We all know that the carbon tax is a tax on every single family, on every single worker in Ontario. We have the best talent pool in the world. We’re better educated than any OECD country: 71% of Ontarians have a post-secondary degree, 70,000 annual STEM grads, 420,000 tech workers, 100,000 auto workers, 85,000 AI workers, 72,000 life sciences workers. Our economy needs these workers, but the carbon tax hurts them and the carbon tax risks chasing all of them away. We need to axe the tax.

The Liberals need to stop making it harder for these companies to expand and to grow. They need to scrap the tax today.

Speaker, a few minutes ago, you heard the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing say that 700,000 new jobs were created in Ontario in just the last five years. Let me give you a bit of a breakdown: 70,000 workers work at 1,900 life science sector firms in Ontario, 420,000 workers are at 25,000 tech firms in Ontario, and over 120,000 direct jobs and hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs are now in our auto sector all across Ontario. All of that, Speaker, is not by raising taxes; it’s by lowering taxes and lowering the cost of doing business by $8 billion a year. Record job numbers have hit Ontario by keeping taxes low.

With more than 420,000 tech workers at more than 25,000 firms, Ontario is the global tech leader. By cutting red tape and reducing the cost of doing business by $8 billion annually, we’ve created the conditions for the tech sector to prosper. That’s why we’ve seen the creation of more than 100,000 good-paying tech jobs since we took office.

In just this last year, cutting-edge tech companies like Snowflake, DNEG and USEReady invested $142 million to expand their operations and have created 950 good-paying jobs. As a result, Ontario is now one of the largest IT clusters in North America. Our message is clear, Speaker: If you’re a tech worker, researcher or firm, there’s no better place to be than right here in Ontario.

The brightest tech workers and leading tech firms are packing their bags and coming to Ontario, reaffirming their confidence in the thriving tech ecosystem that we have built.

Our government will continue to do absolutely everything to ensure Ontario remains a global tech powerhouse.