Experts, politicians and business leaders spoke about both Burlington and Ontario’s financial states
Local business people and politicians gathered at the Burlington Holiday Inn yesterday (Oct. 22) to attend the Burlington Chamber of Commerce’s (BCC) 2024 Finance Symposium.
Peter Bethlenfalvy, MPP for Pickering-Uxbridge and Minister of Finance for the Ontario government, was the keynote speaker for the event and was joined by Burlington councillors Angelo Bentivegna and Paul Sharman, MPPs Natalie Pierre and Effie Triantafilopoulos and BCC president and CEO Terry Caddo.
Pierre, who announced last week that she would not be running for re-election, was thanked by Caddo at the beginning of the symposium for the work she has done.
The nearly-sold-out symposium covered a range of topics, including traffic issues, energy, relations with the U.S., and the housing crisis.
“When we hear about housing and I talk to our business members, there’s staffing issues,” Caddo said. “Staffing comes back to attainable housing and how to get staff into the community. I want to give credit to our councillors in the room, Burlington is the only community in Ontario that has reduced their development charges. That said, housing starts are the lowest they’ve been in 20 years in Ontario and our population is going through the roof.”
Bethenfalvy also spoke on the two things he believes are most important to meeting Canada’s long-term housing needs.
“One of them is the incentive,” he told the crowd of around 100. “We give communities and municipalities who meet their housing targets a cheque. In Pickering last year, they got a cheque for $5 million because they met their targets. Number two is that municipalities need help with infrastructure, like water, sewage and wastewater. Municipalities across Ontario are signing up for building that infrastructure, which allows for quicker development of housing.”
While housing was a focus at the symposium, it was far from the only topic of importance discussed by the Minister of Finance.
Bethlenfalvy talked about the provincial government’s goal to make Ontario into a powerhouse of carbon-neutral energy, citing the success and refurbishments of the province’s nuclear reactors and both the growing and future needs for power province-wide.
“We have all the critical minerals necessary to go into cell phones and to take up electronics, including car batteries,” he said. “We have them right here in Ontario. We’ve got to unlock the power that we have in Northern Ontario, which is good for jobs. I think it’s absolutely critical, we know that everyone will be driving an electric vehicle so we need to be ready for that.”
Bethlenfalvy also touched on how the province plans to react to the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, as Ontario is the largest trading partner for several states.
“It doesn’t matter if Harris or Trump gets in,” he said. “There’s a protectionist wave in the U.S., we’ve got to side with the largest trading partner and the largest economy on the planet. It’s why we call Ottawa to slap the tariffs on electric vehicles from China to match the U.S., because when the walls go up, I’d rather be inside the North American wall than on the other side.”
The Minister of Finance ended his keynote speech with a short question period, where he answered questions about Highway 413, electric vehicles, universities and colleges facing large projected losses and immigration.