Thank you, Speaker. Do you think I was going to let an opportunity go to waste to talk about the great things that are happening in Ontario thanks to Premier Ford and the team that is bringing jobs and prosperity right across all of Ontario?

We’re reminded, of course, of some years ago, under the previous Liberal government, when we lost 300,000 jobs. I recall the day when the former chair of what was then called Fiat Chrysler was sitting on a stage in Windsor with the former Premier, Kathleen Wynne—don’t forget auto companies were leaving Ontario at the time—and she was musing with Chrysler’s chair, “Are you going to be expanding in Ontario?” He looked at her with this shocked look on his face and said—I’m paraphrasing: “You have made Ontario the most expensive jurisdiction in North America in which to do business.” And she pushed a little further, and he replied one more time, “You’ve got to lower the cost of doing business in Ontario.”

The very first thing Premier Ford said to our team when we got elected was, “You heard loud and clear the problem in Ontario: 300,000 manufacturing jobs have left us. We’ve got to lower the cost of doing business in Ontario.” And we began immediately by reducing the cost of WSIB, workers’ compensation. Think about it: We charged employers a fee. We had charged so much that that fund was so overstuffed with cash, it was far beyond any financial realms. It was so far beyond any moral requirements that we reduced that fee by 50%. That is a $2.5-billion reduction in the cost of doing business in Ontario overnight, and that’s permanent reduction. The benefits have not changed, but the premiums have been lowered by 50%.

The next thing we did was bring in what’s called an accelerated capital cost allowance. That means that businesses can now write off the cost of their brand new equipment in the same year. That’s a billion-dollar savings to the businesses.

Then we reduced industrial and commercial hydro rates by 15%. That’s a billion three in savings.

The Liberals had a tax increase plan for January 1: $465 million in taxes that were to go up on January 1. We cancelled that tax increase and every other tax increase since the day we were elected. That’s $465 million, year after year after year, of savings.

Then we lowered the provincial share of your local property taxes by $450 million annually.

Then the red tape reductions began. Think about this: There are a couple of simple red tape reductions. General Motors, for instance, told us at the CAMI plant, they have to go through 120 pages of red tape. We reduced it to 12 for them. That is a massive savings of money and time that they can put in to doing great things like designing the BrightDrop electric vehicle that comes off the assembly line in General Motors.

We put red tape reductions that today amount to almost a billion dollars a year. Add all these things together and many more, and it is an $8-billion annual savings to the cost of doing business in Ontario. We pulled on every lever that we had at our hand to lower the cost of doing business, and the business community did exactly what we expected they would do. We lowered the cost, we lowered taxes, we lowered all of the red tape, we got out of their way and let them do what they do best, and what do they do? They hired 700,000 new employees since we were elected.

You can see the signs of this success all over Ontario. Here we are in Toronto. You look up in any direction in the city of Toronto and you will see cranes building this city. In fact, today, there are 240 cranes in the city of Toronto at work. Now, Speaker, that is an all-time record. There is no other city in North America that has ever had more than 60 cranes at the same time. There are 240.

This is an interesting list that I must read. There are more cranes operating in Toronto today than every other city on the crane list. That includes Seattle, LA, Denver, Boston, Washington, Portland, Honolulu, San Francisco, Chicago, Las Vegas, New York and Phoenix. We have more cranes operating in Toronto today than all those cities combined.

That’s the might. That’s the power. That’s what happens when you reduce taxes, lower the cost of doing business. They put people to work. They create jobs. Families earn incomes. This is what’s happening in the city of Toronto. This is what’s happening all across Ontario.

No better example than in the auto sector, where we now have landed $28 billion of new EV auto business in the province of Ontario in the last three years. That’s a remarkable statistic, and it is in conjunction with the $3 billion that we’ve landed in the life sciences business and the tens of billions of dollars we’ve landed in the tech sector. It is a remarkable picture that you see in Ontario.

You’ve heard me in this Legislature—I love this statistic. I can say this statistic 10 times a day in this Legislature. There were more manufacturing jobs created in Ontario last year than in all 50 US states combined. That’s what’s happening. That’s the picture of Ontario that people need to see.

You think back to that day when Sergio Marchionne was sitting on the stage telling Premier Wynne that Ontario is expensive. Reuters announced that there would be $300 billion spent in the EV sector, and zero of it was coming to Canada, zero of it was coming to Ontario. We put that $8 billion of savings, that power of that low tax, in front of the business community, and they did everything they said they would do. Last year, the business community hired another 180,000 people. Ninety-three per cent of those were full-time jobs. This is what’s happening.

What you hear across the aisle and what you see, the Liberal policies of high tax, carbon tax—tax, tax, tax—that is exactly the opposite of what we’re doing here in Ontario. We’re lowering the costs. We’re putting the conditions for businesses to want to be here and create jobs, and that is exactly what we see happening in the province of Ontario.

So, Speaker, there’s a very different Ontario happening today: one of job creation, one of economic development. We’ve had, as trade minister, the privilege of travelling far and wide last year, and we heard two messages—very consistent, unrehearsed, un-asked-for messages. We’ve heard that in this world, this post-COVID world—lots of trauma, lots of uncertainty. We saw Russia’s invasion of Ukraine creating more uncertainty, more disruptions. We see China disrupting the supply chain. Now, this was all before the war in Israel. But we see this sense of uncertainty around the world, and they all say—but they can look across the ocean. They can look across and see this beacon of hope that is Ontario. They know that they can come here, and they find certainty, stability, dependability, reliability, almost boring, in a sense—in a good way. That’s what they see in Ontario. They know what they’re going to get, and they understand that we’re open for business.

Then the other thing they tell us is that Ontario is safe. It’s safe for their executives. It’s safe for their employees. It’s safe for the families to be in. This is the vision around the world that is Ontario today. It’s a vision that was not Ontario only five years ago, before we were elected.

So, Speaker, I would say to you that the state of Ontario’s economy is very solid. We have great projections for this year, all because we’ve lowered the cost of doing business by $8 billion.