Thank you, Madam Speaker. You are looking great in the chair.

And thank you to my colleague from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound. It is a beautiful riding. You talk about your landscape and the water and the green—always, I miss your riding. Thank you for your election. Thank you for bringing your wonderful family to the chamber, and congratulations on your election.

My colleague comes from the municipal world. He understands the housing crisis is not only facing Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound, but Ontario as a whole. Tell me about the throne speech—elaborate on that—bringing hope and dreams to the next generation of Canadians of having a home, having a roof over their heads. Please elaborate on that.

I am proud to rise today in this great place among my distinguished colleagues in this House.

First, Speaker, I wish you a sincere congratulations on your own re-election in this past campaign. I grew up learning quite a bit about you on CHCH television when I could tune in with my rabbit ears. It’s truly an honour and privilege to have the opportunity to serve side by side with you and all 124 members of this House who represent their communities.

I want to begin by taking this moment to wholeheartedly thank the voters of Windsor–Tecumseh. I am grateful to each person who gave me this privilege to serve them. The community told me that this is the government that, when it mattered, supported our community. The delivery of real, tangible results from this government stood out for my constituents.

Les actions de ce gouvernement sont transformatrices pour ma communauté. C’est ce gouvernement qui a fait possible l’avancement de l’hôpital régional de soins aigus de Windsor-Essex. C’est ce gouvernement qui termine enfin l’élargissement à quatre voies de l’autoroute 3 à travers Windsor et le comté d’Essex, un projet autrement suspendu depuis 2011. C’est ce gouvernement qui investit des centaines de millions de dollars en soutien financier pour la fabrication de pointe dans notre région, comme l’usine d’assemblage de batteries de véhicules électriques NextStar Energy, le Centre d’innovation pour les batteries Flex-Ion et le réoutillage de l’usine d’assemblage de Stellantis à Windsor.

Congratulations on your election and your wonderful speech. It was very noble of you to bring up Percy. Certainly we miss him, but we of course welcome you here in the chamber.

I was also really pleased to hear that you come from an engineering background. I have studied the sciences, and I’d love for you to share with us maybe what unique perspective having a background in engineering and science brings to politics.

First of all, I would like to congratulate the member from Windsor–Tecumseh for his election. What an accomplishment. You were a councillor. You were actually recognized as one of the 40 leaders under 40 in Windsor–Tecumseh. It’s a pleasure to see you here.

My question would be if there’s anything that you want to accomplish in the next four years for your riding. If you could share that as well.

I want to congratulate the member from Don Valley West on her election, and thank her for sharing her stories, for the beautiful inaugural speech.

I know that you shared about your family, who is here today—welcome to the House—as well as you shared about your volunteers and the contributions that they have made. We have some of our volunteers from Scarborough here today as well, and I know that they’re the pillars of a campaign, of a movement that you create. Regardless of party line, they really inspire you. You also talked about diversity and the first time you came to Queen’s Park, seeing Nelson Mandela.

I guess my question would be, in terms of the ratio that that you told us about the amount of women that we have, I feel like an imposter sometimes. When I walk through the doors here—it’s been almost five years now—I still feel that at times. What are some of the things that you want to do to inspire more women to run for public office, and some of the things you want to do for diversity?

I’d like to first off congratulate the member on his election and such a great maiden speech. I also want to thank the member; I was one of the member’s first patients here in the Legislature, which I don’t think he was expecting, so thank you for that.

But across to the member from Don Valley East: You talk about people outside looking in. How do we go about making Ontario more inclusive, where people from all walks of society feel welcomed? I know you spoke about that at the beginning; I’d just like you to elaborate for the House on that.

Well, the first thing you do, to the member opposite, is drive 10,000 kilometres during the election. It’s a big riding. It’s a lot of geography. The one thing that I’ve really enjoyed so far about my experience in this provincial Legislature is being here and learning about here. I just wish in these early days we had more time to be at home because I’ve got a lot of people to see and a lot of things to do. We’ve got one constituency office, we’ve got a great team, but it’s really about being out, not sitting in the office. It’s like what I did for a living: Get out, be seen, be heard, listen and learn.

The Royal, folks—I’m serious when I say this—is just a wonderful thing to experience. If you’ve not been to Toronto the first week of November, please go. It’s down at Exhibition Place. You’re going to learn so much. You’re going to appreciate so much about where our food comes from, and the exhibitors. It’s fun. Grandparents are one of the number one exhibitors.

What’s really fun is to just be there, and I said it—the sights, the sounds, the smells. Go be part of it. Take your family. You’re really going to enjoy it—all of it, every little bit of it.

For instance, let’s really encourage further development of our beef sector, of our pork sector. It’s wonderful how this industry continues to produce, but it’s consolidated. When I got into this business, there were nearly 22,000 dairy producers; there are less than 4,000 today. There were 23,000 hog producers; there are less than 400 today. It’s consolidated. We still produce a lot more food and it will continue to grow, but we have to get out of the way of their everyday activities and let them do what they do best and produce food.

That being said, we can’t take our foot off the gas. I think this is a fair stat: OMAFRA calculates that the amount of primary agriculture GDP generated per acre actively farmed has risen 45% since 2016, and 208% since 2001. So it’s been on an escalating curve, as has our population. We just have to continue to make sure that happens.