Ontario Premier Doug Ford: Building Ontario

June 19, 2023

The Empire Club of Canada Presents

Ontario Premier Doug Ford: Building Ontario

Chairman: Sal Rabbani, President, Board of Directors, Empire Club of Canada

Distinguished Guest Speakers
Joseph Mancinelli, International Vice-President & Canadian Director, LiUNA
Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario
Flavio Volpe, President, Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association (APMA)
Megan Telford, Executive Vice-President, Head of Strategy, Energy Transition, Human Resources and Safety, Hydro One

Head Table Guests
Izzie Abrams, Vice-President, Government & External Affairs, Waste Connections of Canada
Tania Artenosi, President, Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA)
Chris Benedetti, Managing Partner, Sussex Strategy Group
Rejean Bourgault, Country Leader, Public Sector, AWS Canada
Patrick Dalzell, Head of Corporate Affairs, Bruce Power
Ian L. Edwards, President & CEO, SNC Lavalin
Martin Gangadeen, Tax Practice Leader, Consumer and Industrial Markets & Partner, KPMG LLP
Michele Harradence, Executive Vice-President & President Gas Distribution and Storage, Enbridge Inc.
Corey Hessen, Executive Vice-President & President, Power & Energy Solutions, TC Energy
Dr. Mohamed Lachemi, President & Vice-Chancellor, Toronto Metropolitan University
Paul Lehmann, Head, Enterprise Public Affairs and Communication, BMO
Sal Rabbani, President of the Board of Directors, Empire Club of Canada, Managing Partner, BDC Advisory Services, BDC, Empire Club of Canada
Dr. Fabio Varlese, MD FRCPC, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Ann Marie Vaughan, President & CEO, Humber College
Blaine Woodcock, Partner, Deloitte Canada
Julia Zhang, CEO, JD Development Group

Introduction
It is a great honour for me to be here at the Empire Club of Canada today, which is arguably the most famous and historically relevant speaker’s podium to have ever existed in Canada. It has offered its podium to such international luminaries as Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, Audrey Hepburn, the Dalai Lama, Indira Gandhi, and closer to home, from Pierre Trudeau to Justin Trudeau; literally generations of our great nation's leaders, alongside with those of the world's top international diplomats, heads of state, and business and thought leaders.

It is a real honour and distinct privilege to be invited to speak to the Empire Club of Canada, which has been welcoming international diplomats, leaders in business, and in science, and in politics. When they stand at that podium, they speak not only to the entire country, but they can speak to the entire world.

Welcome Address by Sal Rabbani, President, Board of Directors, Empire Club of Canada
Good afternoon. Please be seated. Welcome to the 119th season of the Empire Club of Canada. To our in-person attendees joining us at the Arcadian court in Toronto, I'm delighted to be here with you today. And to our virtual audience joining in live or on demand, thank you for your participation and support. This incredible community of colleagues and peers is a driving force behind our mandate to engage, debate, indicate, and advance the dialogue on issues of importance to Canadians. Welcome. My name is Sal Rabbani, and I'm the president of the Board of Directors of the Empire Club of Canada.

To formally begin this afternoon, I want to acknowledge that we are gathering today on the traditional and treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the homelands of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wyandot Peoples. We encourage everyone to learn more about the traditional territory on which you work and live.

We are extremely privileged to have with us two absolute champions for our province, Ontario premier Doug Ford, in conversation with Flavio Volpe, President of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association. Thank you for being here. We've got a lot going on in Ontario. Largest economy in Canada, contributing around 40 percent of the country’s GDP, and home to almost half of all employees in high-tech, financial services, and other knowledge-intensive industries. A growing, diverse population, a dynamic economy with sound fundamentals, a strong manufacturing sector. We also face some important challenges—labour shortages and inflation—that are impacting our businesses and their competitiveness.

But I believe we don't speak enough about another great advantage that Ontario has. Something less tangible, yet super powerful. And this is our ambition. As a proud Ontarian, I'm definitely biased, and you'd be hard-pressed to find more innovation, more drive, and more collective ambition to transform great ideas into tangible businesses or success stories, than right here in Ontario.

I'll share just two recent examples. Volkswagen, choosing Ontario to build the site of their first battery site outside of Europe, and hiring 3000 people in St. Thomas; going head-to-head with 90 sites around the world and winning. This took a lot of work, I'm sure, at all levels. But this also took a lot of ambition. And second is Project Arrow, Canada's first zero-emissions autonomous concept vehicle. Again, this is ambition. Flavio, big congrats for your leadership in showing the world just what our auto industry is capable of.

There are many other examples outside the auto and manufacturing industry—and I'm sure we'll hear more from Premier Ford in a minute. This is a province of ambition. I've called Ontario home since I was three, when my parents immigrated here, and I've seen firsthand the power, the winning mindset, and the energy Ontario has. And I can tell you without a doubt that this definitely is the best place to live and work in the entire world. One of my top commitments at the Empire Club is to extend our reach to better engage the next generation. And so, we want to provide them with opportunities for participation, get them more involved in our events and conversations. If we're going to ask any of the students and young professionals in the room today—and those that are listening online—they would tell us that we could even be more ambitious in Ontario. We could dream even more bigger. And you know what? I think they're right. The only limits are the ones that we impose on ourselves. Premier Ford, today you're speaking in front of 400 very determined people who think big for Ontario, and who are very excited for our collective future. We look forward to your address, and to hearing about your ambitions for our province.

Turning to today's program, I want to recognize the Empire Club’s distinguished Past Presidents, Board of Directors, staff, and volunteers. Thank you for your contributions in making this event a success. We also have several special guests in attendance, and I'd like to acknowledge the Honourable Caroline Mulroney, Minister of Francophone Affairs and Minister of Transportation; the Honourable Monte McNaughton, Minister of Labour, Training, and Skills Development; and the Honourable Nina Tangri, Associate Minister of Housing; the Honourable Peter Bethenny Falvey, Minister of Finance.

The Empire Club of Canada is a not-for-profit organization, and we'd like to recognize our sponsors, who generously support the club and make these events possible and complementary for our online viewers to attend. Thank you to our lead event sponsors, Hydro One and LiUNA; thank you to our VIP reception sponsors, Amazon, BMO, Bruce Power, Deloitte, Enbridge, OREA, SNC Lavalin, Sussex, TC Energy, and Waste Connections; and thank you to our supporting sponsors, Billy Bishop Airport, Fasken, Home Care Ontario, IBAO, Johnson & Johnson, Labatt, PwC, Provincial Building Construction Trades Council of Ontario; and thank you to our season sponsors, Bruce Power, Hydro One and TELUS.

For those of us joining us online, if you require technical assistance, please start a conversation with our team using the chat button on the right-hand side of your screen. It is now my pleasure to invite Joseph Mancinelli, International Vice-President and Head of Canada for LiUNA, to introduce our guest speaker. Joseph, welcome.

Opening Remarks by Joseph Mancinelli, International Vice-President & Canadian Director, LiUNA
Thank you, Sal. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. For decades—many of you will agree—we have seen a level of inertia in all levels of government. At the municipal level, a lot of bureaucracy, where it takes too long for projects to get approved—three to four years in a number of municipalities—stunting the growth of our communities, a lack of housing because of that level of inertia; where budgets at all levels of government have been cut, so that way, transportation has suffered, infrastructure has suffered because of these budget cuts. In order to reverse this level of inertia in this province, it takes exceptional leadership. It takes leadership with vision, it takes leadership that takes control to build a team, a strong team, of cabinet ministers in order to tackle these very important issues that are stunting the growth of our great province.

Today I have the honour of introducing a leader, an exceptional leader, who has turned this province around in such a very short period of time. Cutting through red tape, giving the opportunity to a number of municipalities to fast forward their plans for building housing, for building new roads, sewer and water main infrastructure, that are so important to all the citizens in each community. To build transportation infrastructure that has been ignored for decades, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs right across the province of Ontario. I've had the pleasure of sitting on the Invest Ontario board, and I can't believe how many companies right across the planet are now zeroing in on Ontario, investing in Ontario, because of the confidence they have in the leadership of our province. So, without any further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the leader who is making all of this change possible, our premier, Premier of Ontario, our friend, Doug Ford. Thank you so much.

Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario
Appreciate it, thank you. Well, thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much, everyone. Well first, first of all, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. And thank you, Joseph, for that very kind introduction. And I have to I have to tell you, Joseph, you want to talk about true community builders, city builders, province builders, and right across the country, there's one name that stands out: Joseph Mancinelli. And thank you for your great partnership. And I want to thank you, Sal, along with your entire team here at the Empire Club, for having us by, and hosting so many events over a number of years. I also want to thank my pal—I call him my pal—he was instrumental in growing the auto sector here to a tune of 25 billion dollars, that we'll talk about shortly, is Flavio Volpe. And thank you for moderating today. I understand we're going to have a chat later on.

And it's great to see everyone, not only Joseph, but Anthony and Victoria, Victoria, his daughter. I always joke around, the brains behind the operation, Joseph. Wonderful to see your family here. Another true champion that's instrumental in moving our economy forward, building infrastructure, is Hydro One chair, Tim Hodgson. Tim came over the other day and had a great chat. And I know you planned on bringing your dad over—I think he was 88 years old—that didn't happen; but give him all our best, and I look forward to sitting down with him. Another good friend is Doctor Mohamed Lachemi, where is—I call him the Commander-in-Chief—over at TMU. And you're doing a great job graduating some really, really bright young people, along with Ann Marie Vaughan. Ann Marie, I saw you earlier—there you are. Humber College; largest college in the country. And I'll get into the reason why so many companies are coming here to Ontario, and you two are part of that critical path. Tim Hudak from OREA. Tim, great to see—I don't. Oh, there you are. It was great to see you and thank you for everything that you're doing as well, and so many familiar faces in the audience. Each one of these people, including the people in our audience, will play a critical role in our economic growth and prosperity right here in Ontario. And thank you all for joining us.

Friends, one year ago this month, it was a privilege and an honour to be re-elected to serve the great people of Ontario. Our government was elected on a promise to get it done, and we're delivering on that promise. And I'm thrilled to be here with all of you, people instrumental in getting it done, to not only talk about the progress we've made as a province in the past year, but in the past five years. But also, about how we are working to build Ontario, and to deliver the infrastructure our growing province needs. And I say all the time, infrastructure is absolutely critical. No matter if it's the highways we're building through the leadership of Minister Mulroney, infrastructure being built across this province by Minister Surma. We're investing over 184 billion dollars over the next 10 years, building schools and hospitals, bridges, and highways, and roads, right across our great province.

We've been hard at work building a stronger, more resilient economy that can weather any storm. We're creating the conditions and the climate for businesses to grow and succeed. We've made electricity more affordable. When you look at small and medium-size and large-size companies, we've reduced it by 15 to 17 percent. We've cut red tape by over 700 million dollars—and everyone loved the fact that we're the first government ever to have a Minister of Red Tape Reduction. But where the red tape comes from is, each and every one of you, in the sectors that feed us the regulations that aren't necessary or duplicated from the federal government. Cutting unnecessary red tape, making it easier to do business in Ontario, and we're keeping taxes and fees low—I have a strong believer in this. You have two choices in government. You jack up the taxes on businesses and people, and you just see an absolute slowdown. They put the brakes on. People will stop spending, as simple as going out for dinner or doing a renovation, or buying a refrigerator, and so on and so forth. And businesses, we saw what happened in the last government. They'll stop spending, and they'll leave the province. We took a different approach. We reduced taxes. And we saw more people being employed, more revenue going up to the Queens Park coffers. In fact, we've reduced the cost of doing business here in Ontario by 8 billion dollars a year. That's right, 8 billion—with a B—each and every year. That's money that goes back into businesses so they can invest in their workers, growth, innovation. Our plan is working.

The numbers speak for themselves, folks. When we first took office five years ago, the previous government chased 300,000 jobs out of our province. Fast forward five years ago, almost to the day, almost 650,000 more people are working today than they were five years ago, in 2018, when we took office. But the other great news is, we have 380,000 jobs going unfilled each and every day. I say great news because we need more people to fill those jobs. Last year alone, 85,000 new businesses opened right here in Ontario. And Joseph, you mentioned Invest Ontario—and what a talented board we have there, my goodness, in all different sectors—but I think you were telling me, or someone was mentioning, you have 200 files, applications, to open up here in Ontario, from companies all over the world. So, thank you for the great work and the teams doing over at Invest Ontario.

And we're attracting billions of dollars in new investments every day, across all sectors and in all regions of the province. In Life Sciences, we secured over 3 billion dollars in new projects, including Moderna's investment to manufacture vaccines in Cambridge, Astrazeneca's expansion of its research facility, Roche new Operation Hub—both in Mississauga—and Sanofi, 925-million-dollar state-of-the-art vaccine facility right here in Ontario, and Toronto.

In tech, Ontario's home to one of the largest IT clusters anywhere in North America. And tech job creation here in Toronto continues to outpace—these are great figures—San Francisco, the Bay Area, Seattle, New York City, combined. I'll give you an example. San Francisco Bay Area employs about 388,000 people in the region, whereas we employ over 411,000 people. Every day—and it's usually at nighttime, about eleven o'clock at night—Minister Vic Fedeli, our number salesperson in the in the province, sends me over a text, ‘and this is the company that's coming, this is the investment, these are the amount of people we're employing.’ And it's every day, and he never misses a day. Then we sit down—and he has a binder about that big—and he sits down, and he runs through all the investments. Not 10 million, hundreds of millions, but billions that are being invested, right here in Ontario.

And one of the reasons, I'll tell you, it's because the great colleges and universities we have. And the auto sector alone, I think there's 24 colleges and universities that are focusing on the auto sector. But they always ask, you know, our number one talent are the young people coming out of these great colleges and universities. I'll put them up against anywhere in the world. And again, thank you for everything that each and every one of you do, who run the colleges and universities.

We're putting our manufacturing sector back on the map. We're building a homegrown electric vehicle supply chain—I call it the electric vehicle revolution—that's connecting critical minerals in northern Ontario and clean steelmakers in Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie, over at Algoma in Sault Ste. Marie, and Dofasco in Hamilton. It's like—we're changing over to electric for or furnaces—it's like taking 2,000,000 cars off the road. To automakers and battery manufacturers across Ontario, and over the past two-and-a-half years, we've attracted over 25 billion dollars in automotive and EV battery investments. Flavio, thank you for your leadership and doing that, and standing shoulder to shoulder with us, including. Volkswagen's 7-billion-dollar investment in their first overseas EV battery facility, right here in Ontario, in beautiful St. Thomas. Sal, I know you mentioned it, but this is really incredible. And I'll tell you, the people of Volkswagen, they're tough. They're tough, but they're very fair. Anyone in real estate can comprehend these numbers: their footprint is going to be 16 million square feet, it's going to be a 1500-acre business park, the largest in North America. Both of them will be the largest in North America. But I love their plan. Not only are they going to put their facility there, but they're going to put all their suppliers behind them. So, J-I-T, just in time, will have parts flowing through there. And they're going to create direct and indirect jobs of over 30,000 people. It's like we're building a new city in St. Thomas. Before, they lost 5000 auto jobs, and you could shoot a cannon down the middle of the street in St. Thomas. Now, it's just going to be absolutely booming in all areas.

These major investments, they're spurring further growth across our manufacturing sectors, across all sectors. In fact, we're the only jurisdiction in the entire world that has six of the largest automakers right here in Ontario, helping to create more jobs in every single region of Ontario. But friends, as our economy grows, as our population grows—and I'm not too sure if you saw StatsCan a couple of months ago, I love using these stats—you have Florida. I talked to a lot of folks in Florida and Texas, and both governors always say, “hey, we're the fastest growing anywhere in North America, we have a thousand people coming into our state every single day.” And you look at the size of Texas, I think it's about 36 million, and Florida is about 22 million, give or take. And they're so proud of it. So do the math. A thousand a day, that's 365,000 a year there. Well, Stats Canada came out, we have 445,000 people that arrived in Ontario last year alone. So, we're leading North America in economic growth and in population growth.

We know that we need infrastructure to keep up. That's why we've embarked on the most ambitious capital plan in Canadian history. We're investing an unprecedented 184 billion dollars in infrastructure projects over the next 10 years. We're investing 22 billion dollars to build more schools and childcare spaces. We're investing nearly 50 billion dollars to support more than 50 new hospital projects right across the province. Your community’s either getting a new hospital, or you're getting an addition to a hospital; we're investing 28 billion dollars in roads and highways, be it the 413, the Bradford Bypass; 60 billion dollars in transit, including 30 billion dollars of which is dedicated to building the largest transit expansion in North America, with our four subway lines being built as we speak today.

Our government has made incredible progress building transportation infrastructure. Shovels are in the ground to build the new Ontario Line. We've started construction on a bridge crossing over the future Bradford Bypass. We're building Highway 413, as I mentioned—a new 400-series highway across Halton, Peel and York Region—that will bring relief to the most congested corridor in all of North America. In Windsor, we've awarded the contract to design, and build, and finance, the widening of Highway 3, and have launched procurement for an environmental assessment to connect Highway 401 to Lauzon Parkway. We've purchased three new train sets—I love when they put that down, three new train sets, but they're pretty big train sets—as part of our plan to bring back the Northlander, connecting Timmins and Cochrane with Toronto.

And we recently approved the terms of reference for the First Nations-led environmental assessment from Webequie First Nations, Marten Falls First Nations, to build the Northern Link portion of the All-Seasons Road to the Ring of Fire. Folks, I can't begin to tell you how important the Ring of Fire is. We have 34 of the most critical minerals—and probably even more—that the whole world wants. But rather than just go and give away our critical minerals; we can't do that. We'll sell our critical minerals on one condition: you manufacture here, you manufacture the batteries here. No matter if it's the cobalt, or the nickel, or the lithium, we need to produce everything here in Ontario.

But at a time when it's never been more important to deliver infrastructure for our growing province, we need to do everything possible to deliver on our commitment to build Ontario. We need to get it done. And together with Indigenous communities and municipal leaders, with business and union partners, we have to ensure that Ontario is a place where our shared potential is limited only by the scale of our ambitions. Together, we have to ensure that Ontario is a place where we can build really, really big projects. That's exactly what we'll do, and that's exactly what we're doing.

Let me—thank you—let me just give you a couple of examples of where we're already making progress, where we're cutting red tape and eliminating unnecessary process, to get things built. Under previous legislation—and these are pretty staggering numbers as well—typically, it took 10 to 15 years to build a mine in our province. Even before opening a mine, miners would have to submit a detailed closure or rehabilitation plan to the Ministry, explaining how they would restore the site to its original condition after mining is complete. Just imagine, trying to put together a comprehensive closure plan for something that's going to happen 30, 50 or even 100 years into the future. This process, this back and forth with ministry officials, added months, and sometimes years, to the process. Years of lost jobs, lost revenues, and lost opportunities. That's why, earlier this year, we introduced legislation allowing qualified professionals to certify plans, and allowing companies to conditionally file on closure plan, and defer certain elements to a later date, all without compromising our world-class environmental standards. The timing of these changes couldn't be more important, as we build up our homegrown electric vehicle and battery supply chain. We want global mining companies to view Ontario as a destination of choice for investment. We want global mining companies attracting the same minerals needed for the batteries that will power the cars of the future. Batteries that will be made right here in Ontario, by Ontarians.

Let's also talk about homes. And it's no secret, we currently are facing a housing crisis decades in the making. For far too long, restrictive zoning rules, time-consuming approval processes, and soaring developer fees—and I think you mentioned it, Joseph—I lived it, down at City Hall. It could take 3, 4, 5 years to get an approval, which is totally unacceptable. The rampant NIMBYISM—and there's a new name, too, it's called BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone; I like that one even better—meant we didn't get enough homes built to meet the needs of our growing population.

Ontario is the fastest growing region, as I mentioned, in North America, bar none. I also mentioned about Texas and Florida, together about 365,000, and we're seeing 445,000 people land right here last year alone. And it really kind of boggles my mind when I hear people saying “we can't build, we can't build.” No, we can build, we have to build. These people need homes. The future generation needs a home, they need affordable homes, and attainable homes. That's why our government is taking bold action to build 1.5 million new homes across Ontario by 2031, including a mix of ownership and rental housing types, that meet the needs of all families. Over the past five years, we've introduced over 90 initiatives to build more homes, including legislation to reduce government fees, and fixed development approval delays. And just this past Friday we announced our intention to expand our strong mayor powers to an additional 26 municipalities. I had the opportunity to invite the large city mayors over to the house, had a little BBQ. They're excited. We're excited to get homes built. Providing more mayors with the tools they need to get homes built faster in their communities.

This progress, our government is proud of. But the work isn't done. It shouldn't take to get approval—as I said earlier—to build homes for growing communities, it shouldn't take 15 years to open a mine, it shouldn't take decades to build roads to the Ring of Fire, as I said earlier, as we have to ensure that Ontario is a place where we can do and build big things. We're attracting new investments and jobs, we're welcoming hundreds of thousands of newcomers to our province every single year. As we grow, our province grows, and as our economy grows, we need to be able to build. This isn't just about delivering our commitments. The world is watching us. Global companies, looking to invest and grow, are watching us. We need to show them that we can deliver, that we can build. That's why we continue to work with our partners.

I always believe in working collabouratively with our federal and municipal partners, our regional partners, and getting things done. The people living, working, and building on our front lines, people representing companies—like the ones in this room—to identify how we can do more to move big ambitious projects forward, to keep building Ontario, to get it done. Thank you again, for inviting me. Thank you all for joining us. And May God bless the people of Ontario. Thank you, everyone.

Sal Rabbani
Thank you. Thank you very much, Premier Ford. I'd now like to invite Flavio Volpe, the President of the APMA, to facilitate this afternoon's discussion.

Flavio Volpe, President, Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association (APMA)
Thanks for having me. This is going to be the funniest karaoke session in Toronto. It was a funny joke. Some of you didn't laugh there, but....

Doug Ford
Better not quit our day job, then.

Flavio Volpe
You know, you talk about auto investments, and you talk about some of the deals that we've landed. I want to give a little bit of context for the room here who’s in the business every day. The run of the last 18 months, of 25 billion dollars in investments by 6 automakers, is the greatest run in the history of this province, in the history of any of our competing American jurisdictions, ever. And it is done at a time when competition is at its highest. Every single company in the world is electrifying. Every single company in the world is either coming up with batteries, or gotta buy them somewhere. There's a lot of people who don't think that these are good investments for government. What do you say to the criticism on some of these deals?

Doug Ford
Well, I just respectfully disagree. When we're competing against the IRA down in the US, the Inflation Reduction Act. And I always say, we can compete against anyone. Folks, I spent 20 years in our Chicago facility, in New Jersey, and I love the Americans. But I love kicking their butts when it comes to winning these agreements. And I know, you know, as Sal, I think, mentioned about Volkswagen. They were looking at 90 locations across the world, and it came down to ourselves and Tennessee—and I think Oklahoma was in there—and we're fortunate enough with everyone's collabouration, and your leadership, Flavio, to land this massive, massive deal. And all the spin off jobs and reciprocal jobs, like I said, just on Volkswagen alone, over 30.000 jobs, but I always like going back five years—well, I don't like thinking back five years—but going back five years. And I'll never forget—and I think you were at the Auto Show with Vic Fedeli and myself, when we first took office. And I can't quite remember which CEO it was—or I won't name the CEO—he sat down with Vic and I. Now, we were only a few months into our mandate. And they said to Vic and I, “I want to tell you, Ontario is the worst jurisdiction to do business in; the highest hydro rates and electricity rates, the highest red tape, and it's just, it's not good to do business. Oh, and by the way, we're closing our plant, and see you later.” And we thought, “wow. “And then next thing you know, Ford was looking to go down to Mexico, and GM said they were closing. And guess what? Oshawa closed, Chrysler, Stellantis right now, said, “we're closing Windsor and Brampton, and see you later.” And we were left with Toyota and Honda.

Look forward, today, with everyone's help and support—all levels of government—we are the only jurisdiction in the world that have six of the largest manufacturing auto manufacturers right here in Ontario. Not only did GM come back; they did the quickest build in the history of their company. They're rolling off those pickup trucks as we speak today. We're seeing massive expansion. And I know Toyota, Honda, and GM, they're all looking to expand their battery facilities right here in Ontario.

Flavio Volpe
It's a hell of a turnaround. I remember that CEO. And that CEO warned this room, and other rooms over the previous five years. And we were in a different space then, and I think we ignored him. But you know, it was a big risk we took. And now we're back in the game, and we're swinging for the fences. But you're swinging for the fences on housing.

Doug Ford
Yes.

Flavio Volpe
So, you say we're going to build one-and-a-half million new homes. We've got the highest interest rates we've seen in 20 years. We've got trouble with inflation. And, you know, talked to Tim. We have declining housing starts. Can we do it?

Doug Ford
Well, I'm totally confident all of us can do it, we work together. I'll give an example. We have more housing starts since all the way back, since 1988. That's what happens when you cut the red tape and the additional fees that the municipalities want to put on the buyers at the end of the day. We had more housing rental starts, all the way back to 1988. And we will hit our goal—it's not a matter of fact if we will or not. We will. But municipalities have to cut this red tape. If anyone—Joe, you know better than anyone in this room—you can't put an application in. And I don't mean to pick on Toronto. I was just down there, and it's rampant everywhere. Put an application that goes on the carousel, they call it. So, they make their comments, it goes around the carousel, and transportation, and heritage, and everyone else makes their comments, comes off the carousel. Do you know where it goes after that? It goes back on the carousel, and it goes around and around and around. That's unacceptable. That's why, with co-operation with the municipalities, we’ll issue as many municipal zoning orders as we possibly can. We know people are coming in droves. We need homes built. Not just affordable homes, attainable homes. That we have a program that people can afford to buy a home, and over a certain period of time, they'll own their home.

Flavio Volpe
You're very ambitious on the infrastructure required to connect those homes...

Doug Ford
M’hm (affirmative).

Flavio Volpe
...to connect those electric cars that we talked about. To accommodate those companies that are investing here. But you did touch in your speech a lot about duplication in approvals processes. And I remember, during the pandemic when we first responded, when we didn't have the PPE and the ventilators we needed, we worked together with other jurisdictions...

Doug Ford
That’s right.

Flavio Volpe
...and found a way to certify things, without skipping steps, quicker. I want you talk a little bit about how you plan to do that on infrastructure.

Doug Ford
Sure. And I’ll start off with the pandemic. You know, Team Ontario pulled through in a massive way. And you see a lot of cracks in the ship. In your own companies, you see a lot of cracks, cracks in the ship, and government, and looking at our distribution centers. And we all pulled together—I'll never forget, right at the beginning of the pandemic, we couldn't get our N 95 masks off President Trump. And we're probably pretty frustrated, to say the least. And so, I called out for help—literally, at one of my press conferences. In 48 hours, 26,000 companies went on the portal. And we had auto manufacturers—I think it was Ford making the shields, we had, you know, beverage companies, liquor companies, changing over to hand sanitizer, we had Roots, the clothing people making gowns, we were making ventilators. All—we set up a whole industry together in two months.

And I love when I heard CBC say, “Ontario was second-best in the world.” And coming from CBC that's pretty good. So, you know, second-best in the world next to Japan. I love our Japanese friends, but I thought we were number one. Everyone pulled together. And so, on infrastructure, Infrastructure Ontario has an incredible reputation for on time, on budget. We're putting a lot of items, no matter if it's schools now, or hospitals, or roads and bridges, under infrastructure. And they're working collabouratively with the Ministry, and we're getting things done. There's no better organization, in my opinion, than Infrastructure Ontario. They have great leadership on all levels over there.

Flavio Volpe
We need workers for all this.

Doug Ford
Yes.

Flavio Volpe
I spent a week in Germany with Porsche, and they took me from facility to facility, including the test track. Every single place they said, “we can't find workers.” And you imagine growing up in Germany and not wanting to work at Porsche. We’ve got leaders like Joe, here, working really hard, and making sure that the next generation of Ontarians want to do the work that we're bringing in here. And we're working very closely with Monte.

Doug Ford
Yes.

Flavio Volpe
I want you to talk a little bit about your strategy for that skilled labour that we need.

Doug Ford
Well, first of all, I have to give a big shout out to Monte. He's done an absolutely incredible job on his file as the Minister of Labour. So, there's a nominee program for bringing in skilled workers. And when we first took office, it was about 6000; we were able to get it up to 18,000. As you’ve heard, 445,000 people have landed here. We've really poured money through Monte’s Ministry; 1.5 billion dollars into skilled trades. We know one in five people are going to be in the skilled trades as we continue building this province. And we just, we're going to work closely with the federal government to speed up the process.

And I always say, you know, if someone's on ODSP, I'll support them for life. And we'll all agree on that. If someone has a challenge, mentally or physically, we're behind them. What drives me crazy is people on Ontario Works, probably 300,000, 400,000, that are healthy. And we've never seen more jobs. There isn't one jurisdiction in Ontario, you can't walk down the street—no matter if it's Etobicoke, or down to Windsor, or anywhere else—and not be able to find a job in numerous sectors. It really bothers me that we have healthy people sitting at home collecting your hard-earned dollars. We need to encourage them to contribute back to the province and find gainful employment. I'll support anyone that's having a tough time—I have no problem with that—but eventually, you have to go out there and start working and contributing back.

Flavio Volpe
We're doing a lot of winning—I don’t want to use a sports analogy here, so I won't—so we're doing a lot of winning. But we're not winning automotive. We're winning in tech; we're winning in life sciences; we're winning in development; we're winning in renewables, and in mining. It's a hell of a run.

Doug Ford
Yeah.

Flavio Volpe
Why are we winning? Isn't everybody competing with us? Doesn't everybody have money? Doesn't everybody say they have workers?

Doug Ford
Well, they do. You know it's about working in co-operation and collabouration of all three levels of government. I don't give two hoots about political stripes. Our family’s never give two hoots if you're from the green team, orange team, red team, or blue team. In saying that, am I proud to be the leader of the PC party? Yeah, one hundred percent I am. But we've turned the PC party around, and we welcome everyone. And when you work in collabouration with trade unions, like LiUNA, and other trade unions, and when you work with businesses, and you work with three levels of government, there's nothing or no one that can stop us.

When we—our number one selling feature, as I was saying, are, you know, are STEM graduates. You just think, 85,000 new businesses opened up here in Ontario last year alone. We're graduating 65,000 STEM graduates. You know, science, technology, you know, engineering and math. And when we're selling to these companies, we're saying we have the best students anywhere in the world. We have the brightest and smartest people anywhere in the world, right here in Ontario. And come and invest. We'll cut the red tape; we'll make it easier to open up a a facility. We'll have shovel ready, you know, land that you can come here and start building. LiUNA and other trade unions are doing an incredible job getting stuff built as quickly as possible. That's what happens when we work together. We're unstoppable. So, we're going to continue doing that with everyone, and attracting new businesses to Ontario.

Flavio Volpe
The last thing I'll say is I was in Ottawa with the Prime Minister on Wednesday, last Wednesday. And he talked very candidly about the work you're doing together. Talking about your team and his team on another big deal. And having had the perspective of working with governments of all stripes at both levels of government, I've never seen this before. And I think that's, further to your point, why we're winning. Because outside of these borders, nobody cares, and they're all cutthroat, and they all have everything. And it's honourable—you started it really well during the pandemic, and carried forward as business, and it's an honour here, to speak with you today.

Doug Ford
Thank you. Thank you, and I appreciate it. And I just, before we wrap this up, I just have to tell you the story, you know, with the Prime Minister and myself. We know that 30 percent of the people that are voting for me are voting for him. We know that people want us to work together and have a phenomenal relationship. I'll work with anyone. I don't, I don't care what political stripe you're from. But think of it. Never before, in the history of this country, have two levels of government been able to get more things done. No matter if it’s healthcare, or childcare, or 25 billion dollars of investment in the auto sector, or the life sciences, or the tech sector. And we work very well together. I have a great friend, Chrystia Freeland. I was talking to her yesterday via text. Actually, I invited him to the Ford Fest—so, you're all welcome to Ford Fest in Scarborough. The hard-working people: they'll be about 15,000 people that show up. Or my good friend Dominic Leblanc. He's a champion Minister of Infrastructure.

So, we're going to continue working with everyone. And again, thank you. If you ever need any help at all—is this live on TV? Can you clip this? It doesn't matter. I'm giving my cell number—everyone has it anyways—so, it's 647.612.3673. And feel free to give me a text; I get about 200 to 300 a day. As Patrick, my Chief of Staff, one of the brightest guys down at Queens Park, gets things done; he’s an absolute champion. We're up till midnight, you know, going back and forth. So, you don't have to say, “great to see you today.” But if your family needs help, you need help, your business needs help, send it over to me. Give me a few hours, or til the next morning, but I get back to every single person. You have ears and eyes all around the province. But thank you again for having me. Thanks, everyone.

Sal Rabbani
Thank you. Thank you very much, Premier Doug Ford, and Flavio Volpe. I'd now like to invite Megan Telford, Chief Energy Transition Officer, Hydro One to deliver some appreciation remarks. Megan, welcome.

Note of Appreciation by Megan Telford, Executive Vice-President, Head of Strategy, Energy Transition, Human Resources and Safety, Hydro One
Premier Ford, thank you for your remarks today. It is inspiring to hear a plan for Ontario that is not just talk, but has a real impact on the families and businesses of this great province. I am the granddaughter of two blue collar gold-mining families from Kirkland Lake. My grandfathers worked underground for over 46 years. I have no doubt that they would be truly shocked to know that someone from our family was having the chance to sit down and have lunch with the leader of this province. Teck-Hughes, Upper Canada, Toburn, Macassa. Those are the names of the gold mines where they worked. And by the time I was old enough to understand the mine shafts had either been abandoned or turned into museums, my dad quit his job at the mine. And later told me not just that he left, but that he escaped Kirkland Lake to give us a better shot, because there is no future in mining in Ontario. It was later, in Hamilton, that I went to school, and I found other people like me. The children and grandchildren of steel workers, auto workers, and manufacturing families, who were propelled away from the big industries of Ontario, because their families told them there is no future for that kind of work in Ontario.

But now, we enter a new chapter together. Supported and encouraged through the policies of this government, Ontario is thriving. You heard the numbers. Industry is thriving. And what is certain is that we need a strong energy system to support this future. I'm so truly honoured to represent Hydro One, because the hard-working men and women of this company are here to meet that energy need. There simply is no energy transition in this province without transmission. We are committed, Premier Ford, to developing the right critical transmission projects, to ensure we can meet the growing demand for all those companies you mentioned across the province.

Today our CEO, David Leadbetter, is with the Minister of Energy, Minister Smith, along with Indigenous, and local, and community leaders, breaking ground on our new Chatham to Lakeshore Transmission Line. This line will support the incredible growth in local agrifood and manufacturing industries. Premier, we are focused on partnering with your government to build a resilient energy system. One that will help give Ontario a clean energy advantage. And really, what your government is doing—and we want to be part of—is we are going to compete globally but create jobs locally. We are taking advantage of your focus on cutting red tape, by building smarter with Ontario worker-led innovation. And we are getting ready to connect faster, so that we can get industry working, and get all those families connected to all those homes that you want to build.

So, Premier, first, thank you for everything you are doing, for this bold and much needed road map for Ontario prosperity. We at Hydro One are excited about working together with this government, to support your plan to continue to build Ontario. And finally, and most importantly, thank you for giving people like me the opportunity to tell their children a different story to what our parents told us. We actually do now mine for gold in Kirkland Lake. We build cars, we make batteries, we make steel, and so many other things that our grandparents could have never imagined, but would be so proud of. It feels sort of unreal that, many days, I get to come home from work—just one generation later—and say to my kids that we don't have to escape from something, but that we're staying in Ontario, because it's clear there's a bright future. And with that, Premier Ford, I would like to share with you the ground-breaking shovel from this morning's activities, from the opening of the Chatham Line.

Concluding Remarks by Sal Rabbani
Thanks, Megan. And thanks again to Joseph, and all our sponsors for their support, Amazon, AWS. And I'd be remiss if I didn't take the time to acknowledge some other members in the room today. The Honourable Prabmeet Sarkaria, President of the Treasury Board, the Honourable Jill Dunlop, Minister of Colleges and Universities, the Honourable Kaleed Rasheed, Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery, the Honourable Stan Cho, Associate Minister of Transportation, Billy Pang, Parliamentary Assistant Minister of Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Rick Byers, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Finance, Hardeep Grewall, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Transportation.

As a club of record, all Empire Club events are available to watch and listen to on demand on our website. The recording of this event will be available shortly, and everyone registered will receive an e-mail with the link. I know that the Premier’s got a busy schedule ahead of him, so I just would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for joining us today. Enjoy the lunch hour. This meeting is now adjourned.