Last week, I got the opportunity to participate in two Legislative Assembly virtual tours offered to students of the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic High School, which is located in the town of Russell in my riding.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the tour team here at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for this great initiative.

Ontario is a big province, Mr. Speaker. To have these virtual tours available both in English and French for every school of the province is a good occasion to teach students about how the provincial government works.

It was great to be able to participate in these virtual tours and greet students and answer their questions at the end of the tour. I believe that there’s a possibility that we might have some of these students that are after my job, Mr. Speaker. A few students asked me how to become an MPP, and I told them that the best way is to get involved in helping each other and offering their service to the community. I really enjoyed explaining the role of an MPP and the kinds of services we offer to our constituents.

I want to thank all the students who took part in the event and would like to invite all schools in my riding to participate in these virtual tours so students can learn more about the provincial government of Ontario.

I’m very grateful to be able to rise this afternoon and participate in debate on a motion from the Leader of the Opposition—and for their participation this afternoon. I’ve listened very intently to a number of different colleagues speaking passionately about the motion before the House, and I want to thank all those members for adding their voices to debate.

I want to pose a question to the members who are here in the chamber this afternoon, and my question to you all is: When? When did the New Democratic Party become a party that failed to aspire for better? When did the New Democratic Party become a party that believed in opportunity for the people of Ontario? When did the New Democratic Party of Ontario become a party that no longer believed that if you could see it, you could be it? I want to build on that theme in relation to this motion this afternoon, because we’ve all heard that phrase, and I think it’s an important one. It’s an important aspect of all of our roles in this House—to lift up those voices who aren’t always lifted up; to ensure that the people we have the privilege of representing understand that there are opportunities that exist here for them in the province of Ontario. I look at the almost a million people who came to this province last year from so many corners of the world, because they believed that better was possible when they made their home here in Ontario. Aside from those who are in this chamber who are Indigenous, all of us came from somewhere—we all came from somewhere, to this province, from another land, believing that we had the opportunity to grow a life for our family, to build a career, to build opportunities for our children, because we saw that potential in the lives of those who had come before us. We saw it and we believed it, and we knew that if we saw it, we could be it.

And yet, when we see the New Democrats, the party who I know will often stand in this chamber and say, “It is the New Democrats who were the party of advocating for primarily government-paid health care”; who have a long history of standing for not just workers’ rights, but farmers’ rights, standing for those who work hard to build strong products that we can be proud of in every corner of this globe, I have to ask the question: When? When did the NDP lose their way? When did they fail to see that supporting these workers, supporting the incredible products that are grown here in Ontario, that are exported from this province, means that we all have a responsibility, as legislators, as members of the legislative branch, but also, in the government, in the executive branch—wanting to make a little bit of a distinction between those two here. The executive branch and the government also have a role in promoting that opportunity, so that those who see what happens here in Ontario, those who see those opportunities, understand that that is also an opportunity for them.

Speaker, I know I don’t have that much time, so I’m not going to be able to dig into all the examples of that, but I think of those I’ve met in my constituency, who came here with very, very little—family members, neighbours, those I’ve had the opportunity to meet, from church basements to town halls and chambers of commerce—who said that they came to this province with a dream and a belief in what was possible if they worked hard, if they followed the rules, and if they were able to bring forward good ideas that could grow the economy, grow their community and grow a better home for their children. And now they are the same people I had the opportunity to speak with, who come to me in my constituency office and say, “What we are seeing in the province of Ontario, finally, is a government that dares to dream big, that believes in the potential of this province, and that is giving us the tools to succeed.”

And there are a few different areas to that. One of the reasons is that—I think it’s important that we’re seeing the government promote made-in-Ontario and Ontario opportunities, and one of the advantages that we have in comparison with every other jurisdiction of the world is our manufacturing strength.

In Niagara, we have a long, proud, rich history of manufacturing. It stems from our ability to capture the incredible power of Niagara Falls. If you have the opportunity, go through the Niagara Parks station and see that incredible site, where, for over 100 years, the power of the Falls has been harnessed to drive big machinery. And we have many, many people working with that machinery to produce incredible products.

In Ontario, it’s a legacy that we saw, under the former Liberal government, go by the wayside. We saw the former Liberal government abandon labour; we saw them abandon the hard-working men and women in places like Niagara and across Ontario who build incredible products—from our auto parts sector to our advanced manufacturing sector, in aerospace engineering to the mining sector, and everything in between. Ensuring that along every part of that supply chain continuum, there were those who were not just saving a little bit of money to be able to put food on the table—that’s important, too—but who were able to put more than that away, to be able to ensure that they have something in the bank account for a rainy day or to put their kids through university. Those are the dreams that the province of Ontario is upholding and is uplifting by the investments that have been made in things like the electric vehicle space; by ensuring that strong manufacturing is coming back in a way that we have never seen in the province of Ontario.

Speaker, I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity to hear the statistic—it was something that, when I first heard it, frankly, made me surprised but also understand now why I’m seeing that amount of growth in the Niagara region. Last year, in the province of Ontario, more manufacturing jobs were created than not one, not two, not 10, not 20, not 30, but all 52 US states combined. That is a dream and an opportunity that is a reality for so many men and women who are now able to work good jobs in those areas.

Speaker, it’s about ensuring that there’s clean, affordable energy, so that people aren’t worried about having to choose between heating and eating but are able to ensure that when they look forward to the future, when they dream about what is possible, they are able to know that, whether it’s next year, this year or five or 10 years from now, when they come home and they plug in their electric vehicle made in Ontario, they are able to have clean, affordable, reliable energy being produced because of the nuclear investments that this government is making.

It means that when they have a child or they have a loved one they have to take to a walk-in clinic, or whether it’s someone they have to take to a local hospital—like the two new hospitals going up in Niagara. It’s not just the new West Lincoln Memorial Hospital that we saw cancelled by the Liberal government, with the support of the NDP, in the 2012 budget—when the NDP propped up the Liberal government and cancelled the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital. It’s not just the new South Niagara Hospital that’s going up. It’s work on other sites—for example, the new Hotel Dieu Shaver site that’s being worked on as we speak; the planning for an expanded rehabilitation hospital in the Niagara region. Not one, not two, but three hospitals are coming to the Niagara region.

It’s incredibly important, though, that we have the people to do that work. That’s why, when I go and I visit the students, so many of them, again, from across this world—not just Canadian-born, but those who come from every corner who see the opportunities that exist in this province and believe that, if they come here, they will be able to leave a better life for their children than those who came before them. They’ve seen the advertisements; they’ve seen the important work that’s already being done here, and they believe that they have a government that has their back. That’s why, when I go to Brock University and I go through their nursing program and I speak with the students who are in that nursing program—they tell me, “A couple of years ago, there used to be 300 spots, and we were all competing for these 300 spots in this nursing program at Brock University.” Today there are 760 students in that nursing program at Brock University—well over double the amount of training spots. Those are people who have the opportunity now to give back, to earn a good wage, to be able to earn a good salary for their family, but also who are able to provide incredible care in a time with aging demographics, when we need people to provide that care.

So I look at my history and my family’s history, when we came here after the Second World War because we saw Canadians who dared to dream big. We saw Canadians who were willing to go overseas to put their lives on the line—men and women like those from the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, who I had the opportunity to join at their officers’ mess over the weekend, in St. Catharines—who believed in freedom and opportunity so much that they were willing to put their lives on the line and, by doing so, to go overseas to liberate my grandparents in Holland, in the Netherlands, and to be, in fact, a form of a walking advertisement for the best of what Canada is.

Those people, when they came here and they saw the incredible opportunity that was happening in the post-World War II era here in Canada, saw a national dream that was being created.

And who was part of that dream? Who was part of the national conversation that was happening? Of course, I know they’ve never formed government, at least at the federal level— and it took another 40 years for them to form government here, provincially. The New Democrats, or the CCFers, I guess they were called at that point. They might not have been people who, again, my ancestors always philosophically agreed with. My ancestors were farmers. My family are farmers. They’re hard-working people. They’re people who believe in the importance of community, of building things and of leaving a better future. I believed, growing up, that that was, again, a party that believed in those things. They believed in dreaming big. They believed the old line that you may as well shoot for the moon, because even if you miss, you’re going to land among the stars. That was something that I’d always thought the NDP believed in—that they shot for big things, even if often poorly thought out and naive in the way that they designed a lot of their programs.

So I go back to that question: When did the NDP lose their vision? When did they believe that better wasn’t possible? When did they believe that it wasn’t important for a national people, for a people here in Ontario or Canada, to believe in themselves and their potential, in their skills, to be proud of the things that they’re doing? When I hear them stand in this place and—I don’t want to be rude, but—complain, as they do, about the investments that are being made and the way that we’re working to build that pride in the people of Ontario, it makes me sad. This is a party that has a long history—a history in agricultural communities in southwestern Ontario, and Prairie roots among the Baptist preachers and those who continue to inspire me. It has its roots in people who believed that better was possible and that they could bring forward a positive vision of what Ontario could be. It was a party of people who believed that if you could see it, you could be it. But now this is a party who seem to think, “No, no. We don’t want you to see it, because we don’t want you to be it. We don’t think that the people of Ontario deserve to have a government that is investing in a national, in a provincial, in a forward-looking vision that they could be part of.” They don’t want to see people who are encouraged to know that we have some of the cleanest steel in the world. They don’t want to be part of bringing forward opportunities for people in skilled trades. They don’t want to be part of building up an incredible system of health care, where you have staff being trained in levels they’ve never seen before, opening up brand new facilities that they’ve never seen before. They don’t want to be part of the solution.

Again, Speaker, I go back to my question, and I want to leave you with it: When did the NDP lose their way? When did they fail to learn and when did they fail to understand that providing a vision for the future for the people of Ontario is crucial to continuing to grow, to bringing more people here to this province, to continue that legacy that each and every one of us who is in this House believes in? I would leave that question with you in hopes of an answer, because this motion doesn’t answer it. All this motion says is, “We don’t like things that the government does.”

I’ll be candid. That’s what I hear regularly from my constituents—they say, “We know what you’re doing. We see what you’re doing. We have your back in what you’re doing in building up this province, in providing opportunities, in getting homes built and in ensuring young people have good careers, good-paying careers in Ontario.”

But all we ever hear from the opposition is negativity, negativity, negativity, and today, unfortunately, they continue that trait.

So, Speaker, regrettably—I love supporting the members of the opposition when they have good ideas—I will not be supporting this motion.