Yes, Mr. Speaker, I would. The bill amends the Excellent Care for All Act, 2010, to make the Patient Ombudsman an officer of the assembly. It also provides that the current ombudsman remains in that role until their appointment ends or it is revoked.

I think that since health care is of such critical importance, not only to the people we represent but in this assembly, we should have an ombudsman who reports on behalf of Ontarians to us here so we can make the best decisions possible.

Ms. Scott moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 96, An Act to amend the Ministry of Correctional Services Act / Projet de loi 96, Loi modifiant la Loi sur le ministère des Services correctionnels.

Je remercie ma collègue pour sa question.

Comme vous le savez, notre gouvernement est le premier à avoir modernisé la Loi sur les services en français en plus de 35 ans, ce qui démontre notre engagement à améliorer l’accès à des services de qualité en français pour la communauté francophone de l’Ontario.

La Loi sur les services en français modernisée a mené à la création d’un nouveau règlement détaillant neuf mesures concrètes que les organismes assujettis à la loi doivent mettre en place pour assurer une offre active de services en français. Ces mesures incluent les salutations « Hello, bonjour » et la signalisation bien visible en français. Cela fait en sorte qu’il incombe aux organismes assujettis à la loi de proposer activement les services en français et non à la personne francophone de les demander.

Je suis très heureuse du progrès important que nous avons accompli et de la continuité de ce travail si essentiel pour la vitalité de la communauté francophone de l’Ontario.

Quoique l’offre active ait été explicitement mentionnée dans la loi depuis un an déjà, les neuf nouvelles mesures clarifient les exigences minimales requises pour assurer une mise en oeuvre réussie de ce principe important.

I’d like to say that this bill is also co-sponsored by the member from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke, Mr. Yakabuski.

This bill provides that if an inmate who committed sexual or domestic violence is released on parole, the board shall consider the appropriateness of electronic monitoring and may impose conditions with respect to electronic monitoring.

A petition to raise social assistance rates:

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and far from adequate to cover the rising costs of food and rent: $733 for individuals on” Ontario Works “and $1,227 for ODSP;

“Whereas an open letter to the Premier and two cabinet ministers, signed by over 230 organizations, recommends that social assistance rates be doubled for both Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP);

“Whereas the recent small budget increase of 5% for ODSP still leaves these citizens well below the poverty line, both they and those receiving the frozen OW rates are struggling to live in this time of alarming inflation;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized in its CERB program that a ‘basic income’ of $2,000 per month was the standard support required by individuals who lost their employment during the pandemic;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to double social assistance rates for OW and ODSP.”

I fully support this petition, will affix my signature and give it to Artur.

Ma question est pour le premier ministre.

In my riding, many people and businesses are relying on slow, unreliable, expensive Internet. I have met with every Internet provider; none of them is interested in setting up in Nickel Belt. There is no money to be made. You can pay for all the infrastructure, they’re not coming. So we use phone lines with a five-megabit download and a two-megabit upload. How can businesses thrive with this?

The government claims they’ll spend billions on broadband, but last year they spent less than 2% of that money. Will the government finally get that money out the door and put in place a government-run system for fast, reliable Internet at a reasonable price?

Interjections.

Ma question s’adresse à la ministre des Affaires francophones. Avec plus de 620 000 francophones et 1,5 million de locuteurs, l’Ontario a la plus grande communauté francophone au Canada à l’extérieur du Québec.

L’amélioration de l’accès à des services en français de qualité dans divers secteurs est d’une importance vitale. Le vendredi passé, un nouveau règlement sur l’offre active est entré en vigueur dans le cadre de la modernisation de la Loi sur les services en français. La ministre peut-elle dire à la Chambre comment ce nouveau règlement affectera les services en français en Ontario?

La communauté francophone de l’Ontario mérite un environnement propice à son épanouissement afin qu’elle puisse continuer à participer activement à la prospérité de la province.

Monsieur le Président, la ministre peut-elle nous en dire plus sur le nouveau règlement et qui est assujetti aux mesures?

The bill has two schedules, so please bear with me.

Schedule 1 enacts the 2SLGBTQI+ Community Safety Zones Act, 2023. The act provides that the Attorney General may designate 2SLGBTQI+ community safety zones. The act prohibits persons from performing an act of intimidation within 100 metres of the boundary of a property that is designated as a 2SLGBTQI+ community safety zone. Every person who contravenes the prohibition is guilty of an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine of not more than $25,000.

Schedule 2: This schedule enacts the Ontario 2SLGBTQI+ Safety Advisory Committee Act, 2023, which provides for the establishment and composition of an Ontario 2SLGBTQI+ safety advisory committee. The act requires the Ontario 2SLGBTQI+ safety advisory committee to make recommendations with respect to various matters relating to improving the safety and preventing hate crimes and hate-motivated incidents against two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and additional sexually and gender-diverse people in Ontario. The act also requires an annual report setting out the findings and recommendations of the Ontario 2SLGBTQI+ safety advisory committee.

Mr. Fraser moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 95, An Act to amend the Excellent Care for All Act, 2010 with respect to the patient ombudsman / Projet de loi 95, Loi modifiant la Loi de 2010 sur l’excellence des soins pour tous en ce qui concerne l’ombudsman des patients.

To reply, the Minister of Infrastructure.

The Minister of Infrastructure.

The member asked a question; the minister wants to reply. I need to be able to hear the minister’s reply. I ask the House to come to order.

Please restart the clock.

Minister of Infrastructure.

There being no further business this morning, this House stands in recess until 3 p.m.

The House recessed from 1140 to 1500.

MPP Wong-Tam moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 94, An Act to enact the 2SLGBTQI+ Community Safety Zones Act, 2023 and to establish the Ontario 2SLGBTQI+ Safety Advisory Committee / Projet de loi 94, Loi visant à édicter la Loi de 2023 sur les zones sécurisées pour la communauté 2SLGBTQI+ et à créer le Comité consultatif pour la sécurité des personnes 2SLGBTQI+ en Ontario.

First reading agreed to.

First reading agreed to.

First reading agreed to.

Thank you very much to the member opposite.

Our government truly recognizes how important access to high-speed Internet is, no matter where you live in the province of Ontario. I think we can all agree that COVID has certainly changed things and made it a necessity in terms of being able to educate your child, being able to contact your doctor and/or work from home, which is why our government is investing $4 billion to make sure that every single premises in the province of Ontario is connected by the end of 2025.

I would just remind the member opposite that this is the most ambitious high-speed Internet broadband program in the country.

We are not only investing $4 billion—

Interjections.

Again, I will repeat: An investment of $4 billion is a historic financial investment in the province of Ontario.

We have also taken the initiative to present legislation in this House to expedite the delivery of broadband, high-speed Internet projects across this province, and we are consistently interacting with Internet service providers that have participated, be it in our application-based programming, our partnership with the federal government, or our reverse option to make sure that even the toughest, hardest-to-reach places are invested in. We will get everyone connected.

I have the privilege to introduce into the chamber today a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario that reads as follows:

“Whereas to address the current staffing shortages in the health care sector, the Ontario government has proposed an investment of $200 million in 2023-24 to address immediate staffing shortages; and

“Whereas to grow the workforce for years to come, this includes:

“—offering up to 6,000 health care students training opportunities to work in hospitals providing care and gaining practical experience as they continue their education through the Enhanced Extern Program. This program has offered these opportunities to over 5,000 health care students; and

“—supporting up to 3,150 internationally educated nurses to become accredited nurses in Ontario through the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership Program; and

“Whereas more than 2,000 internationally educated nurses have enrolled in this program and over 1,300 of them are already fully registered and practising in Ontario; and

“Whereas Ontario is continuing to hire more health care workers to ensure everyone can see a trained professional when they need to; and

“Whereas key new investments in” the 2023-24 budget “to build the health care workforce include:

“—$22 million to hire up to 200 hospital preceptors to provide mentorship;

“—$15 million to keep 100 mid-to-late career nurses in the workforce; and

“—$4.3 million to help at least 50 internationally trained physicians get licensed in Ontario;

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

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support the passage of the Ontario budget bill, Bill 85, Building a Stronger Ontario.”

Speaker, I have to say that I fully support this petition. I will be affixing my signature to it here, and I will be giving it to page Keya to bring to the table.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Support Gender-Affirming Health Care.

“Whereas two-spirit, transgender, non-binary, gender-diverse, and intersex communities face significant challenges to accessing health care services that are friendly, competent, and affirming in Ontario;

“Whereas everyone deserves access to health care, and they shouldn’t have to fight for it, shouldn’t have to wait for it, and should never receive less care or support because of who they are;

“Whereas gender-affirming” health “care is life-saving” health “care;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support the reintroduction of a private member’s bill to create an inclusive and representative committee to advise the Ministry of Health on how to realize accessible and equitable access to and coverage for gender-affirming health care in Ontario.”

I will proudly affix my signature to this petition and return it to the table with page Jonas.

I have a petition regarding conscience protection for medical professionals.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas medical assistance in dying (MAID) is increasingly controversial as it expands to more Canadians; and

“Whereas many medical professionals in Ontario have sincere conscientious objections to participating in providing medical assistance in dying for professional, ethical or religious reasons; and

“Whereas the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario forces medical professionals to provide an effective referral in cases of conscientious objection; and

“Whereas this policy has the potential to push medical professionals out of Ontario’s already short-staffed health care system; and

“Whereas violating freedom of conscience harms a person’s professional and personal integrity; and

“Whereas during the 2018 Ontario provincial election, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario promised to legislate conscience protection;

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

“Legislate conscience protection for medical professionals who object to participating in providing medical assistance in dying, whether directly, or indirectly through effective referrals, and actively support the charter-protected right of freedom of conscience.”

I support and will affix my signature to this petition and send it to the table with page Felicity.

I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly from the Elementary Teachers of Toronto.

“Petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from the Elementary Teachers of Toronto to Stop the Cuts and Invest in the Schools our Students Deserve.

“Whereas the Ford government cut funding to our schools by $800 per student during the pandemic period, and plans to cut an additional $6 billion to our schools over the next six years;

“Whereas these massive cuts have resulted in larger class sizes, reduced special education and mental health supports and resources for our students, and neglected and unsafe buildings;

“Whereas the Financial Accountability Office reported a $2.1-billion surplus in 2021-22, and surpluses growing to $8.5 billion in 2027-28, demonstrating there is more than enough money to fund a robust public education system;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to:

“—immediately reverse the cuts to our schools;

“—fix the inadequate education funding formula;

“—provide schools the funding to ensure the supports necessary to address the impacts of the pandemic on our students;

“—make the needed investments to provide smaller class sizes, increased levels of staffing to support our students’ special education, mental health, English language learner and wraparound supports needs, and safe and healthy buildings and classrooms.”

I fully support this petition. I’m going to sign it along with all of these constituents and give it to Mikaeel to take to the table.

“Support Gender-Affirming Health Care.

“Whereas two-spirit, transgender, non-binary, gender-diverse, and intersex communities face significant challenges to accessing health care services that are friendly, competent, and affirming in Ontario;

“Whereas everyone deserves access to health care, and they shouldn’t have to fight for it, shouldn’t have to wait for it, and should never receive less care or support because of who they are;

“Whereas gender-affirming care is life-saving care;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support the reintroduction of a private member’s bill to create an inclusive and representative committee to advise the Ministry of Health on how to realize accessible and equitable access to and coverage for gender-affirming health care in Ontario.”

I am proud to put my name to this. I will give it to Claire to take to the table.

Resuming the debate adjourned on April 4, 2023, on the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

This is a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario entitled “Support Gender-Affirming Health Care.

“Whereas two-spirit, transgender, non-binary, gender-diverse, and intersex communities face significant challenges to accessing health care services that are friendly, competent, and affirming in Ontario;

“Whereas everyone deserves access to health care, and they shouldn’t have to fight for it, shouldn’t have to wait for it, and should never receive less care or support because of who they are;

“Whereas gender-affirming care is life-saving care;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support the reintroduction of a private member’s bill to create an inclusive and representative committee to advise the Ministry of Health on how to realize accessible and equitable access to and coverage for gender-affirming health care in Ontario.”

I absolutely support this petition. I have affixed my signature and will hand it to Savannah for the table.

It’s my honour to present a petition entitled “Health Care: Not for Sale.” It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontarians should get health care based on need—not the size of your wallet;

“Whereas Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones say they’re planning to privatize parts of health care;

“Whereas privatization will bleed nurses, doctors and PSWs out of our public hospitals, making the health care crisis worse;

“Whereas privatization always ends with patients getting a bill;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately stop all plans to further privatize Ontario’s health care system, and fix the crisis in health care by:

“—repealing Bill 124 and recruiting, retaining and respecting doctors, nurses and PSWs with better pay and better working conditions;

“—licensing tens of thousands of internationally educated nurses and other health care professionals already in Ontario, who wait years and pay thousands to have their credentials certified;

“—10 employer-paid sick days;

“—making education and training free or low-cost for nurses, doctors and other health care professionals;

“—incentivizing doctors and nurses to choose to live and work in northern Ontario;

“—funding hospitals to have enough nurses on every shift, on every ward.”

I fully support this petition, will affix my signature and deliver it with page Mikaeel to the table.

Further debate?

I’m going to talk for the next 20 minutes about the budget because this is one of our documents and one of our efforts that is really going to propel Ontario through 2023 and into the future. All you have to do is look to the past to know exactly where the future is going to take us, and this bill addresses everything that we need to get us through this year.

I want to look back to some time ago when former Premier Wynne was on a stage with former CEO of Fiat Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne. Now, his exact words when the Premier asked him about expanding Chrysler in Ontario, he looked very quizzically at her and his exact words to her were: “This is not what I would call the cheapest jurisdiction.” He said to her, “You need to create the conditions to be competitive.” Speaker, I would attest that that is exactly what was done in the past, and that’s exactly what the Ontario Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit that is in this budget will do for the future.

Speaker, when you look again to the past, you can see what happens when you don’t do things like the Ontario Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit, investing in Futurpreneur, investing in places like Invest Ottawa and others.

The previous Liberal government, in their thankfully final report on the economy, threw in the towel on manufacturing and threw in the towel on Ontario. I’m quoting again from their final report on the economy: “The structure of the Ontario economy will continue to shift from goods-producing to service-producing sectors” and this will result in “shifting employment from goods-producing industries, in particular manufacturing, to the service-sector industries.”

Instead of fixing the problems that they created, they threw in the towel. They just gave up. They gave up on Ontario. They gave up on manufacturing. They certainly gave up on northern Ontario. We know that.

We were elected in 2018, and one of the very first instructions from Premier Ford to our entire caucus was that we’ve got to listen to what happened in the past, learn why 300,000 manufacturing jobs fled Ontario, why manufacturers fled Ontario and listen to what they’ve asked. They asked us to lower the cost of doing business. That’s exactly what we did, and that’s exactly what this budget will do through the Ontario Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit.

The Premier visited places like Ford, GM, Stellantis, Honda and Toyota, as well as companies in the tech sector, as well as companies in the pharma sector, and all of them said the same thing: “The cost of doing business in Ontario is too high. You’ve got to bring in some relief. You’ve got to lower the burden. You’ve got to lower the taxes in Ontario.” The very first thing that was done was the WSIB, Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. Some people would call it workers’ compensation. That was reduced by 50%. There was so much money in reserves bundled in there by the previous government, taking it from the businesses and piling it into reserves that not only were so overstuffed, they far surpassed any financial requirements, they far surpassed any moral requirements to keep that much money. So that was cut by 50%. That was $2.5 billion annually in the cost of premiums saved by businesses without touching the benefits even a fraction. That $2.5 billion—the 50% cut—was only the beginning. From there, something called an accelerated capital cost allowance—that’s a really fancy way of saying that you can take your equipment and write off the cost of that equipment in-year. That’s a really novel thing to do in North America. Businesses, instead of writing their equipment off over years, can write it off in the same year. That saves businesses a billion dollars a year.

Then the red tape reduction bills began, a series of eight or nine of them now, that saved hundreds of millions of dollars every single year. All the taxes that the previous Liberal government had planned for January 1, all of those hundreds of millions of dollars of tax increases that were to come in on January 1, 2019, we wiped all of those off—gone. Hundreds of millions of dollars did not come on the tax rolls of these businesses on January 1.

The hydro mess that the Liberals created: We also immediately reduced industrial and commercial rates by 15%. You take that combination of capital cost allowance, WSIB, red tape, hydro, taxes: All of these things together at the time lowered the cost of doing business in Ontario by $7 billion each and every single year.

Speaker, you would say, as some have said, “Well, what did the government do? They lost $7 billion each year in revenue. How do you continue governing with that much loss of revenue?”

We’ve always said from the very beginning that lower taxes create jobs and create higher revenue. And nothing proved it more than the budget that came out last week, where we saw that now the annual total of savings is $8 billion—$8 billion in savings every year. What did that do, Speaker? Exactly what it was set out to do: 600,000 new jobs were created in the province of Ontario. That exactly is the result that you would anticipate—one of the two results you would anticipate.

Some 300,000 jobs were created before the pandemic; 300,000 jobs were created since the pandemic. Our government, with these changes—$8 billion a year in savings—created the conditions for those companies to create all of those jobs. Eighty-five thousand new businesses opened in the province of Ontario last year. Again, why? You’ve got a lower cost of doing business.

Again, $8 billion—yes, lower revenue to the province. How did that get made up? Higher employment—600,000 new jobs. Revenue to the government was $154 billion the year we were elected. This budget shows the revenue to the government is now $204 billion, a $50-billion increase, because lower taxes create higher revenue. That’s what’s happened here in the province of Ontario.

More of that is coming. You’ve got the Ontario Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit. That brand new tax credit is going to lower the cost of investing in Ontario for local manufacturers who want to grow their business, want to expand their business, just like the WSIB, $2.5 billion in savings; just like the capital cost allowance—in fact, this one is very similar to that—that saved a billion dollars. This is going to save $780 million for businesses to be able to reinvest that money in their companies, just like they did the last four years, where they hired 600,000 workers.

This is exactly what works. This is the formula for success for Ontario. This is going to provide a 10% refundable corporate income tax credit on the investments in buildings and machinery and equipment, all to use in advanced manufacturing and processing, all to build the things we need in Ontario, all of the reshoring that has gone on in the province of Ontario—I’ve talked about it before, a great company down in Windsor that makes Pine-Sol. Pine-Sol was never made here in Ontario. It has been reshored from the States into Canada, and who doesn’t love Pine-Sol? It’s now made here in Ontario, along with dozens and dozens and dozens of other companies that are making products in Ontario for the very first time. Why? Because we’ve lowered the cost of business. We’ve made it attractive to them. This Ontario Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit is the next step. That’s the next piece of the puzzle to lure even more companies here to work in Ontario and to hire our families.

If there was any doubt that there was any issue with this at all, think again. We’ll go back to where we were in 2019. Reuters news agency announced that $300 billion was going to be spent on electric vehicles, electric vehicle batteries and parts—$300 billion. Of that $300 billion, not one penny was earmarked for Canada or Ontario. Not one cent under the previous government was earmarked here. They’d given up. They threw in the towel. They gave up on manufacturing, turned manufacturers away, raised the price of hydro, raised taxes, raised all the costs of doing business and sent people fleeing. With $300 billion at stake, we got zero.

In a very short period of time after implementing the things that we talked about—things like this Ontario-made investment tax credit that’s coming, if passed—we now saw $17 billion in announcements made by all of these auto companies in 24 months, and that is before the Volkswagen announcement that was made only a few weeks ago. We’ll learn more about that in the coming weeks as they are here to make their announcements, and we’ll learn just how vast the plant that they plan is and how vast their investment will be, Speaker—without that: $17 billion. And that has prompted Bloomberg, another one of our media agencies, to rank Canada as second in their annual global battery supply chain ranking. We went from zero to second place in the world; first in North America, ahead of the US, incidentally.

We also heard from Site Selection magazine, the very company, the very groups that find sites like Ontario for all of these global companies, whether it’s in pharma, whether it’s in tech, whether it’s in auto—the site selectors gave Ontario the number one ranking. Ontario has been ranked as the most competitive province in the nation. We are the leader. We’re leading the nation in job creation; we’re leading the nation in site selection. On virtually every economic metric you can find, we are number one. Ontario is leading that pack every day of the week.

I’ve said this in this Legislature before, but I do want to repeat it: Every single day of every single week, Premier Ford gets what we like to call his one-a-day vitamin. We send him a text with the name of a company, the city they’re locating in, how many millions they’re investing, how many employees they’re hiring and whether we have any skin in the game. I bring that up again because nothing has changed. Every day—every single day—the Premier receives that note, because the economy in Ontario is robust. We have the same concerns that we see around the world, but we’ve been powering through it with announcement after announcement after announcement after announcement of companies that are investing here because they look at Ontario.

We’ve travelled to several countries in the last while attracting these businesses here, like Volkswagen, and they all have told us two things. The very first thing when we sit down with the executives, no matter which country we’ve been in or no matter what company we visited in that country—they tell us the same two things. It’s really interesting to hear this. The first thing they tell us is that they look in this very troubled world that is coming off a pandemic for the last couple of years, and they look at Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, they look at the elephant in the room of China and all of the turmoil that the world is going through and all of these tough economic decisions that have to be made. They tell us, to a company—they look to Ontario as a sea of calm. They say, “You are stable. You’re a reliable partner. We know what we’re going to get. We’re putting our money with you.” All of them have said that to us.

The second part of what they’re saying is that Ontario is a safe place. It’s a safe place for their executives. It’s a safe place for their employees. It’s a safe place for their families to be. It’s universal that they’re doing this, and that is also why they’re coming here.

You need the fundamentals in place. You need to have a skilled workforce. They like our 65,000 STEM grads we have. Every single year, we’re producing 65,000 science and technology and engineering and math graduates.

We have a tremendous life science ecosystem here: all of the companies that are making medical technologies, making pharmaceuticals. It is a huge life sciences sector. We’ve had $3 billion in new life science investments in the last couple of years.

They love our tech sector. I think for four or five days in a row the notes that I sent to the Premier were of brand new tech companies who are investing hundreds of millions of dollars here in Ontario. Look at Nokia: only a few months ago, $340 million invested in Ottawa. Telus: $23 billion invested in Ontario, 9,500 new employees coming to Ontario with that company alone.

Now, the Ontario Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit is the newest piece, the newest tool that we have in our tool box. We will now add this to the long litany of things where we talk to companies about how we lowered the cost of doing business by $7 billion. Well, it’s now $8 billion. When we put this Ontario Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit—we talk about 600,000 new employees. That number will grow too, because these companies are going to hire people.

There are a couple of other things that are exciting as well. In Ottawa, we’ve seen a real investment in the tech sector. If you look between 2016 and 2021, in San Francisco, they added 14,000 employees in those five years in the tech sector, brought them up to about 380,000 employees in Silicon Valley. But if you look between Toronto and Waterloo, we’ve added in the same period 88,000 new tech employees, just from Toronto to Waterloo. That brings us up to about 315,000, just between Toronto and Waterloo. We grew 350% faster than Silicon Valley in the last five years.

Speaker, if you add Ottawa, there are 555 tech companies in Kanata alone. There are 80,000—

I apologize. I need to interrupt the minister.

Pursuant to standing order 61(d), I am now required to put the question.

On March 23, 2023, Mr. Bethlenfalvy moved, seconded by Mr. Ford, Etobicoke North, that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? I heard a no.

All those in favour of the motion, please say “aye.”

All those opposed to the motion, please say “nay.”

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Interjection: On division.

It is therefore resolved that the House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Pang moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr12, An Act to revive Artgem Granite and Marble Inc.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Second reading agreed to.

Mr. Pang moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr12, An Act to revive Artgem Granite and Marble Inc.

Be it resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

Third reading agreed to.

Mr. Vanthof moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr14, An Act to revive 1753461 Ontario Ltd.

Second reading agreed to.

Mr. Vanthof moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr14, An Act to revive 1753461 Ontario Ltd.

Be it resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

Third reading agreed to.

Ms. Pierre moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr15, An Act to revive 816537 Ontario Inc.

Second reading agreed to.

Ms. Pierre moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr15, An Act to revive 816537 Ontario Inc.

Be it resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

Third reading agreed to.

Ms. Pierre moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr16, An Act to revive Flight Level Canada Inc.

Second reading agreed to.

Ms. Pierre moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr16, An Act to revive Flight Level Canada Inc.

Be it resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

Third reading agreed to.

Resuming the debate adjourned on April 3, 2023, on the amendment to the amendment to the motion for an address regarding bail reform.