It’s 10.7.

I’m proud to rise this afternoon in the third reading of Bill 162, the Get It Done Act, introduced by the Minister of Transportation. I want to thank him and his team, including the associate minister and the parliamentary assistant from Hastings–Lennox and Addington for all the great work they’re doing.

I want to thank the associate minister in particular for all his great work on the One Fare initiative. Speaker, it’s been less than two months, and there have already been over five million free transfers between GO Transit and municipal transit systems across the GTA. Again, this will save the average commuter $1,600 each year.

Before I begin my remarks, I also want to congratulate the Premier and the Minister of Economic Development for their announcement today on the largest auto sector investment in Canadian history: $15 billion from Honda for new electric vehicle manufacturing plants in Alliston, north of Toronto. Speaker, this means that, in the last three years alone, we have been able to attract over $43 billion of investment from global automakers here in Ontario.

I remember when the former Liberal Minister of Finance, who I ran against in 2018, said that assembly line manufacturing was “a thing of the past” in Ontario. Speaker, if the former Liberal government had been re-elected, it would have been something in the past. But our government has taken a very different approach, that the bill today, Bill 162, would continue. We’re cutting taxes, red tape, energy costs, and making Ontario open for business again. This has produced an economic recovery that leads the country and leads North America.

In June 2018, there were 7.2 million jobs in the province. Last month, there were almost eight million. That’s an increase of 725,000 jobs. That is an average of about 10,500 new jobs each month, or 126,000 new jobs each year. Last year, Ontario created more manufacturing jobs than all 50 US states combined.

Speaker, to support this growth, the 2024 budget includes the most ambitious capital plan in Ontario’s history. It includes investments of $190 billion in infrastructure over the next 10 years, including $98 billion for new highways and public transit, including many critical projects in Mississauga and across the Peel region that the changes in Bill 162 would help us to build faster.

As the minister said, modernizing and streamlining Ontario’s 50-year-old environmental assessment process would make it easier to build infrastructure we need. That includes the new 20-kilometre Hazel McCallion LRT line in Mississauga, including the new downtown loop and expansions into Brampton that were announced earlier this year. This project is now a priority transit project under the Building Transit Faster Act, together with the Ontario Line and other major subway and LRT projects across Ontario. It includes a historic GO Transit expansion along the Lakeshore and Milton lines and across the GTA. ONxpress is planning to run up to 18 trains per hour on the Lakeshore West line; that is an average of a train every three minutes. Expansion of the Milton line would be a little bit more difficult because the corridor is owned by Canadian Pacific; the passengers share the same tracks with the freight train. But we’re working toward a two-way, all-day service by building a fully separated passenger rail line.

The changes included with Bill 162 would help us get this new rail, highways and other important infrastructure built up to four years sooner. For example, for some projects, terms of reference will no longer be required, which by itself can save up to two years.

Schedule 1 would also make a minor change to clarify that we can acquire property before an EA is approved. While these changes would save time and money, it is important to note that all environmental safeguards would still be maintained, including consultation. But Bill 162 would help to bring Ontario’s EA process in line with other provinces, including Quebec and British Columbia, and with the federal government.

On that note, I want to take a moment here to thank the federal government again for their decision last month to cancel their EA on Highway 413, which would have delayed the project by at least five years. By working together, we should be able to begin construction next year to help connect Peel, Halton and York regions and save drivers 30 minutes each way. That’s five hours per week and 260 hours each year, or a total of 11 days each year.

Ontario grew by half a million people last year, and we’re on track for at least another half a million people this year. That’s more growth than any US state, including the fastest-growing states like Florida or Texas. The western GTA doesn’t have the highway capacity we need to support this growth. All of our major highways, including the 407, will be over capacity within the next 10 years. Highway 413 will finally bring relief to an area that clearly needs it.

I’ve mentioned this before, but when I was first elected, we met with the region of Peel, on September 18, 2018, and they told us that Highway 413 was one of their top priorities. They said it’s “critical to the economic well-being of both the region of Peel and the entire province.” They said Highway 413 is “required to support increased capacity, which is needed across Peel due to our goods movement sector.”

This was the position of Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga, including Bonnie Crombie. Like John Kerry, she was for Highway 413 before she was against it. Not long ago, the federal Liberal environment minister said that his government would stop investing in road infrastructure, but even he is now on side on Highway 413, so I hope that Bonnie Crombie will support 413 again as well.

Next, I move on to schedule 2, which would help make life easier and more affordable for drivers. As you know, two years ago, we eliminated licence plate renewal fees for passenger vehicles, saving drivers $120 each year in southern Ontario and $60 in northern Ontario. Combined with our gas and fuel tax cuts until at least the end of 2024, which are saving the average household another $320, this is real relief for Ontario taxpayers.

Unfortunately, at an event earlier this month at the Empire Club, Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie said that these are just “gimmicks” that she would cancel if she ever got a chance. This couldn’t be any more out of touch with the average Ontarian. I have a lot of respect for the member from Ottawa South; he was right when he said his party lost in 2018 and lost party status because they had a listening problem. Their leader still has that same problem.

Families are struggling with the cost of living, high interest rates, high inflation and, of course, the federal carbon tax. That’s what I’ve been hearing lately when I go door-knocking in Mississauga–Lakeshore or in Milton. I haven’t been in Lambton–Kent–Middlesex, but I’m sure it’s the same there as well. They don’t think that the tax relief we’re providing is a gimmick. That’s why schedules 2 and 4 of Bill 162 would put the current freeze on driver licence and photo card fees in legislation for the first time: $35 for photo cards and $90 for a five-year driver’s licence. This would save drivers $88 million by 2030 and also help to protect them from future increases. Moving forward, this House would have to approve any changes.

As well, schedule 2 of Bill 162 would help us to transition to automatic licence plate renewals for drivers in good standing who have no outstanding tickets or fines. As the Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery said, at a time when people are as busy as ever with their work and families, we can save them time, not just money, by making government services simpler, faster and better. That is what schedule 2 would do. As the minister said, this change alone would save drivers over 900,000 hours each year.

Moving on to schedule 3: As I said earlier this week, our government is committed to working in partnership with municipalities to get shovels in the ground and build 1.5 million homes. As the minister said, we are not micromanaging or taking a top-down, Queen’s-Park-knows-best approach. These changes to official plans in schedule 3 of Bill 162 respond to feedback from municipalities, including the region of Peel, after many months of consultation.

I also want to thank my friend the Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks for all the work she’s doing to consult with our municipal partners to streamline the EA process for water and sewage projects. As Mayor Steven Del Duca told the committee of infrastructure back in January, the biggest problem municipalities are dealing with as they work towards their housing targets is the need for more water and waste water infrastructure. That’s why the 2024 budget includes $825 million for the Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund, which we announced at the Arthur P. Kennedy Water Treatment Plant in Lakeview. The planning expansion here will support tens of thousands of new homes along the Mississauga waterfront, including the Brightwater and Lakeview developments.

Right now, the municipal-class EA process for new waste water treatment plants or an expansion can take up to two years or more, when we need homes right now. Adding time limits for the first time could help cut these timelines from two years to six months. As I said before, all current environmental safeguards would be maintained, including consultation.

Next, I want to thank the minister for schedule 5, which would protect Ontarians from any new provincial carbon tax by making the government ask for the approval of voters in a referendum.

It was an honour to welcome the Premier and the Minister of Finance to the Pioneer gas station in Port Credit for an announcement in February. I got my first job there at that station when I was 16, pumping gas and propane. At the time, the price of gas was 33 cents per litre. Within the next six years, the federal carbon tax is scheduled to rise to over 37 cents per litre, more than the price of gas when I had my first job there. At a time when many families and small businesses cannot afford it, this will increase the price of gas, groceries and almost everything else. Again, this is with the full support of the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie.

As the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer reported last year, the federal carbon tax costs the average Ontario family almost $1,700, far more than any rebate. Still, Bonnie Crombie refused to call on the federal Liberals to cancel their 23% carbon tax hike on April 1. As I said, just a few days later, she told the Empire Club that she would cancel the relief that we’re providing here to help keep costs down for families and small businesses. Speaker, that’s why, when Bonnie Crombie says she won’t introduce a provincial carbon tax, it is very hard to take her seriously because we’ve seen if all before.

Former Premier Kathleen Wynne—who was back here at the Legislature yesterday—promised that she wouldn’t introduce a provincial carbon tax in 2014, but in 2015, just one year later, she introduced the cap-and-trade carbon tax. Now, just last month, the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie told Colin D’Mello she thinks that this “was a great program.”

So, again, I want to remind all the members what the Auditor General wrote about it back at that time. She wrote that cap-and-trade would have cost Ontario families and businesses $2 billion every year with hundreds of millions of dollars sent to California for little or no environmental benefits.

On November 30, 2016, the Auditor General wrote that the Liberal government did not study whether cap-and-trade would actually reduce emissions in California. In other words, she wrote, “These funds may be leaving the Ontario economy for no purpose other than to help the government claim it has met a target.”

The Liberals also claim cap-and-trade would cost only $5 on your natural gas bill each year, but two of my constituents in Clarkson, Bill and Muriel Chudiak actually did their homework and they discovered that it would cost at least triple that which was hard for seniors living on fixed incomes.

As Premier Kathleen Wynne admitted, some seniors were forced to choose between paying the electric bill and buying food or paying their rent because of her mistakes on the energy file. They sold off Hydro One and created many new long-term energy costs. They signed over 33,000 contracts to buy power for 80 cents per kilowatt hour when nuclear power was available for nine cents per kilowatt hour.

In December 2015, the Auditor General reported that because of mistakes like this, Ontario consumers were paying for electricity that was overpriced by $170 billion. For a typical family, that’s a power bill of about $1,200 higher than it should have been every year.

Speaker, this mismanagement of the energy sector is the reason—more than anything else—the Liberals lost party status in 2018 and again in 2022. Bonnie Crombie calls Bill 162 a “gimmick” or a “distraction,” but I’d like to share a statement from the former leader of the Liberal Party and now, the mayor of Vaughan, Steven Del Duca: “It is critically important,” he said, “that we help to keep our residents moving and our economy growing while not adding any financial burden to the people we represent.” And he continued, “I thank the Ontario government for introducing legislation”—and he’s talking about Bill 162 here—“that will help to accomplish these important goals.” So I want to thank him for that and for the work that we’re doing together to keep costs down and to support economic growth right here in Ontario.

Lastly, I want to add a few words about schedule 6. This would amend the Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act to ban any new tolls on provincial highways, including the 400-series highways, but also the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway, once they’re uploaded to the province.

In April 2022, we removed tolls on Highway 412 and 418, which is expected to save drivers another $68 million by 2027. Much like schedule 5, schedule 6 would require any future government to consult the public before they introduce any new tax.

Again, I want to thank the minister and his team for all their work on another important bill here in the House, and I know that as a government, we are saving taxpayers money here in Ontario, and we have increased our budget here in Ontario from $152 billion in 2017, under the former Liberal government, to $214 billion for Ontarians, without raising one tax and giving money back to our Ontario families across the province. So I just want to thank everyone for listening to me here today, and I want to thank the Speaker as well.

I want to thank the member for that question. As you know, our goal is to build 1.5 million homes through the province of Ontario, and we are on target to build that. I look at my own community of Mississauga–Lakeshore with the Brightwater development and the Lakeview development going forward. We’re looking at building 16,000 new units in the Lakeview development, with 10% of those homes being affordable and attainable for the people here in Ontario. As well, Brightwater has already their Peel homes there. We’re going to continue to build homes across the province.

I look at the Indwell projects that we have right now. We have one on Lakeshore in Lakeview that has units there, as well as we’re going to be building another building in the Clarkson area. We’re continuing to build homes, and we’re going to continue building through the province of Ontario with our municipalities and working together with them.

This is the largest budget ever in Ontario’s history, without raising a tax, and we’re giving money back. We’re building hospitals. We’re building long-term care that was neglected by the Liberal government for so many years. Even in my riding alone, one long-term-care facility has 632 beds—more than the Liberal government built in the last 15 years.

As well, we are freezing our drivers’ licence fees, and that is saving us another $22 million. And the photo cards, as well, will save Ontarians another $66 million. And by building the 413, that will save commuters another 30 minutes each way. But not only that; because of all the automotive investment that we are getting here in the province of Ontario, $43 billion and the $15 billion today, we’re going to need more corridors to move our parts to these plants through the province.

I want to thank the member from Malton for that excellent question, and I want to thank you for all the great work you do in Malton as well. And being my colleague from Mississauga, thank you. I’m really honoured to have you as my colleague from Mississauga.

As you know, building that 413 will save commuters an extra 30 minutes each way. That’s a total of an hour each day. But not only that, because of the gridlock that we do have, in the next 10 years, every corridor in the GTA will be gridlocked. So we’ve got to look for the future, how this highway will help us get parts into our plants We’re investing in all this automotive investment in the province; we need more highways and more transit in Ontario.

As we are, we are building the LRT line on Hurontario, which is coming right from my area of Port Credit all the way into Brampton, and with the loop too. We are building more transit than any other government has done in the history of Ontario: over $71 billion in transit and $28 billion in roads and highways. We’re going to continue doing this and building Ontario for the future and for our children to prosper here.

As well, I want to talk about the other highways. I know he mentioned the 407, but I want to talk about the other tolls that we have taken off other highways like the 412 and the 418, which is saving us $68 million.

And building new highways, that is very—like I said all the time, it’s about getting things to market. And it’s very important, because if we can’t get things into market, we’re going to lose that advantage that we have. We have one of the best workforces in the world right here in Ontario, and that’s why we’ve been able to attract $43 billion of automotive investment here in Ontario.

I remember when I used to work for an automotive company. They were going to leave Ontario because this is not a jurisdiction for them to produce vehicles. We’ve changed that here in Ontario because of the Premier and the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Economic Development, who have been able to attract all these people to come here to Ontario.

I want to thank that member for that excellent question.