I appreciate this opportunity to speak to our Plan to Build Act. But in my first official opportunity outside of question period to speak in this place, Mr. Speaker, I want to express a heartfelt thank you to the people, my constituents, of Kenora–Rainy River for five elections—four of them, I had an opportunity to come to either the other place, the House of Commons in Ottawa, and here now for my second session. I appreciate the support, the confidence that you have put in me.

Standing in this place today, I reflect on the past four years. I would make the observation that it went quite quickly, as these sessions often do. Just getting back from AMO in Ottawa—the seven years that I spent there and the seven years since seem a bit of a blur. But in sitting down with some of my older old colleagues from that other place and looking around this magnificent Legislature, I am struck by the opportunity for renewal—most notably, in this session, the strong, stable majority that the people of Ontario have given the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, and some fresh new faces to join us here today, because they rejected out of hand the platforms of the opposition parties and, in particular, if you will, the gaggle of non-affiliates across the way there who used to form the governing party for some 15 years. So if there’s anything to be proud of there, it is the fact that they’ll have an opportunity to sit in this place and take note of the fact that in this legislative session, the people of Ontario have sent a strong message that they want our government to continue to build.

I’m going to focus, for the purposes of my remarks, on northern Ontario, where not only did we pick up a few new seats, but we also got a couple of those NDP members out on the doorstep a lot more vigorously than they’re used to, as we replaced a couple of seats in northern Ontario and finished a strong, notable second in every other seat across northern Ontario—a historic finish in and of itself. I want to thank the candidates who ran for us across northern Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, from hospitals to highways, from bridges to broadband, we’re committed to building northern Ontario and rebuilding our economy across northern Ontario. In the past four years, several new mines moved to construction or transitioned into electrification only. This isn’t just sound environmental policy; this puts significant demands, positive pressure on our northern communities to ensure that we’re ready and that we continue to be ready, as some northern communities across the province will see exponential growth and therefore requirements for infrastructure and community enhancements moving forward.

We understand the opportunity to ensure that our highways, our modes of transportation, are upgraded. We saw, in print, our budget highlighting a plan to twin Highway 17 from the Manitoba border to Kenora, and hopefully points beyond, as we make a commitment not just based on safety, but based also on the economic opportunity to link our northern communities across some 800,000 square kilometres and ensure, as we move from earth to electric vehicles, from mining to motors, that for the first time we have a fully integrated supply chain in our transportation modalities—most notably buses, transport trucks and electric-powered vehicles—that northern Ontario is part of that integrated supply chain. More importantly, it would start there. So, safe transportation modes, rail into the Far North out in northeastern Ontario, and a plan to link our highways with two-plus-one and/or twinning is a great way to get started.

My colleague the Minister of Mines and I have an extraordinary opportunity to continue on with our growth plan to open up what I’ve referred to as the corridor to prosperity, leveraging what governments do. Let mining companies build those mines; we will be there to support the regulatory pieces, but most notably, to create a highway or road infrastructure to leverage health, social and economic opportunities for those isolated communities in the north. I know a thing or two about that. I spent more than eight years of my life living and working as a nurse in those isolated communities. Retired in that capacity, I also served as a lawyer—I asked my constituents not to hold that part against me—and then as a politician, ensuring and committed that the northern communities—I even got a smile from the Speaker on that one. Lawyers are good people, Mr. Speaker, just for the record—just to ensure that we understand the opportunity to connect our communities.

There has been much discussion about health care. As a former health care provider and someone who has worked with communities across northern Ontario to improve access to health services and programs—we’re investing $142 million, starting in 2022-23, to recruit and retain health care workers in underserved communities. This will start with $81 million, beginning in this fiscal year, to expand the Community Commitment Program for Nurses, which includes compensation and recovery for the cost of full tuition for nurses.

We see at Seven Generations Education Institute in Fort Frances and Kenora an incredible opportunity, as that Indigenous post-secondary education institution, now accessible for all students, is training in paramedicine, PSWs, RPNs and registered nurses.

There is a plan and a relationship to work with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine to address one of the greatest opportunities we’ve seen perhaps in a generation, and that is to ensure that students attending northern high schools—and now northern colleges and potentially northern medical schools—will have an opportunity to play out and live out their dream to be educated and then work in their region. As a young man coming from southern Ontario, armed with a diploma in nursing in the very late 1980s, early 1990s, I came there, I settled there, I made it my home, and went on to other things. We need to ensure, moving forward, that as many northern students have that opportunity.

The expansion of these kinds of programs—the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant—will support and attract the retention of a whole host of human resources, health human resources, moving forward. We think that is the right thing to do.

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about a couple of other programs that are highlighted in this bill but that find their importance in the previous session—because this is about building. It’s not just building Ontario as a legislative exercise; it’s about a government building on the previous session.

A couple of those key things for northern Ontario were found in the Northern Energy Advantage Program. This wasn’t just a rebrand. This was a program that replaced the northern industrial energy rebate program. NEAP, as it’s called, is kind of neat, because it provides—now, as opposed to before—large industrial electricity consumers with competitive and predictable electricity rates. This program is now broader in scope and will assist more major and larger operations, through a new investor class, to be competitive. In the forestry sector, margins are razor-thin. Mines are pivoting to full electrification, in some cases, and they need to know that that cost has certainty—unlike from the previous government—and that it’s competitive.

Listen to the names of companies that have rallied behind our government, Mr. Speaker, to support this and access this:

—Algoma Steel, which is now transitioning to an electric arc furnace thanks to the investments that we’re putting into their operations;

—Domtar, one of the most efficient pulp producers across northern Ontario—in fact, in the world—right there in Dryden, in my own riding;

—Evolution Mining;

—Vale Canada in Sudbury;

—Impala Canada;

—GreenFirst Forest Products;

—Pan American Silver; and

—Agnico Eagle.

These have a couple of interesting features. They are anchor tenants and major employers in all our ridings.

Historically, we’ve brought these programs to this legislative floor.

And do you know what, Mr. Speaker? Are you curious?

The Speaker is curious.

They have two features: They were transformative programs, and the members of the NDP, for reasons I don’t understand, voted against them. They have a chance at redemption here today and as we vote moving forward. They’re going to get an opportunity to support these programs. They’re going to get an opportunity to ensure that their constituents, especially the younger ones, have an opportunity to transition out of high school or out of college or other training, Red Seal training, into the industries that have characterized northern Ontario for well over a century. This is a plan to build, but this is a plan for opportunity.

I mentioned transportation modalities earlier in my remarks, and I just want to return to that for a moment. Our government’s efforts in the last session and moving forward, as highlighted in our plan to build, include cutting the gas tax and fuel tax by a combined 11 cents. That doesn’t sound like a lot, until you fuel up jets and my 133-litre tank in my pickup truck, to serve one of the largest ridings in northern Ontario with highway networks.

It’s a commitment to make investments through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, widely acknowledged as one of the most robust efforts to modernize the investments for municipalities and northern businesses moving forward. But it also made investments in airports—the town of Hearst, to replace the René Fontaine Municipal Airport in-ground fuel system; the town of Iroquois Falls, to make improvements to the Iroquois Falls municipal airport; Confederation College, to improve and expand and modernize its aviation programs so pilots can move out across northern Ontario to ensure safe passage across some 800,000 square kilometres of this amazing part of the province; and, of course, closer to home, for my purposes, in the city of Dryden and the town of Fort Frances, improvements to their facilities and terminal buildings.

I’m so pleased to serve with an amazing Premier and a caucus, frankly, who have made sure that every time discussion substantively comes up in caucus or cabinet, it is viewed mandatorily through a northern Ontario lens, and that we continue to understand that through things like the Northern Ontario Resource Development Support Fund, we are ensuring that our towns and cities, where pressures are put on them as a result of the resource sector, are accounted for and are stackable to work with other levels of government, including our own, for meaningful upgrades to their infrastructure that’s targeted towards the impact of resource development.

I’m going to take up the last few minutes to talk about, in my capacity as Minister of Indigenous Affairs, some of the tremendous progress that has been made not just historically but for the purposes of this plan to build.

We sat down with Indigenous business and political leaders to talk about a wealth creation table and a prosperity table. We took our direction from then-Regional Chief RoseAnne Archibald, now the national chief. We took our lead from people like Matt Jamieson, president and CEO of Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corp.; my friend Kevin Eshkawkogan, president and CEO of Indigenous Tourism Ontario; Brenda LaRose, partner and head of the national diversity and Indigenous board practice; Desiree Norwegian—one of my favourites—owner and chief executive officer of Atunda Inc., working in the nuclear sector; and of course, a dear friend of mine, Darren Harper, co-founder and president of Maawandoon Inc. What they know is what we know: the tremendous opportunity for Indigenous communities and businesses to prosper. It’s why we’ve advanced and built on resource revenue-sharing agreements between Indigenous communities in the province. It’s why we have invested in increased funding for Aboriginal financial institutes to access capital. We’re going to have more to say on that as budget 2022 endeavours to address the Indigenous Economic Development Fund highlighted in our plan to build.

This is exciting because this is organic. It comes from Regional Chief Glen Hare’s pen and his adviser Ted Nolan—you will remember him as the coach of the Buffalo Sabres and a former player in the National Hockey League. My only wish is that he had played for my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. But forget all that. For the purposes of this discussion, Ted, who has one of the largest business networks the province over and the country over, with Indigenous partners, has come to the table to advise Regional Chief Hare and create an opportunity to the tune of $25 million.

The Chiefs of Ontario office and their Indigenous leadership, the Grand Chief included, know that access to capital, investing in Indigenous businesses is the right way to go.

Mr. Speaker, finally, on that note and making a quick pivot, Indigenous businesses, now more than ever, under the revamped Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, are seeing exciting opportunities—expanding existing businesses, helping to support the creation of new ones, and, vitally, by virtue of our business programs in the new-look Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, ensuring that they are an essential part of the supply chains.

As I mentioned earlier, not only does northern Ontario count itself in from mines to motors, from the earth to electric vehicles—from some of the most northern communities that you can contemplate, right down to the Stellantis plant in Windsor that we intend to onboard—but we want to include Indigenous communities in that opportunity.

So, Mr. Speaker, already we’re seeing the results in the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund revamp. This budget accounts for an ongoing commitment to the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund.

Once again, my NDP colleagues across the way will have an extraordinary opportunity to stand with the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, to focus on the opportunities and support this important bill as we build Ontario and as we build, importantly, for the purposes of my representation, northern Ontario.

Thank you for this opportunity.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas our government was elected on a promise to the people of Ontario to rebuild the economy after the devastating impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on our businesses and workers; and

“Whereas the creation of new jobs, new opportunities and bigger paycheques will enable Ontario workers to bring home more money for their families and to their communities; and

“Whereas the Progressive Conservative government is seizing on opportunities in industries and fields that the Liberals and the NDP gave up on; and

“Whereas we are investing $1 billion for critical mineral infrastructure, such as all-season roads to the Ring of Fire and the implementation of our very first Critical Minerals Strategy; and

“Whereas through hard work and good policies building an environment for economic growth we have attracted more than $12 billion in new investment in electric and hybrid vehicles, including Canada’s first full-scale electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor; and

“Whereas our plan for driving economic growth includes building an end-to-end supply chain for electric and hybrid vehicles from mining to processing to manufacturing, all of which will happen right here in Ontario; and

“Whereas our government has delivered an estimated $8.9 billion in cost savings and support for Ontario employers, especially small businesses, who are the backbone of our economy; and

“Whereas the province has created more than 500,000 new jobs since 2018, 500,000 new paycheques and opportunities for families in every corner of the province;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to continue to build on this progress and rebuild Ontario’s economy.”

I thoroughly endorse this petition, will sign my name to it and give it to page Adele.

Mr. Speaker, it’s always a pleasure to rise in the House to speak about what our government is doing to support hard-working Ontarians. The plan to build is the blueprint to prosperity, with ministries coming together with a common goal to build a better Ontario—in post-COVID times, a stronger, prosperous Ontario. Mr. Speaker, I call this “Team Prosperity.”

The budget is about how we are ensuring that Ontario is the best place to live, work, raise a family and thrive. In the last four years under the leadership of Premier Ford, we’ve seen—and I was attentively listening to the member from Peterborough–Kawartha when he was reading the petition. He talked about creating an environment where the government has delivered an estimated $8.9 billion in cost savings and support for Ontario employers. Then he talked about hard work and good policies, building an environment for economic growth. Because of that, we have actually attracted over $12 billion in new investment in electrical hybrid vehicles, including Canada’s first full-scale electrical vehicle battery plant in Windsor.

Mr. Speaker, these are some of the things that we do, and the results are obvious. The results are in terms of how when we started in 2018 and when we finished the first term in 2022, there were 500,000 new cheques and new opportunities for families across the province. That’s what was the result was out of that.

Last week, I remember that all of us—most of us on this side—were at AMO, the municipalities conference. We had an opportunity to meet many municipalities, so I just want to take a moment and thank the municipalities that I had the opportunity to meet, including Bonnechere Valley Mayor Jennifer Murphy, Mayor Sandy Brown and councillor Joe Andrews from the town of Orangeville, Mayor Barb Clumpus from the municipality of Meaford, Mayor Bonnie Crombie from my city of Mississauga–Malton and Mayor Brian Bigger from the city of Greater Sudbury.

Mr. Speaker, when we were there, as I was listening attentively to them, they were applauding the efforts that we’ve done and talking about the issue which the majority of them were talking about: the shortage of labour and more opportunities for the skilled trades. That’s something which, when I was thinking about what I should talk about today—because in this plan or this budget we’re talking about, there’s a lot of things that it has and a lot of things we can unpack.

But what I want to talk about is something that resonates with me as an immigrant who landed on January 15, 2000, and started my first full-time job as a lab technician, as a worker. I had an opportunity to get the micro-credentials. I went back to school, so I know the value of the skilled trades. I know the value of training and how this benefitted me. So I thought what I would be focusing on today would be employee training and skills development, areas overseen by the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skill Development. These areas are a critical part of Ontario’s pathway to a more prosperous future, as well.

Mr. Speaker, what we’re doing in this budget is that we are actually making an investment of $89.5 million in Employment Ontario over the next three years. This will assist in Ontario’s economic recovery. Then, along with this, as I said earlier, when we created this environment, which has attracted a lot of investment, it increased the number of jobs that have been created. But another thing we have seen is that at this moment, as we’re talking, there are over 350,000 jobs that are unfilled. As we all know, each one of them is a paycheque waiting to be collected, and that’s something which, through this project, we want to address as well.

Things that we’re doing—there are multiple tools. The first tool which I will really talk about is addressing the problem through immigration. We have a program called the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program. In this budget, we are making a historic investment to fund and develop this program. What’s going to happen is this investment will allow the program to meet and exceed integrity requirements for its immigrant nominee targets as set by the federal government and position us for continued growth.

I just want to draw every member’s attention to this: At this time, through the OINP program, we are receiving 9,000 immigrants, and if you really look at the total number of immigrants who come to Ontario, it’s about 200,000. So if you really do the math, it is about 4.5% of the immigrants we get, the province has a say in that. When you take a look at the contrast just next door, in Quebec, wherein it is about 52% of the immigrants, the Quebec provincial program has a say in it. So if you really put these together, all I’m trying to say is that we need to have more say, and our ask is very simple and small. Our Premier and the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development are continuously advocating to the federal Liberal government to increase the number of immigrants we get, wherein we have a say. From 4.5%—we’re not asking for 50% or 52%—we’re just saying from 4.5% to 9%. That is equal to 18,000.

At this time, I will urge all the members, whenever you meet and see your member of Parliament, who has a seat and a say with the Prime Minister, ask them to support it. Why? Because it is the right thing to do. We know, by having those people and getting them here, getting them to fill those jobs, that they’re actually able to contribute more to the government. Thereby, we will be able to contribute more to society through service. I think what is good for them is good for Ontario. So I will encourage, again, one more time—I would appreciate, all of us, every time you meet with your member of Parliament, please do share this story with them.

Talking about the OINP program, what we’re doing at our own end: We are making a robust online application system, added 26 full-time employees and investing $4 million more in the program so that we are able to welcome newcomers with the skills we need to build our province. As I said earlier, we are facing a historic labour shortage. With these measures and investments, I’m glad to see that we are on a mission to build a better Ontario.

Some of the other things which we’re doing: There’s another one called Better Jobs Ontario, wherein we’re investing $5 million in the Ontario Workers’ Plan, which will allow for workers to upgrade their skills and find good jobs. Under this program, the applicants—including the self-employed, gig workers, youth and newcomers—will be eligible to get up to $500 per week in financial support for basic living expenses. This program will pay up to $28,000 if you take short-duration micro-credential courses for job-specific training.

Another thing which I quickly would like to add—I know time is flying—is about the OYAP program. The name stands for Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program. Skilled trades are so important that we are starting to reach out to our youth while they’re at school. The OYAP program is a specialized program for high school students to explore apprenticeship and consider careers in skilled trades. I would encourage, again, all the members to reach out to the high schools in your own riding. This is a great program. You’re able to support those young leaders for the future.

Another program, another tool which I want to talk about is the Skills Development Fund, wherein we’re investing about $34.8 million in the Skilled Trades Strategy, along with programs like the Hammer Heads. Along with the other over 140 successful organizations, the Hammer Heads Program was created by the Central Ontario Building Trades in 2009 to support at-risk youth. It is a skill- and employment-based training within the construction industry. As we all know, there are over 100,000 jobs in the construction industry which are unfilled as we are speaking. What it does is it brings these at-risk youths with the specific training in the skilled trades and gets them job-ready.

These are some of the things that we are doing, Mr. Speaker, in this budget. Our government is making these investments because it is what people in our province need to thrive. This budget outlines our government’s priorities and continues the legacy of our government, which is creating for the workers. I want to say, let’s work together to make Ontario the best place in the world to live, work, raise a family and thrive. Let’s seize the opportunity to grow. I encourage everyone: Let’s support this budget.