Again, I would like to express my gratitude for being in this beautiful chamber. I keep looking at these lights and ceilings and can’t take my eyes off it. I love the fact that the people of Cambridge gave me the trust to elect me to sit in this room with this esteemed group, everybody on both sides of the aisle.

This morning, I started talking about Cambridge, a place with vitality, innovation and quality of life. That’s my city part of my riding. I also have a countryside of my riding called North Dumfries township. It’s picturesque. It’s mainly agricultural. Its quaint location and proximity to many large economic centres along the 401—and, like Cambridge, the 401 doesn’t run exactly through it but very close to it. It’s also at a main rail hub with Canadian Pacific that runs through Cambridge also.

North Dumfries is named after a Scottish settler—and I’ve got a little bit of Scottish history beside me, but Riddell is also an old Scottish name. It’s a scenic area that wraps around the city of Cambridge, and it’s located on the south end of the region of Waterloo. The township’s population is about 10,500—not big—with Ayr and Branchton being the largest communities, and settlements of Roseville, Clyde and Reidsville, as well as the Greenfield Heritage District. It’s a peaceful retreat with the countryside charm of rolling hills, ponds, rivers and trails. It’s a go-to destination if you want to have some recreation and relaxation.

People in the riding, whether it’s on the street or in a restaurant or in a campaign office or knocking on doors, would ask me why am I getting into the world of politics. I would tell them, “I’m a lifelong resident of the area, and I’ve always wanted to get involved and make positive change.” And that’s my credo: make positive change.

I’m going to steal from Will Bouma right now. I believe in treating people how I’d like to be treated and leaving things better than I found them.

I have a crazy background. I started off going to school for photography for three years. I worked for the Edmonton Journal and hated it. I saw a side of life that our esteemed member on the other side was mentioning about news, and it just wasn’t for me. But my dad was an electrician. My grandfather was involved with Tender Tootsies slippers, which I’m sure maybe your moms wore at one time.

I was raised around factories, so I thought, “I’ll be a millwright.” I went to school for that and started working at a company in Cambridge called Dresser Industries, building oil rigs. Then I started getting promoted up. They sent me to school for industrial engineering, where I graduated from Conestoga College. Then I did my degree at Wilfrid Laurier and the University of Chicago. And then somehow, I got into working black-box projects for General Motors, Ford and Toyota. I was one of the first people to be sent over to Toyota City in Japan. It opened my eyes like you would not believe.

As that industry started to shut down and move a lot to the States, I got into tire companies. I was the assistant manager of quality of Uniroyal-Goodrich up in Kitchener. We were bought out by Michelin. They looked at me and said, “We’re making you a field engineer,” so I used to go all over Canada, place tires in various facilities and then just report on them to the engineers in Clermont, France and in Greenville, South Carolina, just on their progress. But a lot of my friends from U-G ended up going over to Bridgestone. When I finished at Bridgestone, I was one of the national sales managers, and I thought it’s time to retire.

I was fooling myself. I can’t sit still. I love working. So I got into teaching. I went back and I was a professor at Conestoga College, teaching creative industries. I love that too, but I’ve always wanted to get into political life. I remember an MP in Cambridge named Max Saltsman who had business dealings with my father. He took us up to Ottawa and gave me a tour of the Parliament buildings, and I got bit—just like a tick, only I didn’t get Lyme disease from it.

Part of the thing that was bothering me: The past Liberal and NDP governments left the province in a mess, and I just wasn’t satisfied with that situation. I put my name out there and got a call on New Year’s Eve, of all days, that they’re interested in me being a candidate in Cambridge, so I went for it. About four months after that, I talked to the Premier. We got along, and I thought, I want to do this. But I had a big problem. The New Blue Party was formed in Cambridge, and everyone in this room knows what that is, and that was going to be my biggest challenge, I thought.

Basically, the riding association was destroyed. I had to rebuild that. I had great help from a lot of people. Peter Tudisco was our president. Dr. Matt Stubbings was my campaign manager—a lot of you know Matt; an amazing person. And probably the best person I had to deal with was my wife, Suzanne. She became my CFO. John Wright was my vice-president. Rob Leone, who sat in this chamber too, was on my board. And I had a guy named Nicholas Ermeta, who’s a councilman in Cambridge. He knocked on 10,000 doors for me. I have hobbies. I was a baseball coach. I’m a ski race coach out of Glen Eden, so my knees are gone. How this guy did 10,000 doors, I’ll never know. But in total, we knocked on over 16,000 doors, which was amazing.

There were all these hard-working people who believed in our cause, who were willing to go out there and donate their time, their money, and ultimately their votes to make this happen, and I will never forget them.

I would like to thank MPPs Mike Harris, Will Bouma and Monte McNaughton for helping me out too.

One of the largest advantages I had over other vying candidates—and it was kind of interesting—our campaign office was beside a Dairy Queen. In June, it was getting a little hot. May was hot, and everybody liked going to Dairy Queen. So that was my advantage. I used it for door-knocking schedules so they could have a break on a hot day.

Our government, under Doug Ford’s leadership, has been blessed with a second term and is working hard to correct all those issues and move forward with innovation, growth and prosperity for all Ontarians. I would like to mention a few of those examples that intrigued me—things that have been done and are going to be done:

—the spending of over $1 billion building five transmission lines to address electricity needs;

—$91 million to help electric vehicles and chargers to become more accessible;

—spending $3.5 million over three years, starting in 2022-23, to support over 3,000 hospital beds;

—$2.8 billion over the next three years to make temporary wage enhancements for PSWs;

—$142 million to recruit and retain health care workers in underserved communities;

—investing an additional $114 million over three years in skilled trades. Working with Monte on visiting Conestoga, the new campus, was invigorating;

—making Ontario the electric car manufacturing leader in North America, and I think that’s where we’re going;

—$91 million to help make electric vehicle chargers more accessible—I mentioned that already;

—introducing a new science and technology curriculum;

—spending over $40 billion in the next 10 years on hospital infrastructure. My colleague here from Brampton North mentioned the Peel hospital being shut and then reopened. The fact that we’re building the first medical school for doctors in over 100 years is amazing;

—spending $124 million over three years to modernize clinical education for nurses;

—$42 million over two years to support the expansion of undergraduate and postgraduate medical education in Ontario; and

—reducing barriers to make it easier and quicker for foreign-credentialed health workers to begin practising in Ontario.

It just goes on and on. I could probably talk about this for an hour, but I’m not going to.

I want to go back to what I said earlier. The people of Cambridge have put me in this honoured role. I am deeply honoured, and I will do my best to bring their voice forward in this chamber.