I want to start by thanking the Premier for this important role and thanking all the many men and women in the skilled trades I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with over the last 48 hours. I’m really looking forward to working with you.

Speaker, if we’re going to be honest with ourselves and we’re going to build the hospitals we need, build the schools we need, build the highways, the roads and the bridges that this Premier, this government have committed to doing to support a stronger Ontario, we need the men and women who are going to build them. We need them—men and women like my grandfather, who came off the boats from Italy and found a very rewarding career in the trades. But for too many, that’s out of reach. The opportunity for home ownership and everything he did to provide for my family is out of reach. But under this Premier’s watch, it’s changing.

I want to draw attention to an important fact: Since the moves this government has made to support the skilled trades, we’ve seen an increase in apprenticeship registrations in the last year of over 24%. Bottom line: It’s working.

I’d like to acknowledge the work of the Associate Minister of Women’s Social and Economic Opportunity—the work that she has been doing to ensure that we have greater representation of women in the trades—and again, it is working. Under the leadership of this Premier, we have seen an increase in the number of female apprenticeship registrations, up by over 30% from last year. I hope, in the spirit of non-partisanship, that’s something that everybody in this House can say is a good thing.