By reducing taxes, lowering the cost of electricity and cutting red tape, we have seen manufacturers look to Ontario to expand again.

Every morning, Premier Ford gets what we call his one-a-day vitamin: the name of a company, where they’re locating, how many millions they’re investing, how many people they’re hiring, and whether we have any skin in the game or not.

Sante Manufacturing in Aylmer invested $7.5 million to accelerate their expansion, diversify their product line, and hire 15 people. Arvaspring in Middlesex is investing $5 million to build a new state-of-the-art poultry processing facility to help enter international markets—MC3, $6.8 million; Idol Core, $5.1 million, 30 new jobs.

Since our election, businesses and industry have created 600,000 new jobs—proof positive that Ontario is open for business.

This government dug deep and asked them, what do you need to return to Ontario? They told us—reduced taxes, less red tape, and to fix the Liberals’ hydro mess. And we delivered. We did exactly what they asked. We reduced the cost of business by $7 billion every year, and those businesses are now back here. The exodus is over. These companies have hired 600,000 men and women in the last four and a half years, and companies have recently announced millions in reshoring investments, adding thousands more new jobs—all because they know that Ontario is now the best place in the world to invest and succeed.

Cornwall isn’t just a great place to live and work and raise a family, it’s one of the most competitive places to invest as well. In the last two years, $100 million has been invested there with help from our regional development programs. Biscuits Leclerc has an $80-million project creating 76 jobs with $1.5 million of our support. This is a sweet deal for Cornwall, for Hawkesbury and for Brockville. They’ll all see upgrades to their plants as they enter new markets.

We also supported Cornwall’s auto sector through an O-AMP investment for Morbern’s $429,000 project to implement Industry 4.0 technologies.

Speaker, this is how we’re supporting businesses in Cornwall.

Ford: $1.8 billion. GM: $2.3 billion. Stellantis: $3.6 billion. Honda: $1.4 billion. LGE: $5.2 billion. Speaker, what should bring comfort is the fact that over the last 20 months, Ontario has attracted a record $16 billion in auto investments. These are game-changing, historic investments, ushering in a new era for Ontario’s auto industry, providing employment for thousands more workers.

Most recently, Belgium’s Umicore announced a $1.5-billion investment to build North America’s first industrial-scale battery materials plant, and they’re doing it here in Ontario. The facility will locate in Loyalist township and provide employment for a thousand people, just for the construction phase. Umicore is here because they saw Ontario reduce the cost of doing business by $7 billion—

So $16 billion in auto investments in 20 months—Speaker, this government is getting it done.