Speaker, April 25 was a historic day for Ontario and, quite frankly, all of Canada. Honda announced a $15-billion investment right here in Ontario to build Canada’s first comprehensive electric vehicle supply chain. Honda will build an innovative EV assembly plant in Alliston. They’ll also build a stand-alone battery manufacturing plant in Alliston—4,200 jobs retained, 1,000 new jobs just on those sites. And to complete their supply chain, they will build a cathode plant through a joint venture with Korea’s POSCO, and they’ll build a separator plant in a joint venture with Japan’s Asahi Kasei. Those two announcements are coming in the very near future, in the coming days and weeks, which will add a significant amount of employees here in Ontario.

Their investment reaffirms that Ontario is the EV powerhouse.

The minister was kind enough to loan me this one question. Thank you, Minister.

As the minister was saying, a $15-billion investment with Honda; another massive investment, a multi-billion dollar investment we’re announcing next week—so by all means, show up.

When the minister was in Germany, he got off the plane, went into the terminal, and took a picture of the big Ontario sign. Another person got off in LA, walked out—and the terminal was all Ontario. The world is talking about Ontario. The world knows that Ontario is open for business.

We’ve seen over $43 billion of investment in the EV sector. As Bloomberg said, Canada—which should really be Ontario—is now the number one destination for EV assembly and EV battery production.

We’re going to continue telling the world that Ontario is open for business, no matter if it’s a $20-billion investment through the tech sector, $3 billion through the life sciences, more manufacturing jobs—

I want to wish the hundreds of thousands of nurses in Ontario a happy Nursing Week, including nurse Dianne Martin, CEO of WeRPN, and Karen McKay-Eden, VP of ONA. They are here today because our health care system is in disarray, with no relief in sight.

Patients, from sick babies to people needing palliative care, face long wait times in emergency rooms and overcrowded hospitals.

Minister, it does not have to be that way. This is not the new normal. BC is implementing mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios.

Will the minister commit to improving patient outcomes and nurse retention, and bring nurse-to-patient ratios in Ontario?

Let me tell you, Speaker, the state of California implemented nurse-to-patient ratios 25 years ago, and the numbers speak for themselves: better patient outcomes and less nurses burning out—two challenges that this Minister of Health and Premier continue to ignore as they rush forward with the for-profit delivery of our health care system.

It doesn’t have to be that way. If the government is interested at all in improving Ontario’s health care system, there’s a very easy first step they can do: Put in place nurse-to-patient ratios. Will the minister do it?

Interjections.

Yesterday, when the Premier, Minister Dunlop and I were at TMU to celebrate and mark the beginning of Nursing Week, I spoke to a nurse who trained and graduated under Bob Rae’s NDP government. Do you know what she told me? She told me that only three nurses in her graduating class stayed in Ontario, because there were no jobs. The NDP government was actually firing nurses.

I now look at the Liberal government of the day. Your previous leader, Kathleen Wynne, admitted and acknowledged in her exit interview with TVO that she wished she had invested more in the health care system.

Well, we’re doing it. We’re getting it done. We’re training more nurses. We’re retaining more nurses. We’re bringing international nurses to Ontario, who want to be here. We have two years running of historic highs of internationally trained clinicians licensing in the province of Ontario. We’re getting it done.

Last week, I was with Minister Piccini and I sat down with nursing students who are participating in an extern program. They told me how that extern program that was brought in under Premier Ford has made them more confident, has made them a better nurse. That’s the kind of initiatives we will continue—

The supplementary question.

Interjection.

The next question.

Minister of Health.

That answer had nothing to do with my question.

On the day that the changes to the greenbelt were announced, the minister’s chief of staff, Ryan Amato, asked ministry staffers to confirm that Mr. Rehmatullah’s Nobleton property in the greenbelt could be developed. Mr. Amato told staffers, “PO has asked me for a picture to make sure it’s captured.” Ministry staffers responded with assurances that changes to York’s official plan would do just that.

Who in the Premier’s office wanted to make sure that the Nobleton property belonging to the Premier’s friend was captured in the changes to the greenbelt, and why?

News flash to the member opposite: Nobleton and King are actually in York region, and York region is suffering from an infrastructure deficit.

York region was also suffering from a school deficit until this Minister of Education came on board—because what we’re doing is building communities.

This is what they do: They make enemies out of everybody who wants to move the province forward; so if you build a home, you’re an enemy; if you’re a manufacturer, you’re an enemy; if you drive a bus and want to buy a home, you’ve got to be an enemy as well. They are all about making people enemies.

What we are about is fixing the devastating damage that we inherited from the Liberal-NDP coalition government in the province of Ontario that left us with an infrastructure deficit, that left us the most indebted sub-sovereign government in the world, that left us with the most highly regulated province in the world. Jobs were fleeing the province. We are working every single day to repair the damage. The job is not done, and that is why we are going to double down to work even harder to continue the economic progress in Ontario.

Thank you very much.

The next question.

I’m going to ask the member for Toronto-St. Paul’s to withdraw the unparliamentary comment.

The next question.

My question is for the Minister of Energy.

The federal Liberals continue to make life less affordable for Ontarians by hiking the carbon tax. Many families and businesses across Ontario cannot afford the skyrocketing prices for everyday essentials. Unfortunately, the opposition NDP and the independent Liberals in this House are refusing to fight this devastating tax.

While those members want higher and higher prices and higher taxes, our government is working for the people and supporting them during this difficult time.

With summer quickly approaching, can the minister please explain how the carbon tax will continue to drive up costs for Ontarians?

It’s good to hear that the minister is paying attention to what the people of Ontario are looking for.

It is truly unfair that the Liberals continue to punish Ontarians who are already struggling to pay their bills, make ends meet, and provide more for their families with the Liberals trying to hike taxes.

What’s even more disturbing is that the Liberal members in this House, knowing how much Ontarians are suffering, still refuse to rise up and do the right thing and tell their federal counterparts that this tax needs to go. It’s unacceptable. Our government will not stand for their silence and inaction. Our government will continue to fight and tell the federal government that this is a tax that Ontarians don’t want and don’t deserve.

Can the minister please tell this House why the people of this province cannot afford this disastrous carbon tax?

Thanks to the member from Kitchener–Conestoga for his question this morning.

The carbon tax, obviously, is impacting the price of gasoline, but it’s also impacting the price of everything.

I couldn’t help but picture the Harris family of seven as they load into their minivan and maybe head for a holiday this summer—the price that they’re going to be paying at the pumps to fill that van, at $1.65 a litre or whatever it is today. That family of seven—incidentally, when I think about it, if the Harris family was a caucus, they’d be almost the same size as the Liberal caucus here in the Legislature—can rest assured that they’re getting a 10.7-cents-a-litre break from Premier Ford and our government here in Ontario. They’re also not going to have to pay the tolls if they come visit me in eastern Ontario. The tolls are gone in eastern Ontario. Licence plate sticker fees are gone.

This is the contrast between our government and the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, and the federal Liberals. We’re looking to save people money. They’re making life more expensive. It’s time for them to scrap that tax.

As the NDP and the Liberals always look to increase taxes or make life more expensive for the people of Ontario, we’re trying to drive costs down through things like I mentioned earlier: the gas tax break; eliminating the licence plate sticker fees; income tax breaks; ending the tolls; making One Fare for our transit operators a possibility, saving people up to $1,600 a year. These are real, tangible impacts on families like the Harris family of seven and other families right across Ontario. We’re going to be there to help those families while Bonnie Crombie, the queen of the carbon tax, and Justin Trudeau continue to make life more expensive for them.

Oh, Speaker. I’m not sure where the member was in February, but we actually announced the largest expansion of multidisciplinary primary care teams in Ontario.

And of course, last month, with the budget, we announced another over $500 million to expand primary care multidisciplinary teams.

I am hearing from multiple communities that have said they have already recruited, hired, and started to bring online new patients with these multidisciplinary teams. We’re hearing about it in Kingston. We’re hearing about it in Palmerston. We know that this is happening across Ontario.

I only wish that the member opposite would support our budget that increases, again, the opportunities for multidisciplinary team expansions in the province of Ontario.

I will say that we had, last week, residency students, medical students, who are matched with their specialty—100% coverage now in the province of Ontario, which, again, is a historic high. We have residency physicians who want to train as primary care doctors, who have been matched and are now working towards those goals.

When I see the expansions that we are doing with medical schools in Brampton and in Scarborough, it is incredible, the amount of investments that we, as a government, have made to ensure that, moving forward, we are never in the position that we were when we formed government, when Liberal and NDP governments continuously ignored the health care system at the—

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker, my question today is about protecting us from contaminated groundwater. The Kingston and Area Real Estate Association is circulating a petition about this issue.

After repeated questioning two weeks ago, the government has finally said yes to continuing free testing of well water, but it failed to commit to keeping the Public Health Ontario laboratories that do the testing.

Why won’t this government commit to protecting us from contaminated groundwater by continuing to keep open the regional public health laboratories in Peterborough, Orillia, Hamilton, Kingston, Sault Ste. Marie and Timmins?

There’s potential for contaminated groundwater in Wilmot township, where this government has told the region of Waterloo to assemble farmland for industrial use. Not only is that prime farmland at risk—across the road and downstream, you’ll find a cabbage farm where they make St. Jacobs sauerkraut; you’ll find a dairy farm where they also make award-winning Mountainoak Gouda cheese. In this region, if you need water, it has to be drawn from the underground aquifer. The Waterloo region is one of the largest groundwater users in Canada. Does this government realize that the aquifer must be protected?

How can these valuable agri-food operations be protected from contaminated groundwater with all the secrecy and non-disclosure agreements around assembling Wilmot’s prime agricultural land for industrial use?

Interjections.

Given the destructive effects of Bill 124, it is no surprise that senior health care workers have left their hospital positions and that even new nurses are being drawn into the nursing agency vortex—a situation that is pushing almost every hospital in Thunder Bay–Superior North into massive debt.

What is the government doing to attract nurses back into full-time positions and stop the flood of health care dollars going to shareholder profits?

When will the government address the wage gap identified in the Hay report and bring nurse practitioner wages up to levels appropriate to their skills and responsibilities?

Honda’s $15-billion investment is the largest investment in Canadian auto history.

Ontario has now attracted $43 billion in new auto and EV investments in the last four years. That is more than any US state.

What does that tell you, Speaker? Think about where we were under the Liberals—high taxes, red tape that was out of control, everything the Liberals could possibly do to hurt business. We step in, under Premier Ford, and what happens? Lower taxes, reduced red tape, lower electricity rates—$8 billion in lower cost of doing business every single year. That’s what’s bringing companies here into the province of Ontario. The lower cost of doing business has brought 700,000 workers here into Ontario since we were elected. This is what’s attracting businesses all over the world. They look at Ontario as this beacon, this light that’s happening here. They want to be part of it and now we’re at—

Look at today. Bloomberg has announced that Canada—and, as the Premier said, ostensibly Ontario—is now ranked number one in the world supply chain. We went from zero to $43 billion. We went from zero, last place, to number one. That is what’s happening.

We came so close to seeing the end of our auto sector under the previous government. Our workers were almost permanently sidelined because of the legacy of the Liberals.

From day one, as I said, our approach was to lower the cost of doing business—

My question is for the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade—although if the Premier wants to jump in, I’m good with that.

A little over a week ago, our province welcomed an historic generational investment in my riding of Simcoe–Grey. It is an investment that, before we took office, no one would reasonably imagine coming to Ontario. Economic development was at such a low priority for the previous Liberal government that no one could fathom global companies willingly choosing Ontario as a destination to invest and expand in. The Liberals’ high-tax policy chased out countless numbers of businesses and left our auto sector on the brink of collapse.

Thankfully, under this government, Ontario is in a much different place today. We have secured tens of billions of dollars in new investments in our auto sector and right across our economy.

Can the minister please tell this House more about Honda’s generational investment in Ontario?

Honda’s investment indeed is a game-changer for this province. It will create good-paying jobs for my constituents in Alliston and the surrounding region. It is a testament to the competitive advantage that Ontario now has in the automotive sector.

Ontario’s more than 100,000 auto workers are the best in the world. Automakers recognize this, and that is why they are doubling down in Ontario. They see an automotive ecosystem that has been revitalized over the last six years. It is now thriving and robust and leading in the world. They see a province that has everything they need—talent, low costs, an abundance of clean energy, and so much more. That is why they are choosing Ontario.

Can the minister tell us what Honda’s investment means for our automotive ecosystem?

Minister of Health.

Interjections.

The Minister of Health can reply.

Supplementary question.

Next question.

Speaker, I have regularly and consistently reinforced the value and importance of well water testing in the province of Ontario. I grew up on a farm in rural Ontario. My riding is primarily served by well water. I absolutely understand the value and importance of having well water testing available through our public health units. We will continue to do that, as we have, for decades to come. More importantly, we will also invest in Public Health Ontario, something that the member opposite, under their leadership, did not do.

I made mention of Minister Piccini and I sitting down with some nursing students who are externs right now, working in the hospital sector. I asked them, “Where are your pathways? Where are you going when you graduate?” They said because of the extern program, they are more confident as students, they are better employees as registered nurses. They are excited to join the health care sector in the province of Ontario, and we are opening our arms to make sure that we make them welcome.

The Minister of Education.

The next question.