Civic search
Statistics Canada data shows Saskatchewan’s real GDP grew 2.9% from 2024 to 2025, reaching $84.5 billion. Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting grew 17.9%, and construction grew 10%; the province also reports 60 large-scale projects in planning or underway, representing more than $100 billion in private investment.
Mr. Greg Ferron
…mining sector, just how important it is today to say defence manufacturing, AI data centres—all of these things are increasing demand for power, infrastructure and materials, and that’s compounding, while at the same time, the supplies globally are decreasing. So it’s a very good opportunity financially. And then I…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Ms. Megan Johnson
…adults and to prevent the crisis that is oncoming. By comparison, Ontario’s own data—including the Ontario Auditor General, Ontario Health, and the Canadian Institute for Health Information—shows that prolonged hospital and alternative-level-of-care stays cost hundreds to thousands of dollars per day. One…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Mr. John Gamble
…it on the outside of the building so we can create as much power as we need. We don’t really need as much nuclear. Reduce that cost and use our sun to power ourselves. It’s been done in many other places around the world. Solar is the number one power provider. We wanted to start putting in—we talk about data centres
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Ms. Dianne Martin
…or unpredictable. We recommend standardized public reporting of nurse staffing data across hospitals, long-term care and home and community care so that government, employers, nurses and the public have a clear picture of where the gaps are and can use that data to guide evidence-based staffing standards and…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Mr. Anand Misir
…finance officers across the province, from small townships to major urban centres like the city of Brampton, and I’m seeing the same thing. We’re seeing highly skilled public servants spending 30% to 40% of their day or week doing manual entry. I see them taking payments from the citizen in one system and then manually…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Mr. Don Fusco
Absolutely. We know that power needs are going to grow in Ontario, and AI data centres are forecasted to require a lot. Our sector requires a lot of power, and ensuring enough clean and affordable industrial power is available will be a key enabler for attracting investment.
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Ms. Maureen Cassidy
…sector is sometimes referred to by policy-makers as “nice to have,” but the data tells a very different story. The sector contributes over $65 billion annually, representing almost 8% of Ontario’s GDP, and employs over 844,000 people. This is one of the most diverse workforces in the province, delivering services that…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Ms. Bobbi Ann Brady
…I do want to speak to ETFO’s advocacy for a fully integrated model. Recent data shows that nearly 46% of our schools face daily shortages of EAs, speech pathologists, OTs, and other professional support staff, because those people are actually moving toward private practice or ambulatory health care. So if the human…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Mr. Rob Cerjanec
Perfect. What do you think needs to—right now, I think the top supercomputer that we have in Canada is 76th; I think they’re out in BC. How important are supercomputing data centres and stuff to the work that you’re doing in quantum?
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Ms. Anita Armstrong
…people in the Ottawa area, and we are a part of a network of 31 friendship centres across the province of Ontario. More than 406,000 Indigenous people live in Ontario, representing 3% of the population, and 88% of Indigenous people in Ontario live in cities, towns and rural areas. In Ontario, Ottawa-Gatineau is home to…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Ms. Sonya Shorey
…what you said about a system-wide approach. If all of the regional innovation centres are given more money, we can work together in different ways—create one intake, create one set of data where no matter where one company goes in any part of this province, we all have access to the same data and can lean in with our…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Ms. Sonya Shorey
…regional innovation centre network, the small business enterprise centres—to create more opportunity for more founders to benefit from those services, to scale faster, to put AI to work, enabling AI democratization, where we’re all sharing lessons learned on how to put that to work to be the most productive and…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Mme Sylvie Leclair
Je suis d’accord avec Renaud, mais comme tu disais aussi, Stéphane, dans la région de Prescott-Russell, on est vraiment une exception. Il y a certaines raisons. Comme, à Hawkesbury, on est dans le même édifice que le Centre de services à l’emploi Prescott-Russell. Ça facilite aussi la communication et les apprenants…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Mr. Matthew DesRosiers
…for that, we’ve issued pretty extensive guidance out to all of the SSMs on the data that we need them to collect to allow them to do the accountability work that they need to ensure all the costs that are being incurred by the operators are actually eligible. It’s allowing the SSMs to do their accountability checks but…
Standing Committee on Public Accounts
Ms. Whitney Wilson
…which will allow those operators to spend that time with children in their centres. It will also increase the amount of data available to the province. So I think, as you’ve seen in the Auditor General report, there are a lot of things that we do not have data on currently, and that really impedes our ability to plan…
Standing Committee on Public Accounts
Mr. Matthew DesRosiers
…monitor and make sure that the parameters that we’ve put in place, based on the data that we did have, were appropriate, and we’re going to continue to do that. The benchmarks in cost-based funding: Like I said, on the centre side, you’ve got program staffing, supervisors, operations, accommodations—those all get put…
Standing Committee on Public Accounts
Mr. Matthew DesRosiers
…have recovered; it’s in that kindergarten space where we see a bigger difference. That could be due to split shifts, where it’s harder to go and actually hire staff who want to work those shifts. Yes, it’s lots of reasons. We don’t have enough data to know for sure, but it is recovering, which is, I think, promising.
Standing Committee on Public Accounts
Ms. Brittany McMillan
…We do all of this on just under $400,000 in provincial core funding. Canadian data shows that sexual violence is both widespread and deeply under-reported. Approximately one in three women will experience sexual violence in her lifetime. Research also shows that transgender and non-binary people experience…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Ms. Heather Watson
…often highlighted Toronto as the major centre for technology growth, and the data backs that up. Toronto has become one of North America’s fastest-growing tech centres, with tech employment rising by more than 40% in recent years. We have world-class AI talent and innovation happening right here in Ontario, but most…
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs