It is a pleasure to rise to today to share with this House some important investments our government has made in my riding of Perth–Wellington.

Last week, I was joined by the Minister of Education to announce a brand new Catholic elementary school in Drayton, Ontario. This represents $17.3 million in investment by our government in our rural education system and will create 222 new student spaces and 64 new child care spaces.

This is a huge investment for Drayton and area because, for too long, local families did not have any affordable child care options locally. But our government is delivering for rural Ontario after years of inaction from the previous Liberal government.

Speaker, the good news doesn’t stop there. I also had the pleasure of announcing that our government is funding a major expansion of St. Mary’s Catholic School in Listowel. This investment of $5.8 million will help build an additional 150 student spaces and 98 child care spaces. These two projects are part of our larger $1.3-billion plan that more than doubles the funding to build new schools and expands child care spaces across Ontario.

Since 2018, our provincial government has invested over $34 million in communities across Perth–Wellington to build 250 new child care spaces and 470 new student spaces. While the previous Liberal government closed 600 rural schools, our government will continue to invest in rural Ontario.

It’s always wonderful to spend some quality time with my colleague from Guelph. I know we spend time together in our respective ridings because we share, obviously, some service managers in that. I’m always happy to spend time with Mr. Green.

The member from Ottawa South and the member from Thornhill, earlier, were mentioning that we are digging. We are digging; we are digging foundations for new homes in Ontario, I’m proud to say.

From day one, we’ve been focused on building more homes for the people across this province.

What you hear from the typical opposition parties is about more obstacles being put in the way of actually getting more homes built, more shovels in the ground—just like the members who usually sit around the member from Guelph. He is surrounded by independent Liberal caucus members who did just that—especially the member from Ottawa South, when he was part of the government. They put obstacles in the way of building more homes. At committee, we heard from a former minister in the Wynne government. The mayor of Vaughan said that the housing crisis began at the cabinet table when he sat it at. So this has been ongoing, and they have put obstacles in the way.

We’re seeing now that we’re actually getting more homes built across Ontario. Our housing supply action plans are working. We’re seeing rental-housing starts increase year over year; they are at the highest levels ever in the province of Ontario. And this is despite the high-interest-rate policies of the federal Liberal government, and the high-carbon-tax policies which are putting so many people out of the market for that new home.

What we’re going to do is return the dream of home ownership to the people of the province of Ontario by getting more shovels in the ground, reducing costs and removing obstacles.