Premier Doug Ford: 2025 Canada Growth Summit — Full speech

Folks, this is a serious moment for the province and our country. For decades, we relied on a relationship with the United States to drive our province’s growth. Together, we built one of the most prosperous and successful economic partnerships in the entire world, based on mutual respect, cooperation and trust.

But, as the last several months have shown, that trust is now gone. We will continue making the case at all levels of government in the United States, which we have, that we’re stronger when we work together — when we build something called an Am-Can Fortress — but we can no longer afford to have our economic success depend on such an unreliable partner. 

And I always say, differentiate ourselves between the American people, because Canadians love Americans and Americans love Canadians. There’s one person, and that person is called President Trump. He’s openly taking aim at Ontario’s economy, threatening tariffs, disrupting supply chains, putting all of us at risk, including the American people.

When I reach out — and I’ve reached out to endless governors and senators and congresspeople, Republican and Democrat — not one of the Republicans, not one of them, behind closed doors agree that attacking their closest friends and allies is beneficial to Americans.

He’s put the fear of God into these people. But I do have to congratulate the four senators, Republican senators, that have come out. I know Senator Collins, and Senator Mitch McConnell, and Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky. I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve learned a lot about alcohol. You can do anything but don’t mess with people’s alcohol especially in Kentucky on the bourbon.

In response we need to do everything in our power as Ontarians and as Canadians to become as resilient — and that’s the word, resilient — and self-reliant as possible. 

We’ve put all our eggs in one basket over the years, and we’re changing that now. We need to tear down red tape, unlock our resources, unleash our economy and make Ontario and Canada the best place in the G7 to invest, create jobs and do business. We need to stand on our own two feet so we can protect Ontario both from the immediate tariff threat and decades to come.

And that’s exactly what our government is doing. 

First, we’re tearing down barriers that stop free trade within Canada and cost our national economy $200 billion every single year. You know, isn’t it amazing how we can trade with the United States, we can trade with 51 other tariff-free countries, but we can not ship a bottle of wine from Ontario, the Niagara region, out to B.C. And the list goes on. But it’s over $200 billion, it would increase our GDP anywhere from seven to eight percent. 

As a matter of fact, the free trade agreement here in Canada is even greater than the tariffs we’re facing from the United States.

Earlier this month, we introduced historic new legislation to make it easier for people from the rest of Canada to buy and sell and work in Ontario, and we’re inviting every single province and territory to join us. In fact, we’ve already signed agreements with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to support free trade and movement among our provinces and the other provinces are coming along, one after the other. I’m getting phone calls because it’s common sense, no one wants to be left behind.

We’re also unlocking our critical minerals, including the Ring of Fire. Ontario is blessed to have tens of billions in untapped minerals which the world needs, which are absolutely essential for everything, no matter if it’s military or aerospace or electric vehicles, to cell phones. 

People don’t realize this, but we’re getting the message more and more. Yet right now in Ontario, it takes up to 15 years just to get a permit to open a mine. While the rest of the world is getting permits in a year or two years, it’s taking 15 years.  

I have to tell you a quick story. I got a phone call the other day from a large mining company and he said Doug, we’ve been at this for seven years, trying to get a permit. And we’re down to 16 questions and we justy threw the towel in.  I went back to my board and I told him that $500 million we were going to invest in Ontario? Invest it in Australia. Invest it in the U.S.  And even invest it in Quebec because they don’t take as long as what we do.

That’s staggering. That’s just one phone call I got. 

Just imagine. We have more critical minerals than anywhere in the world that people want, but it’s the red tape, the bureaucracy, the duplication.

Because of all the red tape and the overlapping requirements — I’ll give you an example. I think both leaders, federally, agree with this. So we’ll do an environmental assessment led by First Nations, Marten Falls First Nation and Webequie, they’re an incredible community.  And all of a sudden the feds come along and they want to duplicate the exact same environmental assessment that we’re doing. People are shaking their heads, but this is reality. Thank goodness, both leaders from both of the major parties have agreed, we call it one window. You go to one window and you get your permit and you move things forward.

It’s not ‘rip and ship.’ ‘Rip and ship’ is, you get the minerals out and throw them on a boat and they refine it.  

We’re going to get critical minerals out, we’re going to refine them here and we’re going to produce it here with Ontario workers. We’re clearing red tape and speeding up approvals and we’re working with the First Nations in northern communities. We have a phenomenal relationship with our First Nations communities.

Aroland First Nation. So Aroland  is right below Webequie and Marten Falls First Nation — and it’s that 80 kilometre stretch, you have to build that road, to get into the Ring of Fire. And what an incredible community that is. They live on diesel. We can’t appreciate when you run out of diesel in the winter, there’s a big problem. Now, we’re going to bring electricity, and they’re going to be part of the deal. We’re going to be building a community centre, we’re going to be building an arena, they’re going to be able to get better health care. They’re going to get food. We take for granted that we go to the fruit market or one of the big retailers and we can pick up fresh fruit. They tell me they barely get fruit and when it comes, it’s frozen. So just imagine what they’re going through. That’s going to change their lives. 

We’re going to get these minerals out of the ground much faster so we can create new jobs and opportunities across the province from northern mines to factory floors. We’re also doubling down our $222 billion plan to build, which includes new and upgraded highways, hospitals — we’re investing, this has never been done before, $50 billion in the hospitals, no matter where you live. You’re either getting an addition to a hospital or you’re getting a hospital, or sometimes I accidentally announce a hospital before I should. And I get the phone call from the boss, because I have it on my list, like I did in Orillia during the power outage. They were all happy, I couldn’t understand why they were so happy when I said Orillia’s getting a hospital. But they are getting a hospital. 

We’re building transit, we’re building the largest transit system in North America. We’re building subways, and thank goodness that Eglinton line is finally going. They’re training, it’s moving. So they’re going to get that moving, but all the other five lines are moving like lightning right now, which is really, really good. We’re going to get people out of the cars and they’re gonna start hopping on transit. 

We’re also putting the housing-enabling infrastructure right here in Ontario. There’s a lot of communities that want to build, but they don’t have the water pipes, they don’t have the sanitary pipes. So we’re putting $3 billion to put the infrastructure in, until people can build. We’re investing in energy infrastructure. This is one of my favorite areas, including refurbished nuclear energy, and we’re leading the way in the G7 in building small modular reactors, hydro electricity and new transmission lines to continue to make Ontario a clean energy superpower on a global scale. 

So when I have any of our American friends, the governors, or, you know, Governor Cox from Utah, just came up a couple weeks ago, what a gentleman. Every one of them, first thing they want to do, they want to go to Darlington and see how we’re moving forward with the small modular reactions, and we’re open to it. I remind them that American companies are involved in it. General Electric, Tennessee Valley Authority is supporting us, then we have Hitachi. Then we have some of the smartest nuclear minds in the world right here in Ontario. You know, you look at the CANDU reactors, I think there’s 19 across the country, we have 18 of them and the other one’s over in New Brunswick. But again, we’re leading the way when it comes to nuclear. 

We have requests from Europe, I think $100 billion so far from Europe saying, “Hey, we need these small modular reactors. We do not want to be relying on Russia anymore. Can you support us?” And that’s exactly what we’re doing. 

Our government is championing new nation-building pipelines, seaports, airports, highways and railways to connect all 13 provinces and territories, open new markets for Canadian goods and reduce our reliance on the U.S. Now, for the last seven years, I’ll take responsibility for that. But every elected official for the last 30 years should take responsibility. 

We’re captive, we’re landlocked basically. Yeah, we have one pipeline going from Alberta out west. But just imagine if we had pipelines again, going out west, you hit the Asian market, going out east, right out to the Irving refinery, or make a pit stop in Sarnia to build a refinery. Or going north, into the Hudson Bay. We wouldn’t have to be reliant on the U.S. and selling them discounted oil. 

You always wonder, ‘why is the price so much cheaper down in the U.S.?’ That’s a whole other discussion I’ll talk about — believe it or not, here in Ontario we don’t price it based on the barrel of oil. 

Everyone thinks a barrel of oil is going down, it should be going down. But did you see what the gas companies were doing right before they said they were getting rid of the carbon tax? They brought it up a little bit, then brought it all the way down, and it was about two weeks ago I was driving by and I saw a litre of gas for $1.10. How does it jump up overnight over two weeks? These are kitchen table issues that frustrate people. It goes from a buck ten and three days later it’s $1.37. It’s broken. I’m not going to dig deep into that but there’s a reason behind that.

This plan is to protect Ontario and to protect Canada. It’s about more than just an immediate tariff threat that we’re seeing from  President Trump and all the actions that he’s doing. He actually wants to destroy our economy. It’s not his words. He wants to do it. He wants to destroy our auto sector. He wants to destroy our manufacturing sector. He wants to try to take over Canada.

And I can tell you, Canada is not for sale. We will never, ever be the 51st state, and we have two options. I always say you have two options when you face a bully. Either you roll over and he runs you over like a cement truck mixer, or we stand up and we fight like we’re never fought before. I like the latter. We have to fight like we’ve never fought before. Because I can tell you with that guy, he doesn’t respect weakness. He sees weakness, he’ll latch on to you. We need to show him strength. There’s a clear sign that here in Canada, we need to make sure we can stand on our two feet no matter what comes our way. That’s what our plan is all about. We’re going to invest in infrastructure. We’re going to invest in our workers and our communities. 

We’re going to cut red debt and attract new jobs and investments to Ontario, and we’re going to protect the people, the communities, the companies right here in Ontario, no matter what, no matter what it costs. And I told our finance minister, you know something, we can either start cutting and hurting our economy —  we know we’re going to get through it — or spend a few more billion dollars and make that up in the next two or three years and protect communities. That’s exactly what we’re going to do. And I told him, we’re the most prudent fiscal managers this country’s ever seen. But there’s a time to make sure that we balance, and there’s times that we see that it might be a few billion dollars more to protect communities.

I just want to thank each and every one of you, and may God bless the people of Ontario. 

Thank you so much everyone.