Thank you, Speaker, and welcome back to the Legislature. Over the summer, I had the opportunity to announce a plethora of investments that our government is making in my riding of Perth–Wellington:

—$200,000 for local seniors programming;

—$300,000 for palliative care;

—$6.6 million for local hospital capital funding;

—$3.4 million for local ERs and hospital bed capacity;

—$188,000 for local events and festivals; and

—$400,000 for our local police services.

This is all great news, but there is more. Since 2018, our government has secured $25 billion in auto and EV investments and $3 billion in life science investments. There have been 700,000 new jobs created, including 40,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector. In the skilled trades, apprenticeships are up 24%. Our students are entering the health care sector in droves. Over 4,300 students have registered in the Learn and Stay program.

Our government continues to make historic investments in health care. We are increasing land ambulance funding by 6% for our municipalities, to $811 million in total. We are investing an additional $51 million in the Dedicated Offload Nurses Program.

Our government will continue to focus on building a strong Ontario. When will the opposition get on board?

Our recent sales mission to Asia focused on strengthening relationships with our partners and attracting new investments in key sectors, including electric vehicles, life sciences and tech.

While in South Korea, we joined LSK Investment to announce their new $100-million life sciences fund for Ontario companies. This new fund will support early-stage life sciences companies with a focus on developing new therapeutics. LSK also announced their plans to open the first overseas office worldwide—and their first North American office—here in Toronto. This investment will strengthen Ontario’s growing life sciences sector. With Ontario’s talented workforce, the best R&D facilities and 65,000 annual STEM grads, more overseas companies are coming.

Speaker, companies around the world continue to choose Ontario for their future because our government has reduced the cost of doing business by $8 billion every single year.

It is a pleasure to be able to rise and talk about some of the incredible investments we’ve been able to do since 2018. There is no doubt that we were left with a system that Kathleen Wynne, in an exit interview, said, “if we had only, as the Liberal Party, not frozen the health care budget; if we had only not cut those residency positions for physicians.” Imagine where we would be, Speaker. We would have an additional 100 physicians being able to practise in Ontario.

But we have not let that deter us. We have a plan and it is working. There are so many pieces of it. I’m looking forward to talking about some of the innovation that we have able to do working with, for example, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, to make sure that individuals who want to practise in the province of Ontario can do that without additional barriers.

When we brought forward those expansions of cataract surgeries in January—we now have 14,000 people who can read to their grandchildren, who can go back to work, who can volunteer in their community, because those surgeries were done in community, publicly funded, using their OHIP card.

It’s equally imperative that we make targeted investments in First Nations communities across northern Ontario. In the fiscal year 2022-23, the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund invested $17 million in more than 61 First Nations projects, leveraging $30.9 million and creating or sustaining more than 110 jobs.

What does this look like on the ground, Mr. Speaker? The Biigtigong Nishnaabeg outdoor arena and upgrades to their community centre to improve their training capacity, the Matawa Wellness and Training Centre, the Mattagami First Nation Fishing tournaments and improvements to their waterfront development, and the list goes on.

What’s changed about a new-look Northern Ontario Heritage Fund is that we’ve gone from just under 1% in the previous government to up to 19% of those investments annually into First Nations communities in northern Ontario. We’re changing the game, Mr. Speaker, investing in their businesses and investing in their communities for a greater sense of prosperity across northern Ontario.