Good morning, Speaker. Myself and the MPPs for Ajax, Durham and Pickering–Uxbridge, we hear all the time about the incredible talent in the region of Durham that exists—young STEM graduates and hard-working people in the skilled trades, and particularly innovative and excited entrepreneurs, because they know what’s on the horizon. We know what has been created by the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.

My question, Speaker, through you to the parliamentary assistant is, can the member elaborate on the type of investments Ontario is attracting thanks to the competitive edge that we have across Ontario but, in particular, in the region of Durham?

Speaker, through you to the member: We’ve got a general shortage of quality industrial land in the province, as the member knows. He’s a former municipal politician. There are ongoing negotiations that have to take place between municipalities. It’s a very big site.

I have the confidence of the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade that he will continue that conversation between Central Elgin and St. Thomas. Those conversations are not over; he will continue to engage both sides.

But really, Speaker, again I want to reiterate to the member and all members that there is no time to waste when it comes to securing major industrial investments that will employ generations of Ontario workers in good-paying jobs.

Questions?

A question for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing: We all want more good-paying manufacturing jobs. My father worked at General Motors, and we certainly had the benefits of that growing up.

This bill is essentially taking land from one municipality and putting it in another for the purposes of streamlining and attracting an investor. I think we all support that and understand the speed with which we want to do this as well.

I remember reading back in July, I believe it was, that there were some disputes between municipalities as they were assembling this land. Can the minister tell us have all of those disputes been resolved or are the municipalities neighbouring all in support? Are there any outstanding issues?

Thank you, Speaker. It’s a pleasure to see you this morning. Good morning.

It is a positive development when a municipality can find a way to support their communities with jobs. In St. Catharines, General Motors has announced that they will add 500 jobs by investing in EV and the auto sector at their plant. I’m excited and optimistic about the auto sector. I’ve spoken to GM, and this news is subject to support agreements from the federal and the provincial governments. It makes sense to get this moving as fast as possible. We are a proud automotive town in St. Catharines.

My question is to the minister: Given the subject today, can you please update us on the support agreement and timelines from the provincial government’s investments in supporting adding those auto jobs to St. Catharines and Niagara?

Questions?

Third reading debate deemed adjourned.

I just want to thank everyone for their speeches this morning. I was quite excited when I was listening to the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade talking about the great things coming forward for our future. Part of our role here in government is to create the environment so people will invest in Ontario, so people will move and we can attract business.

My question is actually to his parliamentary assistant, the member for Windsor–Tecumseh. I’m wondering if you can elaborate on some of the efforts this government has made to date to attract jobs and ensure that Ontario is where it should be so people will move here and stay here once they’re educated—because we want to make sure we maintain that intelligence—and people will live in Ontario to raise families. How are we getting those new companies here?

I received a letter in the mail from Judy P. in Oshawa. She says, “I’m not normally what I’d describe as an activist or prone to protesting against my government, but never in my life have I felt more compelled to very strongly voice my objection, disbelief, and frankly horror over the policies of Premier Doug Ford....

“I feel the need to fight for our health care for my children, grandchildren, family, friends, and all fellow Ontarians. Premier Ford appears to be intentionally trying to cripple our previously world-class health care system in order to make private health care look like it’s our best option. His promise to end hallway medicine has failed and turned into parking lot medicine. Never in my life have I had to worry about an ambulance not being available or a hospital not having an empty bed. Never have I had to worry about delays in surgeries or treatments and yet, this is now Ontario. People are dying. Premier Ford has said that he would never do away with public health care for Ontarians. But he’s whittling it away and heading for a two-tiered system. And we know private facilities would get the cream of the crop in resources and personnel, making it one gold-level system for the haves, and a much poorer system for the have-nots. This will mean more Ontarians living on the edge will suffer and even die. What a legacy!”

She goes on to say, “Our health care is something I remember my parents being so proud of. Universal health care came about when I was a young child. It sets Canada apart from many nations. We used to be a shining example that other nations looked to with envy....

“We can’t afford to lose our universal health care. It’s part of what makes Canada a great place to live.”

Well, Judy, we have a hell of a fight on our hands to save medicare. Thank you for your strong letter. I’m in the fight with you.

It’s great to be back in the House this week. Over the last several weeks, under Premier Ford’s leadership, we were able to deliver key investments to Brampton and Ontario.

A few short weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining Premier Ford and my caucus colleagues to announce the location of Brampton’s new medical school in partnership with TMU. This new medical school will host 80 undergraduate and 95 postgraduate students.

In over 100 years this medical school is the first to be announced in the GTA, and will be located right across from Bramalea City Centre in Brampton, with doors scheduled to open in 2025.

Speaker, to further support job growth, our government has partnered with Magna International to announce a $470-million investment and expand its operations in Ontario. This investment is expected to bring over 1,000 new high-skilled jobs to the province, out of which 560 new jobs will come to Brampton as the company expands to its eighth location. This new facility will support the development of EV vehicles such as the Ford F-150 Lightning truck and the future OEM programs.

Our government is working hard to deliver for the people of Ontario, and I’m proud that under Premier Ford’s leadership, Brampton is no longer being left behind.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s nice to see you in the chair today.

My question to the minister today would be about process, and the process that a bill moves through in the Legislature. We know that this bill came very late last week and here we are, already at third reading. The committee process has been skipped over due to other circumstances. I would like to know if the minister and the government have done the full consultation process with the community. There are two communities involved in this process. We’re in favour of this moving forward, but we also think it’s important that the community has the opportunity to have its say.

Did the minister do a full consultation process with all of the community and allow people to have their opportunity to speak?

Really, Ontario’s number one advantage is its people. The best and brightest minds are choosing to call Ontario their home. We have the highest rates of adults with post-secondary education and we produce more than 65,000 STEM graduates every year, of which I am a proud member of the STEM community.

Ontario also has one of the most unique and collaborative innovation environments in the world. Business, academia and government collaborate to drive transformational ideas to market through commercialization. Many of our universities—I’ll highlight Ontario Tech, Windsor and Waterloo as some who are doing phenomenal work, working with industry and in partnership with government to collaborate on equipment, on personnel and on research.

We also have some of the lowest corporate tax rates in North America. Small and medium-sized enterprises in Ontario will save up to 50% of their after-tax research and development expenditures, to make sure that more capital is available to be invested back into the people of those businesses and the operations of the business.

Last but not least, Ontario is a gateway to the world. We have free trade agreements with close to 50 countries and an extensive logistics network connecting the province with major US hubs.

I rise today to congratulate a good friend of mine, Doug Wagner, on being a 2023 Ontario Agricultural Hall of Fame inductee. It’s a fitting honour for someone who has spent 45 years dedicated to developing and growing the agriculture and agri-food industry in Ontario. Through his work with several organizations, including the Ontario Seed Growers’ Association and the International Plowing Match, Doug has left a lasting impact on agriculture in Ontario.

Perhaps one of his greatest legacies is Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, which he launched in 1994 with Ginty Jocius, giving the industry a permanent site for an outdoor show.

Since then, he has continued to be involved with the farm show, becoming president in 2012 and helping it grow into eastern Canada’s largest outdoor farm show. As president, he also helped coordinate the purchase of 100 acres of provincial land to create Discovery Farm Woodstock and make it the permanent home of the farm show. He retired as president last year.

Doug has always known the importance of creating future agriculture leaders. After graduating from Ontario Agricultural College, he worked in the youth extension arm of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. He also continues to passionately share his knowledge through 4-H Ontario and the Junior Farmers’ Association of Ontario.

Congratulations again, Doug, and thank you for your lifelong commitment to Ontario agriculture.

As Black History Month comes to an end, I want to share with you some exciting celebrations that took place in the riding of Etobicoke–Lakeshore, home of the politician who in 1995 introduced a motion that was passed unanimously by the House of Commons to recognize February as Black History Month across Canada, Dr. Jean Augustine.

I was honoured on February 13 to address a celebration and a fundraiser for a pioneer, Dr. Augustine, Canada’s first Black female member of Parliament, and to this day, an activist whose work has changed lives.

On February 15, I partnered with Humber College to stage Black Heritage 365. This is the first of an annual event that was created to boost the ongoing effort to amplify Black Heritage Month from an academic point of view. This is its first year, and we honoured five outstanding members of our black community in Etobicoke–Lakeshore.

Black Heritage 365 featured prominent scholars who shared their stories of resilience and resistance that contributed so much to their success. They are the amazing Carla Neto, who is the executive director of the Women’s Habitat of Etobicoke, and they do such fantastic work; Ian Stewart, a pharmacist and owner of a neighbourhood Shoppers Drug Mart; Jacqueline Edwards, president of the Association of Black Law Enforcers; Keddone Dias, who is executive director at LAMP Community Health Centre; and of course, the Honourable Jean Augustine, a long-time trailblazer in our community. Their success is a model for all of us to follow, and we look forward to nominations next year.

This past Friday was the 37th anniversary of the death of Tommy Douglas. In 2004, the CBC did a Canada-wide vote to find the greatest Canadian of all time; 1.2 million people across Canada voted. The winner wasn’t Wayne Gretzky, Shania Twain or even Terry Fox. It was Tommy Douglas.

Tommy was the father of our universal public health care system. As Premier of Saskatchewan, Tommy introduced the first single-payer, publicly funded and publicly delivered health care system in all of North America. Tommy did this as Premier while also running 17—that’s right, 17—balanced budgets in a row, and even achieving surpluses. Keep that in mind when you hear politicians saying we need to cut public services to be fiscally responsible.

Before that, government didn’t help families with health care costs. Health care was expensive and not accessible to most people. Tommy knew it wasn’t right that some people could afford health care and some couldn’t. He spent his life trying to make change for the better.

We need to remember and honour Tommy Douglas and his legacy. People across Ontario and across Canada know that universal, public, not-for-profit health care is part of what it means to be a Canadian. We take care of one another. Ontarians, Canadians don’t want American-style private, for-profit health care where the wealthy get faster and better care and lower-income families go bankrupt trying to get the health care they need, or go without care at all. The Conservatives call this profit-driven, call it innovation. But it’s really the oldest game in the book. Frankly, it’s a cop-out that will hurt Ontarians.

Ferguson Arthur Jenkins, lovingly known as “Fergie,” was born December 13, 1942, in Chatham, Ontario, to Delores Jackson and Ferguson Jenkins Sr. His father was the son of immigrants from Barbados, and his mother descended from American slaves who bravely escaped through the Underground Railroad before settling in southwestern Ontario.

As a young man, Fergie possessed a strong work ethic. He was determined and competitive, excelling in multiple sports including track and field, ice hockey and basketball. It was baseball, however, and more specifically his brilliant ability to throw with unique speed and accuracy, that garnered him attention well before graduating high school. In 1965, at the age of 22, he made his major-league debut as relief pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. The following year, he was traded to the Chicago Cubs, where he honed his professional pitching career on the iconic Wrigley Field, a ballpark known to favour hitters. Jenkins would go on to earn All-Star recognition and win the Cy Young in 1971.

As exceptional as Jenkins was on the pitcher’s mound, he also played basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters from 1967-69. In 1979, Fergie was named a member of the Order of Canada well before formally retiring in 1983 from his beloved sport. In 1991, Jenkins became the first Canadian ever to be inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

This June 10, please join me in Chatham-Kent as we honour Fergie by revealing his full-size bronze statue, an exact replica of the one that stands proudly in Wrigley Field.

Mr. Speaker, it’s good to see you this morning. It’s good to be back.

It’s my privilege to rise in the House today and speak to not only the largest automotive expo in Canada, but our country’s largest consumer show. Of course, I’m talking about the Canadian International AutoShow, which celebrated their 50th anniversary, running from February 17 and concluding just yesterday. And Speaker, it was a smash hit.

The auto show has an annual attendance of over 330,000, with visitors coming from all over the country. It features more than 650,000 square feet of exhibits, displays and attractions, spanning the north and south buildings of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. I think two of the big draws this year were the North American debut of the life-sized Lego Lamborghini Sián FKP 37 and the Roshel armoured vehicle that is helping to defend the people of Ukraine.

Speaker, I want to give a special shout-out to Frank Notte for all his efforts in ensuring the event is a success. Putting on a show of this magnitude is no easy feat. Him and his team pulled it off with class.

This show is put on by the Trillium Automobile Dealers Association, representing Ontario’s 1,000 new car dealers—which means that at one point they represented a certain member from Brampton North. Speaker, I remember working the auto show in the past when I sold cars for Mazda of Brampton. Believe it or not, I was pretty good at it. I actually sold a car at the auto show back in 2017. It’s a memory I will hold on to forever, and I know the attendees of the show will never forget the memories that they built at the show.

I want to congratulate the team on the 50th anniversary, and all the best for next year.

I rise today to honour the thousands of people who rallied at Queen’s Park on Saturday and in communities across the province to tell the Premier to keep his greenbelt promise to keep his hands off the greenbelt. We simply cannot afford to pave over the farmland that feeds us and the wetlands and green space that clean our drinking water and protect us from flooding. People are demanding that the government put the public good ahead of a handful of wealthy, well-connected land speculators.

The greenbelt provides $9.6 billion of economic benefit to our economy each and every year, and its natural infrastructure provides $3.2 billion worth of benefits to the province, especially flood protection. It’s reckless and fiscally irresponsible for the government to put all of that at risk when the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force explicitly said we do not need to open the greenbelt to address the housing crisis.

On behalf of Ontarians across the province, I want to remind the government that they work for all the people, not a handful of land speculators, and that paving over the greenbelt and unleashing sprawl on rural Ontario is not the future the people of this province want or can afford.

Mr. Speaker, I’m taking this opportunity to highlight the winners of this year’s Leading Women, Leading Girls, Building Communities Recognition Program. The Ford government cancelled these awards, but nevertheless, we persisted.

Duaa Al-Aghar works tirelessly to establish services for the Muslim community as well as new Canadians.

Paris Cai is instrumental in developing HomeworkHub, a youth-led non-profit organization providing free, accessible educational resources.

Sara Geidlinger is the co-creator of the Bonn Park Podcast, an ongoing living oral history of the Waterloo region.

Michelle Heyer is a nurse who advocates to ensure internationally educated nurses have the support they need to succeed.

Edl Lemlen and Sophie McConnell are grade 6 students who model inclusion by providing friendship to Sebastian, a classmate and a child with autism who is non-verbal.

As associate director of Waterloo Region District School Board, Lila Read has been an integral part of developing and leading the Women in Educational Leadership group that supports BIPOC women in education.

Rebecca Short created the Sharing Experiences program, where community groups come to the amazing Clay and Glass Gallery to do ceramics and share their experiences.

Finally, Jennifer Stager Piatkowski is a key leader responsible for bringing ONA into the Waterloo Regional Labour Council, strengthening the labour and nursing movement in our community.

And finally-finally, Sarah Wilson developed a menstrual equity pilot program for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board called Changing the Flow.

You are all inspirations, each and every one of you. Congratulations on winning this award.

It is an honour and a privilege to rise today as the first Black male of African descent and one of the first three Black members elected to the Ontario Progressive Conservative caucus to recognize Black History Month in the Ontario Legislature.

Throughout this month, I had the opportunity to host and participate in a number of events that celebrated the countless contributions and accomplishments Black Ontarians have made to our city, province and country. These events also remind us of our responsibility to remain steadfast in the fight against racism and discrimination. At these events, I was proud to share what our government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, is doing to support Ontario’s Black communities. Whether it’s through the Anti-Racism and Anti-Hate Grant or the Black youth action plan, our government is committed to combating racism and hate, building a stronger, safer and more inclusive Ontario.

This month, I also had the chance to visit several community organizations working to support better outcomes for the Black community, including the Careers Education Empowerment—CEE—Centre for Young Black Professionals in my riding of Scarborough Centre. The CEE centre is focused on addressing social and economic barriers affecting Black youth ages 14 and over, and helping them achieve financial prosperity, access job placements, and obtaining stronger knowledge of themselves and their potential through youth workforce development, education and advocacy. Keep up the good work.