it. That’s our collective responsibility, to ensure that it does indeed happen.

As we’ve all talked about in this House, there are two million to three million more people coming to Ontario in the next number of years. We’ve passed a bill, Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster—1.5 million homes built in 10 years, and a lot of it is talked about being built in the GTHA and Ottawa, being the biggest sites where people will move. I would also suggest that now, with this bill passing and a potential investor coming in, southwestern Ontario—in particular London and Elgin county—is going to have people attracted to come to our region. For that reason, we need to be ready to build homes, and build homes fast as well.

Investments in housing, hospitals and schools are going to take place. Infrastructure is not just buying and putting lands together and bringing an investor in; you have to support it with infrastructure. Whether it’s hospitals, schools, roads, waste water, storm water or transit links, we all need this investment. I know this government and this province is going to support that infrastructure every step of the way.

Speaker, I am so proud of the job our Premier, our Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, Vic Fedeli, and our Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Steve Clark, have done to create the environment. Again, they planted the garden to successfully bring back the manufacturing sector to Ontario. It has been failing. It has been waning. It has been hurt. It has been painful. But we are well on the road to recovery.

It is also important to recognize the Ontario labour unions who are at the table with the province and auto-motive manufacturers to pave the way for the success we are all enjoying today. It’s a team effort; it always has been and it always will be.

The creation of the Ring of Fire—our Minister of Mines here has done a great job. Think of that opportunity in EV.

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 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—

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?

I’m delighted to speak today in support of Bill 63, the St. Thomas-Central Elgin Boundary Adjustment Act. As the member of provincial Parliament for Windsor–Tecumseh, how can I not support this bill, given the terrific developments that we have had the privilege to welcome in our riding as a result of similar circumstances?

Central Elgin is truly a gem for Ontario, with some of the most scenic and beautiful communities in the southwest: Port Stanley, Belmont, Dexter, Lawton’s Corners, Lyndale, Lynhurst, Mapleton, New Sarum, Norman, Sparta, Union, Whites and Yarmouth Centre.

St. Thomas is truly the Railway City—and being an engineer, I love railways—and the place where the Canada Southern, the London and Port Stanley, the Grand Trunk, the Pere Marquette and the Canadian Pacific railways rolled right through. While we do try to somewhat compete on the number of railway crossings and railway delays in Windsor–Tecumseh, the sheer number of systems present in St. Thomas certainly exceeds ours.

The St. Thomas area, particularly Southwold, was home to the Ford St. Thomas assembly plant, where the Ford Crown Victoria, the Lincoln Town Car and the Mercury Grand Marquis were rolled off the lines by its industrious employees until 2011. Those Crown Victoria vehicles were a mainstay of the Ontario Provincial Police fleet. Residents of St. Thomas and Central Elgin could look at the work that they produced with sincere pride throughout Ontario any time that they travelled.

We in Windsor-Tecumseh truly know the devastating loss that St. Thomas and Central Elgin went through when Ford was lost in the industrial change. Just within my life-time, I’ve seen the elimination of the GM trim and transmission plant, the Ford Nemak Essex aluminum plant, the Ford casting plant and Windsor engine plant, and the Chrysler Pillette van plant, all just within my riding. Directly adjacent, we had the Ford Nemak Windsor aluminum plant and Windsor casting plant. The Ford Essex engine plant had a happier end, in that it closed but then it reopened, and it continues to operate to this day.

Why is this important and vital? Automotive jobs are good jobs, and for every job in an auto plant, there are 18 others supported by it. When good jobs are lost, it’s not just the local economy that suffers. It leads to displacement of family members. Our populations decline as people move to find work, and in turn, with reduced demand for goods and services, even more job loss.

It’s hard to fathom this here in the vicinity of Queen’s Park. You look outside, and construction is all around us. You visibly see people working, especially right next door at the MacDonald Block. There are cranes here. There are construction barriers. There is excavation. There are closures on the 401, although that seems to be three decades plus in the making, as the province demolishes narrow overpasses and constructs collector lanes to address demand. And really, an economically viable Toronto with vitality is the only Toronto that I’ve ever known. Whether in a period of economic growth or a period of recession, the building and improving here never seems to stop.

But that’s not our reality in southwestern Ontario. Years will go by where our communities will never see a crane. A crane is a sign of growth; it’s a sign of hope and delivering upon promise of hope and optimism for a better future, of revitalization. It brings forward a beneficial community impact that I could not do any justice in trying to describe. Bill 63 will dramatically support and accelerate economic revitalization for the people of St. Thomas, of Central Elgin and of Elgin county.

My riding of Windsor–Tecumseh is now home to the NextStar Energy electric vehicle battery plant, Canada’s largest automotive investment in its history, an investment of over $5 billion. We have experienced first-hand the benefits of the hope and promise of this facility already, and it is just getting built out of the ground as we speak, with an opening anticipated in the next two years. NextStar is not just a new plant, but a new lease on life for our existing manufacturing facilities in the city. NextStar on its own, separate from any other impacts, will create over 2,500 direct jobs to start. NextStar truly means that our largest industrial employers will continue to operate in our community for a new generation and will grow their workforce.

The NextStar development was no accidental event or stroke of luck to land this development. My own hometown of Tecumseh faced a remarkably comparable situation to what is being described in the bill, although with some differences. The city of Windsor had prepared a land use needs report in 1996; it showed more industrial land was needed to meet future growth. Collaboratively, the three municipalities—Windsor, Tecumseh, and the county of Essex—agreed to a boundary adjustment which transferred approximately 6,500 acres of land from the town of Tecumseh to the city of Windsor.

Undoubtedly, the decision to transfer jurisdiction over these lands was not entirely beloved. There were political consequences, but it was the right thing to do. Interestingly enough, while the specific lands around the Banwell Road corridor were not envisioned for this annexation at the front end of it, Windsor had the infrastructure, service capacity and fiscal capacity to service the land immediately. As a much smaller municipality, Tecumseh did not. This boundary agreement between Tecumseh, Windsor and Essex county took effect over 20 years ago now, on January 1, 2003.

The 2008 recession was devastating for our local manufacturing economy. The Windsor region is the first to experience the effects of an economic downturn and the last to return to prosperity, but in a roundabout way this paved the way for what was to come with NextStar. NextStar landed there because the land was available and was serviced. The boundary adjustment completed years before meant that the complexity of the project on the site was lessened dramatically. The NextStar site is located in that Banwell Road corridor. It’s located on Banwell Road at the E.C. Row Expressway, right at the boundary of Windsor and Tecumseh.

The city of Windsor, the province of Ontario and the government of Canada collaborated on incentives to help make the business case for the NextStar site, including land assembly by the city of Windsor. NextStar officials only required consultation with one municipality instead of two. Having few complications and all partners on the same page is very much a determining factor made by a company in where to site a plant.

NextStar coming to Windsor was never a sure thing. For one, the site was smaller than desired; it’s about 800 acres. There was intense competition to land this once-in-a-lifetime investment. So with Bill 63, St. Thomas and Central Elgin can cross that potential complication off of their list. The consolidated industrial site that is the subject of this bill is large enough to meet virtually any company’s needs. It is a site that has the incredible potential to create thousands of new jobs for St. Thomas and for Central Elgin and for our province; a shovel-ready site with railway access, electrical and sewer services and an easy connection to Highway 401 via Highbury Avenue.

This proposed legislation reduces the red tape that would have otherwise existed here. The government is proposing a change in the municipal boundary so that the site lies in one single municipality—the city of St. Thomas—to make site improvements and make any future construction faster and more efficient. By reducing the number of affected municipalities to one, it accelerates decision-making and approvals, ensuring the site is shovel-ready for investment.

The same laws and regulations will continue to apply; the same assets and advantages are present; the same approvals to build on this site are still needed. They will occur. The only difference is the removal of the duplication which would be corrected by this legislation.

The proposed actions show that the government is ready and willing to take the steps necessary to compete for the types of global, game-changing investments needed to create good-paying jobs in Ontario and to rebuild our economy.

Speaker, we know that in our region, there’s truly a critical shortage of shovel-ready industrial mega-sites, and I’ve heard that in my own consultations across Ontario. This is not just an issue local to my region. We need to think innovatively. It means that to compete, municipalities may need to do exactly what our nearby neighbours are doing across the American border and have been doing so for many, many years.

Ontario is in fierce competition with other areas for these once-in-a-generation investments in manufacturing and industrial operations. There are close to 40 US areas, including Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, Missouri and Tennessee—all great vacation spots, but also only located within a few hours drive of us. That means they can be suppliers to everything that exists in our manu-facturing footprint, and these jurisdictions offer certified site programs. Our competitors for these investments have shovel-ready sites, and it is now a widespread expectation that potential investors have of governments like ours and across North America who want to secure the investments that these shovel-ready sites be available.

In 2019, our government developed the Driving Prosperity plan that helped lead to the NextStar Energy electric vehicle battery plant. A Reuters analysis noted that car companies plan to spend $300 billion globally on EVs, and Canada at the time had zero of that investment. That is why our government is laser-focused on securing these large-scale anchor projects, including in the auto and EV space. What we learned was critical to securing these new investment opportunities: It’s having a suitable site ready to go, where timing and costs of development are readily known, and where the owner knows that they can meet project timelines.

The Job Site Challenge program began in November 2019 and was Canada’s first challenge where municipalities, economic development agencies and industrial property owners put forward large tracts of land of 500 to 1,500 acres to support large-scale manufacturing operations. Looking at the St. Thomas-Central Elgin site, it is 1,250 acres. That’s pretty close to the top end of what the industry is looking for. It reflects, relative to the whole of Central Elgin, 1.8% of the land and 0.27% of the land in the county of Elgin.

As mentioned earlier, NextStar isn’t the only demonstrated success. Umicore in Loyalist township is a transformative investment for eastern Ontario. The benefits are not simply direct. As my good friend MPP Bresee noted, for the first time, the people of Millhaven will see public transit service near their community. And as a result of recent successes like NextStar and Umicore, there is significant demand for shovel-ready sites.

In my role as parliamentary assistant, I have seen ample opportunity to witness Minister Fedeli in action. Ontario is truly in good hands to secure more than $20 billion in projects, but many of them require large-scale sites. Premier Ford and Minister Fedeli deliver investor confidence in industry, and it is helping us land these investments in the most competitive investment environment that we have seen in our history.

The shortage that we have of large, industrial sites is real. It puts Ontario at a significant disadvantage. While our communities make every effort to compete for these high-value projects, often our sites can have missing ingredients to them. This could be access to services or access to transportation infrastructure. By assembling and confirming the St. Thomas site and the governance of local regulations, it provides crystal-clear assurance to any companies locating on the site of what they need to do.

Economic developments do have uncertainty and risk, and on occasion, quick action by government is needed. Bill 63 is an example of that. It simplifies the complexity of developing the St. Thomas-Central Elgin site. Passage of the bill will make this parcel ready faster and stronger. There is no need to risk losing this opportunity to compete for and win when these companies are looking for a home. There is a lot of competition out there. Let us not give potential companies any reason to doubt our viability or our ability to deliver to them a great and sustainable business for generations to come.

For Ontario, for St. Thomas and for Central Elgin, it’s an opportunity to create thousands of jobs and to build stronger communities together. We are ready for business. I ask all members of the Legislature to support Bill 63 and to ensure that St. Thomas, Central Elgin and the county of Elgin gain all of the economic opportunities and development that the region can support for its people.

I appreciate the question from the member opposite. I was very happy to give my own comments on the Ambassador Bridge blockade at the time as a candidate in the election. What it was was a barrier to economic opportunity for many, many Ontarians. I think it was the Canadian Press who asked me a similar question. I was actually quite happy with the speed that the province did take action. Undoubtedly, as a former municipal councillor, I was aware of efforts that were under way. They may not have been public, but certainly, the effort to secure resources and deploy resources was there, and I am very happy with how that situation was resolved very peacefully.

We’re in competition for several manufacturing investments, and having risk like the blockade provided is a diminishment of that. So we need to continue to make sure that we are an attractive place to do business and make sure that we give companies no reason to avoid Ontario.

But really, coming down to this investment, there’s really no time to waste when it comes to making sure that this site is available and securing major industrial investments in St. Thomas, Central Elgin and the county of Elgin to employ generations of Ontario workers in good-paying jobs. So it’s going to be a tremendous boost for the London region and for the people who live there.

Certainly we’ve attracted nearly $2 billion in investments by global bio-manufacturers, including Sanofi, Resilience and Roche pharmaceuticals, and $17 billion in transformative investments by global auto-makers and suppliers of electric vehicle batteries and battery materials, including industry giants such as LG Energy Solution, Stellantis back in my hometown, GM, Honda, Ford, Umicore and Magna.

Those are just a few items where that’s our vision: Bring good-paying jobs back to Ontario and bring prosperity to the people who live here.