Speaker, we know that farmland is critical to the success of our agri-food industry. That’s why we’re taking a balanced approach, working with communities to find the right balance.

Just look at what happened in St. Thomas: 1,500 acres of land was assembled with no expropriations. That allowed Volkswagen to announce their gigafactory—3,000 jobs, 30,000 indirect jobs. To get there, we introduced Bill 63, and that was able to change the way municipalities were handling the real estate in their areas. It facilitated Volkswagen coming here. The bill was supported by both parties.

Why are they not supporting us today?

Speaker, again, I refer back to the deal that was made with Volkswagen—1,500 acres.

Bill 63 was supported by both opposition parties. It’s very unclear why they’re so dead against advancing today.

Look at Windsor as an example. They made sure their land was assembled, and as a result, NextStar, there, invested $5 billion in their plant. That’s bringing 2,500 good-paying jobs to the Windsor region and tens of thousands of indirect jobs. I flew over Windsor, took a photo of that massive site, landed and toured that plant. There are 1,400 Ontario men and women working inside that plant, to build that plant today. That’s the result of being proactive and looking for these lands.

The Premier has asked these municipalities, “Assemble your land, and be part of the success of Ontario.”

The members opposite have opposed every economic development in our province at virtually every opportunity they got.

We have tens of billions of dollars of new job-creating investment in our pipeline. The Premier said to municipalities, about a year ago, “Start assembling land in your regions if you want to be in on all of the jobs that are coming to Ontario,” and communities all across Ontario are assembling land. We put a template together. Municipalities are eager to get in and list their property, list the development sites that are available. They’re hungry for these jobs. They’re hungry to assemble shovel-ready sites.

Speaker, we’re decades behind our biggest competitor in the US, and for that reason, we have a dedicated team who are taking all of these responses from municipalities.

Speaker, when businesses look around the world today, they see these heightened geopolitical tensions, lots and lots of uncertainty all around the world. But when they look at Ontario, they see this sea of tranquility; they see this endless opportunity for hope. They know things have changed now that the Liberals are gone.

Ontario is no longer the high-tax, uncompetitive jurisdiction it once was when the Liberals were in government. We’ve lowered the cost of doing business, we’ve reduced red tape, and we’ve made sure that the conditions are there for businesses to succeed. As a result, companies from around the world have flooded into Ontario to set up shop.

The Liberal carbon tax is an attempt to take us back to those days when the Ontario economy was staggering. We ask that they listen to the workers, listen to the businesses.

Scrap the carbon tax today.

For families, more money in their pockets means the opportunity for their kids to enrol in recreational activities; for young people, it means being one step closer to their dream of home ownership; for entrepreneurs, it means more money to scale up their companies and hire more of our trained workers.

The Liberals are ramping up their carbon tax because they think they know how to spend money better than the people who earned it.

Speaker, we’re asking the federal Liberals to give the people of Ontario a break and scrap the carbon tax today.