Thank you to the member.

It’s good news that our water infrastructure program, the $825 million which was announced in FES and the budget—the intake process closed last Friday at midnight. I encouraged municipalities across the province to apply.

For two years, I have been asking the federal government to partner with us so we can support municipalities. They didn’t see that as important as we have.

Nonetheless, we would be happy to continue to work with Niagara region. I know that there are probably several applications within the intake, and we will let the MOI staff and officials do their jobs. I certainly hope that we will be working together in the future.

Thank you to the Mississauga member for the question. Our government’s plan to build Ontario is one of the most ambitious in the province’s history, with planned investments of $159 billion over 10 years and $20 billion in 2022-23 alone.

Last week in Mississauga, Infrastructure Ontario and Trillium Health Partners selected their builder to build the Mississauga hospital, now named the Peter Gilgan hospital. Together, the three parties will work in a co-operative and collaborative manner over the next 12 to 18 months to determine the schedule, design, price and risk. This will be the largest hospital in Canada with the largest emergency room in Ontario, 950 beds and nine new operating rooms to address the growing community.

In the west end of Toronto and Peel region, our government is investing and expanding the Queensway Health Centre. We’re building two new long-term-care homes through our rapid delivery program, which will bring and activate 600 beds. We are investing in the cancer care centre in Brampton, and we’re building a brand new hospital in Brampton with 250 patient beds and a 24-hour emergency care centre.

But we’re not just investing in growing areas. We are investing in health care facilities right across the province.

Thank you to the member.

Mr. Speaker, can I take a second to wish my parliamentary assistant, the MPP from Scarborough–Rouge Park, a very happy birthday today? I know this is something that’s very, very close to his heart: Another P3 pipeline update is the Scarborough subway extension. We are now taking that contract off the pipeline because it has been awarded—the stations, rail and systems contract. This will now go into the partnership phase, where there will be a 12-to-18-month period where the contract owner—the province of Ontario—as well as the selected builder will work collaboratively to address risk and price.

I know how excited the people of Scarborough were when Minister Mulroney, the Minister of Transportation, was there in the new year to turn on that tunnel boring machine, which is drilling below the ground in Scarborough. Mr. Speaker, we have a lot to celebrate and we will continue to build Ontario.

Thank you to the member for the question. Challenges such as inflation, rising costs of products, materials and supply chain disruptions are all real challenges that we’re facing here in Ontario, but also across the world. Our government, as a team, made a decision to face these challenges head on and forge ahead and continue to build Ontario.

Last week, we updated the P3 pipeline, which includes 38 major infrastructure projects which include an estimated value of $35 billion. Mr. Speaker, there’s some good news here, as two projects previously in pre-procurement now have gone to the market, where builders can make their submissions to Infrastructure Ontario: the Garden City Skyway twinning in Niagara, as well as the Ottawa Civic Hospital, one of our larger hospital expansion projects. Mr. Speaker, this is not a time to hesitate or delay. It is a time to build Ontario.

Building hospitals is a priority for the people of Ontario.

I want to thank the member from Niagara West for his hard work in helping to build key health care infrastructure in the Niagara region.

In our most recent market update, we are advancing on the construction of our hospitals—which includes the South Niagara Hospital project. Once completed, the South Niagara Hospital will be a full acute-care hospital with a state-of-the-art, 24/7 emergency department with diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical service. This is in addition to expanding the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Grimsby—which, by the way, was the very first hospital that our government announced when we were elected in 2018. I’m very excited that we’re making progress on these two projects.

In Brampton, we’re building a new hospital, which will include a 24/7 emergency department.

In southwestern Ontario, we’re moving forward with the widening of Highway 3 from Essex to Leamington.

And in Durham region, the Grandview children’s treatment centre in Ajax is under construction.

There will be lots more to share in the year 2023.

I certainly can. The people elected us, and they brought us back here because they want more hospitals, they want more highways, they want more schools and more public transit.

In our most recent P3 pipeline update, we are advancing on procurement and construction of our hospitals and children’s treatment centres—ones like Niagara Health, Trillium Queensway and Mississauga, WAHA, CAMH, CHEO, and Quinte Health.

With regard to transportation, we continue to advance Highway 3; the Scarborough subway; the Eglinton Crosstown West extension; the Ontario Line north, which we’ve broken up into two separate contracts; and the Garden City Skyway.

We’re also bringing Ontario Place back to life so that families have a wonderful place on the waterfront to enjoy.

Our government’s capital plan is one of the most ambitious in the province’s history. We’re building Ontario like never before. We’ve dedicated over $159 billion in the next 10 years to support priority projects such as transit, highways, schools, hospitals and long-term care. In fact, this quarter’s listing includes 39 projects in active procurement and pre-procurement. By building these projects, we will finally build a subway system that will help residents travel across the city more easily and affordably. By building more highways, we will ease congestion and help with the delivery of goods, and address capacity challenges faced by our health care and long-term-care sectors.

As the member mentioned, the people of Ontario gave our government a strong mandate to build Ontario, and that is exactly what we will do.

Mr. Speaker, we are building faster, smarter and better because the people of this great province are depending on us.