Back to the Premier: As someone who has owned several small businesses, I know first-hand how hard it is to get a small business off the ground. I launched my businesses before today’s challenges of every fast technology change and costly inflation hikes.

Sonja Scharf, a small business owner in my riding, told me, “The Digital Main Street Program helps small businesses like ours offset costs and build an online presence. This program is an extremely valuable asset to small businesses. I can only praise their work.”

Now is not the time for the Premier to pull the plug on Digital Main Street funding, and it’s never time to abandon small businesses in Ontario. Yes or no: Will the Premier reverse course, listen to the small business owners and maintain funding to keep the lights on for the Digital Main Street Program?

To the member across, thank you so much for your presentation. I wholeheartedly agree with you that we have to be able to force and move and compel businesses to innovate, especially in the new digital economy. I’m a huge believer around modernization, especially around making it more efficient and reducing any type of red tape, as we like to call it in this House.

But the conversations I’ve had with small business owners and small-to-medium enterprise, including with the representatives with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, are that the biggest concerns right now with small business owners and business owners in particular is the debt that they’re carrying because of the COVID pandemic. That’s probably their number one concern that’s not being addressed in this bill. They’re carrying about $139 billion of debt. Over 76% of those businesses are going to have to take a lot of their one year to pay that debt. How does the government plan to address that specific business concern that’s coming so prominently from the community?