I want to thank the 600 Guelphites who walked in the Coldest Night of the Year on February 24, to raise funds for Hope House. Together we raised $193,592.

I was proud to walk on Team Orpha, led by Orpha Thrasher, who is 102 years young. Orpha is the mom of my constituency staff member, Shelley, and wife of the late Ivan Thrasher, MPP for Windsor–Sandwich from 1964 to 1967.

Hope House alleviates poverty by building community. Hope House feeds 2,400 people, supplies fully-stocked backpacks to 2,300 school children and provides services to meet the basic needs of over 1,500 people. Organizations like Hope House are trying to help people find a safe, affordable place to live.

I’m proud to say that my community in Guelph has mobilized to build a 32-unit permanent supportive housing project. I want to thank the government for contributing $3 million in capital funding for the project. Now, I urge the government to fund the health care supports needed to open up the permanent supportive housing project so we can ensure that we can move people from the streets and tents into a home.

Mr. Speaker, we have shown the Liberals the way. We’ve shown them what happens when you raise taxes, and we’ve showed them what happens when you lower taxes.

By us lowering taxes, we have seen the province create 180,000 new jobs just last year alone—700,000 jobs since we were elected, $11 billion in new investment, all because we lowered the cost of doing business by $8 billion annually. Last year and the year before and the year before that, $28 billion in investment came into this province in the auto sector, because we lowered the cost of doing business; $3 billion in life sciences came here, because we lowered taxes. Tens of billions of tech dollars flowed into Ontario because we lowered taxes. You get these results by lowering taxes.

Imagine where we would be if we didn’t have a carbon tax.