Speaker, we just returned from the BIO International Convention to promote Ontario’s thriving life sciences ecosystem. We talked about companies around the globe, and they’re intrigued by how rapidly Ontario life science is continuing to grow.

Ontario has the best talent pool with over 70,000 STEM grads annually coming out of our renowned post-secondary institutions. We want those workers to stay here in Ontario and succeed, which is why we’ve taken action to lower taxes, so they can keep more of what they earn.

But with the Liberal carbon tax, the federal government is moving in the opposite direction. They’re making life less affordable and risking the progress that we have made, Speaker. We need them to come around. Follow our lead. Scrap the carbon tax today.

The Liberals put up mountains of red tape. They hiked tax after tax after tax and they scared businesses away: 300,000 manufacturing jobs fled the province and key industries were on the brink of collapse. And now, the federal Liberals are trying to do this all over again with their carbon tax.

We need the Liberals to reverse course. Speaker, we ask them: Listen to the hard-working people and businesses in Ontario. Scrap the carbon tax today.

We were at the opening of Kainos—it’s an IT company from Ireland. Just yesterday, they announced—and we did the ribbon cutting at their facility in downtown Toronto: 100 employees, on their way up to hiring 300 employees. Again, all because we have lowered the cost of doing business in Ontario. We graduate 65,000 STEM grads each and every year. Welcome, Kainos and the 100 employees that they’ve brought.

The week before, we welcomed Unilever to downtown Toronto. They’re from the UK, obviously. They have opened their world’s first and only AI lab right here in Ontario, right here in Toronto. We competed with 50 countries around the world to attract Unilever here, and we won. They have several hundred employees that will be employed here at their downtown operation in Toronto. So, Speaker, we’re very grateful—

Speaker, when we speak to companies all across the globe, they’re so excited by what Ontario has to offer. It’s our educated workforce. It’s our low business costs. It’s our innovative ecosystem—all of this and so much more. But the one concern they all bring up, because they don’t understand this, is this federal carbon tax. We look at neighbours in the US: $460 billion in two-way trade, and they ask us, “What the heck is this carbon tax that you have?” They want to think twice about investing and expanding in Ontario. Simply put, this carbon tax has stifled our growth across our economy. Every business, in every sector, has seen their costs go up because of this terrible carbon tax.

Speaker, our message to the federal government is very simple: Get rid of this tax.

Speaker, we are at the centre of environmental progress here in Ontario. Unfortunately, the federal government has taken the opposite approach. Their crushing carbon tax is making everything more expensive while doing absolutely nothing to fight climate change. We want them to scrap that tax today.