Thank you to the member from Carleton for her question.

For far too long, the previous Liberal government drove up the cost of doing business in this province and drove out good-paying jobs. We are taking a better approach. Through the Building Ontario Business initiative, our government is leveraging Ontario’s buying power to drive demand for made-in-Ontario goods and services.

The recently announced updates to Ontario’s procurement directives will provide Ontario businesses with greater access to public procurement opportunities. For example, a business in Carleton that invests in Ontario and that uses local supply chains and creates good-paying jobs right here in our province will no longer be put at a disadvantage when bidding for government contracts.

Speaker, our government is proud to buy Ontario.

Through Supply Ontario, our government is taking meaningful steps to reduce red tape faced by small businesses in the procurement process by centralizing our government’s supply chain and delivering better value for taxpayers by harmonizing contracts across the Ontario public sector.

Additionally, our government is developing an innovation pathway that, in collaboration with Supply Ontario, will make it easier for health services providers to procure from Ontario’s medtech innovators and will remove barriers to the adoption of promised technologies that improve outcomes for Ontarians.

We will continue to move forward with our plan that buys—