Thank you very much to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing for bringing this bill forward. You have heard for the last 32 minutes how very important this is. I want to congratulate you and your team for bringing this to the closing line, Minister Clark. This is excellent work.

So why are we here? Because there is a critical shortage of shovel-ready industrial mega sites in Ontario, and this shortage places Ontario at a significant disadvantage when competing for high-value projects that we are seeing all around the world. Without immediate action, we risk losing the opportunity to compete and win these huge, transformative investments.

Think about other jurisdictions around North America, especially in the US. They have projects that are ready to go. They have land that is ready to go. They have a fulsome inventory all around North America, and we don’t. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs that will go with all of these properties around North America, and we’re not where we need to be. We need to show that we’re not just open for business, but that we’re ready for business.

So let’s understand why we got to where we are. I’m going to be very blunt: Years of mismanagement under the previous government cost Ontario 300,000 manufacturing jobs. In fact, I remember sitting in opposition and looking at the previous government’s final—thank God it was their final—report on the economy, and it’s very clear: They threw the towel in on manufacturing. They completely gave up. They did not think ahead and start to assemble land in Ontario, and you wonder why.

I’m going to read a quote now. This is from that government’s report on the economy: “The structure of the Ontario economy will continue to shift from goods-producing to service-producing sectors.” That’s their admission. They said “no more” to manufacturing. They went on to say that that will result in “shifting employment from goods-producing industries, in particular manufacturing, to” the service sector.

Speaker, they threw the towel in. They gave up on those 300,000 people who lost their jobs in manufacturing. The previous government just said, “That’s it. We’re throwing the towel in. We’ll give up on manufacturing.” Forget the fact that for more than a century, Ontario has been the manufacturing hub of Canada. We’re the economic engine of the country, and they said, “No, we’re going to give up.”

In fact, we heard even further—and I’ve said this in this Legislature many times—that the auto sector was starting on a downward spiral under the previous government. High costs, high taxes, high energy rates, red tape—all of those together were watching the auto industry spiral downward.

Sergio Marchionne was the former chair of what was then called Fiat Chrysler. He sat on a stage with former Premier Kathleen Wynne, and she mused out loud, “Would Chrysler be expanding in Ontario?” He looked at her with this quizzical look on his face and he said to her, “This is not what I would call the cheapest jurisdiction.” Then she pushed him and he went on to say, “You need to create the conditions to be competitive.” That was like a real gut punch to Ontario—that we have gone from this worldwide envy of manufacturing to this humbled loss of 300,000 men and women. Every single company in the auto sector was reducing production instead of increasing. Instead of fixing the mess they created, they just threw the towel in and gave up.

Enter Premier Ford. Premier Ford brought us together as a caucus and said, “We’ve got to do everything in our power to lower the cost of doing business in Ontario.” We visited every one of the auto manufacturers, and they all told us, “Your costs are out of control. You’re not business-friendly in Ontario. We’re not here.” He said, “Give us a chance. We’ll come back to you with a plan,” and we developed Driving Prosperity. That’s the name of the plan that was going to bring back the auto sector.

It started with a reduction of WSIB, workplace safety insurance—a 50% reduction in the cost to business of WSIB. That is a $2.5-billion savings every single year to the business community who reinvested that money—no reduction in the benefits of WSIB, just in the cost. It was so stuffed with cash at the expense of all these businesses with high WSIB rates that it was lowered. That’s a savings of $2.5 billion annually.

Then we put in what’s called a capital cost allowance. What that meant was that you can write off the cost of your brand new equipment. If you decided to invest in Ontario and bring in brand new equipment, you can write that equipment off in the first year. That’s a huge advantage to Ontario. It saved a billion dollars annually by businesses.

Then we had red tape reduction. We have our own Minister of Red Tape Reduction. Nine bills have come through the Legislature—two a year—that reduce red tape. It’s about a $500-million annual savings in red tape. A couple of them are very specific to the auto sector. We sat with them and we said to them, “Show us, tell us what red tape you need—that is duplicative with the federal government, or other reasons. Tell us what you need. Show us what you need to create new jobs.” And that’s what we did.

We lowered the cost of industrial and commercial hydro rates by an average of 15%. We lowered the provincial share of municipal taxes in every community of Ontario so that they all have the same low tax rate now: 0.88%. That’s a $450-million annual savings to the business community.

Add it all up—$7 billion a year in lower cost to do business in Ontario. That is this huge advantage.

We went back and started knocking on the doors of all of these auto companies that were abandoning Ontario and said, “We’ve done what you’ve said.” It immediately put the brakes on them leaving and began the accession. We first heard from Ford in Oakville, with a $1.8-billion announcement; then Honda in Alliston, with a $1.4-billion announcement; GM in Oshawa and in Ingersoll, with a $2.3-billion announcement; Stellantis in Windsor and in Brampton, with a $3.6-billion announcement; Umicore in Loyalist, with a $1.5-billion announcement; and, of course, the LG NextStar Energy battery plant in Windsor, with a $5.2-billion announcement.

Last week, Magna announced their half-a-billion-dollar investment at their six plants in Ontario. Half of that money—more than half of it—goes into Brampton for a brand new facility on EV battery decks, basically; they’ve also got Newmarket, Belleville, Guelph and Penetanguishene.

These are all communities that are adding, collectively, 1,000 new jobs in Ontario, and that brings us to $17 billion from zero—from worse than zero, if you could imagine, to $17 billion in announcements from the auto sector in two years alone.

But it doesn’t just stop at the auto sector. When you think about the other kinds of investments, we’ve done about 150 deals across Ontario in the last couple of years. There’s $3 billion from the life sciences sector, with companies like Sanofi, Roche, CCRM in Hamilton, Resilience and others. Billions of dollars in the tech sector—Telus announced $23 billion in Ontario; Nokia, in Ottawa, a $340-million investment.

Again, we’ve done 150 deals and five trade missions to eight countries, just since the last election. And we’ve heard the same two things from every single company—they love Ontario. This is their words. Think about the turmoil that’s created around the world, coming out of the pandemic. We have Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine. We have the whole China question. All of this turmoil is consuming the business world and families, and they look to Ontario as a sea of calm. They say, “That’s where we want to be. We want to be there.” They also say to us, “We also like Ontario because it’s a safe jurisdiction.” They know that it’s safe for their employees to be there. They know that it’s safe for their executives to go over. They know that it’s safe for families. They all said the same thing in the nine countries that we visited since the election—eight countries plus the United States.

The end result of all of this action over the last few years, since the day we were elected to a week ago: We’ve seen over 600,000 new jobs created in the province of Ontario—300,000 before the pandemic and 300,000 new jobs since the day the pandemic struck Ontario.

Interjections.