The members opposite have opposed economic development in our province at virtually every opportunity they get. We have tens of billions of prospects, new job-creating investments in our pipeline. In fact, we now have more prospects than we have land readily available. That is why the Premier put out a call. He put out a call to municipalities all across the province to get shovel-ready sites assembled so these companies can set up shop and create those good-paying jobs in their own communities.

Speaker, we are decades behind our biggest competitor, south of the border, when it comes to having shovel-ready sites. For that reason, we have now a dedicated team at our ministry and at Invest Ontario who are vetting lands sent by our municipal partners. Companies from across the globe know there is no better place to do business than right here in Ontario.

The last thing we’re going to do is to now listen to the NDP and Liberals, whose high-tax policy saw business and workers flee our province in droves—300,000 manufacturing and other workers left our province under the Liberals. We are creating the conditions for job growth in every industry and in every region.

Interjections.

In order for all of these communities in Ontario to get in on the pipeline of tens of billions of dollars, the Premier’s instructions to municipalities were, “Get your shovel-ready sites assembled.”

Look at what happened in St. Thomas: 1,500 acres, no expropriation. Let’s go down to Windsor and look at the NextStar plant. Here we have a community of Windsor that assembled their land: 2,500 direct jobs, tens of thousands of indirect jobs all happening in the Windsor area. We’ve already been back down in Windsor twice now to announce other companies who are part of that NextStar. DS, Bobaek: These are companies who are now hiring hundreds and thousands of people because they assembled their land in Windsor, because they assembled their lands at Volkswagen in St. Thomas, with no expropriation.

This is what’s happening. This is what’s happening all across Ontario. We have tens of billions of dollars of investment that want to come here to create jobs.