Good morning, and thank you to my colleague for his remarks this morning. He mentioned newcomers to our province. Even in my rural communities in rural southern Ontario, we’re seeing a lot of newcomers—which is wonderful—in our communities, contributing to our economy, coming to work in our province. Newcomers are essential, obviously, to ensuring Ontario continues to grow.

Does the member opposite believe opposing this bill means that the members who are supporting existing practices that keep newcomers from being able to work in the fields that they are trained in—does he believe this is the right decision on their part?

It is a pleasure to rise today to highlight some recent announcements I was able to make on behalf of the Minister of Health in my riding of Perth–Wellington. Last month I was pleased to announce not one but two local family health teams would be receiving funding to expand primary care in our rural communities.

The Minto–Mapleton Family Health Team will receive over $560,000 to hire two additional nurse practitioners, an RPN and a medical receptionist. This funding will ensure an additional 1,600 residents can access primary care closer to home.

The Listowel–Wingham family health team will receive over $822,000 to expand primary care to serve an additional 2,000 residents.

Speaker, it truly was a historic day for our rural public health care sector. The province-wide investment of $90 million represents the first expansion of primary care in Ontario’s history, ever. It is disappointing the previous Liberal government, supported by the NDP, had 15 years to expand primary care in rural Ontario, and they chose not to, Speaker. In fact, the current Liberal members and the current NDP members voted against our historic expansion.

Despite these obstacles the previous Liberal government put in place, we are rebuilding our public health care sector. We’re expanding medical school spots and nurse practitioner spots. We expanded the clinical extern program. Speaker, our government will continue to expand primary care.

Thank you to my colleague across the way for his remarks. Building off of the member from Niagara West’s question, I know there is some confusion amongst the Liberal Party members, especially their leader, around answering tough questions. So yes or no to the member opposite: Do you support natural gas expansion in rural Ontario? Yes or no?

Thank you to my colleague for his remarks this afternoon. I know we both represent rural ridings in different parts of Ontario, obviously, and obviously natural gas expansion is key to the success of our local municipalities, agriculture producers and families. I was wondering if he could elaborate on why it is important the government bring this piece of legislation forward to ensure that those expansions can continue.

Thank you to my colleague from Beaches–East York. I will put it on the record: my favourite Liberal in the House—no offence to the Speaker. Back row, we’ve got to stick together.

My question, though, to the member from Beaches–East York: She was talking about development on main streets. Obviously, coming from rural Ontario—and I won’t ask what happened in your hometown and why you didn’t want to go back. But in the provincial policy statement proposal, it includes “all types of residential intensification, including the conversion of existing commercial and institutional buildings for residential use.” So this is like commercial use and having apartments above stores on our main streets in rural Ontario. This is important densification, as the member alluded to. So will the member support our initiatives to have this gentle densification in rural Ontario and across Ontario?

Thank you to my colleague across the aisle for the question. What I can speak about, Speaker, is the investments we are making in this budget and in this bill. The $425 million extra, as I mentioned, is in addition to the $3.8 billion. I know in my riding, I actually just recently had an opportunity to tour a youth wellness hub. It’s called Grove. It brings youth supports, capital and programming supports, so the wraparound supports, to rural communities in my riding that traditionally never had it.

When I went to school in Palmerston, they didn’t exist there, and now they have a Grove Hub there. They’re very appreciative of the investments we’ve made to bring these supports to communities that traditionally may not have had these supports and had to travel to Guelph or Kitchener in my area or larger urban centres.

Over the weekend, I heard from car salespeople, car manufacturers and people in the manufacturing sector that this was great news for our region and area and all of southwestern Ontario.

To respond to the question the member opposite posed to me, I’d like to highlight it’s $202 million additional dollars that we’re proposing. And I’d also like to point out that the members opposite had the opportunity to help facilitate more non-profit, affordable and attainable housing, but they chose to vote against Bill 23 and those decisions, which is shameful. But this side of the government and the middle over there, Speaker, will continue to fight for my generation that’s looking to get in the market and the future generations in this province to build more homes—all types of homes across the housing continuum—and this budget is one key step in that platform.

Thank you to my colleague for the great speech—I really enjoyed listening to his words—and the great work he does for his constituents in Niagara.

I wonder if my colleague—he mentioned it in his speech, on the reduced load periods. I also have a lot of rural roads and dirt roads in my riding. It’s something that I hear often from my municipalities, but also the farmers and the truckers—around the reduced load periods and the important work this legislation does for that. I was just wondering if my colleague could elaborate a bit about how this model works, how it will roll out, and how it will support our municipalities to make those decisions.

My question is to my great colleague from Chatham-Kent–Leamington. He mentioned some great examples of young people getting into the health care profession, and it’s great to see that. I just wondered if he could elaborate on some of our government’s good investments—I know it’s benefiting rural Ontario with the Ontario Learn and Stay Grant.

Thank you to my honourable colleague for that great question, and to rise and talk about some of the initiatives. Just so the House is aware, my riding, the catchment area, has the lowest unemployment rate in Ontario—2.6%, I believe, was the last statistic. So if you know anyone who needs a job, please tell them to come to my riding. If you can walk and talk and show up on time, they will give you a job and they will train you. It can be a variety of jobs.

Our government, obviously, is hearing this from businesses across Ontario, and so the investments in the Skills Development Fund, the $40 million extra in that, I think demonstrates our government’s commitment to going above and beyond to meet that demand and continue to build Ontario and working with our federal colleagues, as has been alluded to earlier today in this House, to get more new Canadians to come to Ontario and have a bigger say over the provincial nomination program.

The learn and stay grant, which we announced earlier this year, is making a significant impact in our rural hospitals. It’s attracting nurses and health care workers to our hospitals. In rural Ontario, prior to the COVID pandemic—it’s hard to think of way back then, prior to 2020, in March. But in my area where I’m from, and I’m sure similar to Niagara West, I’m assuming, there was already a shortage of health care workers because it was hard to attract and retain health care workers.

Our government is doing our best to address that issue through the learn and stay grant, encouraging people and providing money for them to pay for their tuition, to relocate to those communities and to work in our rural hospitals.