I have the great pleasure to introduce some great friends from the ridings of Parry Sound–Muskoka and Burlington: Sandra St. Germain, Fred St. Germain, Craig St. Germain, and Sandy Lane.

Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I want to thank the member for Burlington for that question and her advocacy for transit users in her riding and across the province.

Mr. Speaker, we’re building the largest transit expansion plan in Ontario’s history; in fact, the largest in North American history. From new subways, LRTs and two-way, all-day GO—we’re investing $70 billion over the next 10 years to keep people connected. GO expansion is a key part of our plan. Work is well under way as we move forward with two-day, all-day GO every 15 minutes on key segments of the GO train corridor. With new electric trains, we will be able to reach speeds of up to 140 kilometres per hour. More trains, more service, and faster speeds—the investments we’re making today will have a generational impact for years to come.

I want to thank the hard-working member for Burlington for that important question.

I don’t think I need to remind the members in this Legislature or Ontarians about the failed policies of the previous Liberal government for 15 years—of course, supported by the official opposition NDP—when we saw jobs were fleeing, businesses were leaving the province, and Ontario was becoming uncompetitive to do business in.

Thanks to the government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, since 2018, we’ve been working hard to reverse that trend—thanks to the 11 different red tape packages that we have introduced in the Legislature, which has helped to reduce 16,000 different kinds of pieces of red tape. That is now saving Ontario businesses nearly $950 million in annual compliance cost savings.

We know we have more to do, and we will continue to work hard each—

On this side of the House, our government understands the importance of helping businesses, which are the backbone of our economy, and what it means to continue to make our province competitive and continue to allow our businesses to compete on the world stage.

Thanks to the initiatives that our government has brought forward to date, just last year alone there were 85,000 new businesses that started in the province of Ontario; there are over 700,000 jobs that we have created since taking office in June 2018.

We recognize the importance of making sure our businesses are spending time creating jobs, investing money into their businesses, rather than having to worry about filling out unnecessary forms.

We will continue to work—