Me?

I’d like to congratulate—actually you, Speaker; it’s nice to see you in the chair. Congratulations. It’s always good to see a strong woman in the chair.

I also want to congratulate my colleague the Minister of Energy. He and I have been working on this type of file for the past number of years—me, 17; him, I believe it’s now 11, 12 or something like that. I do take his point about all of the red tape that was incurred during the last Liberal government. It does take time in order to responsibly, ethically and morally reduce red tape while taking your time, but, at the same time, understanding the sense of urgency.

A week ago, I held a round table in the constituency on Ottawa investment. One of the things I heard that makes Ottawa a unique place to invest is our stability and paycheques because of the federal government. We have a good strong base of high-tech. We’re bilingual; we’re diverse; we have lots of land and we have low costs.

That said, what is still a problem is inflation. We still have labour shortages like everywhere else. The supply chain has impacted us, but today and every day the business owners of Nepean and the rest of Ottawa tell me red tape is the number one concern and it’s costing business.

I ask the minister—he did refer to $700 million worth of cutting red tape. Could he elaborate on that?

Uncle Ernie says we have enough time.

You make red tape exciting.