Doug Ford Has a Plan to Protect Ontario

A re-elected PC government will do whatever it takes to protect Ontario workers, families, businesses and communities

Toronto, February 24, 2025 — Today, Doug Ford released Our Plan to Protect Ontario, the PC plan to protect Ontario workers, families, businesses and communities from the impact of President Trump’s tariffs.

“With President Trump in the White House, Ontario faces four years of economic risk and uncertainty, with hundreds of thousands of jobs on the line,” said Doug Ford. “Whether he imposes them next week, next month or next year, President Trump will use the threat of tariffs to get what he wants. We need to be ready for anything. Our plan will protect Ontario workers, diversify our economy as we attract new investments and good-paying jobs, build the infrastructure our province needs and improve services, no matter what President Trump sends our way. Most importantly, our plan makes it clear that Canada will never be the 51st state and Canada is not and never will be for sale.”

Over the last seven years, our PC team has been fighting hard to rebuild Ontario’s economy and bring back good jobs. One million more people are working today than in 2018, taking home bigger paycheques. Ontario has attracted $70 billion in new investments across the manufacturing, life sciences and technology sectors, including $45 billion in new investments in the first electric vehicle and battery plants in Canada, creating thousands of jobs. Now, all of this progress is at risk as we face down the existential threat of President Trump’s tariffs.

In the face of President Trump’s threats to Ontario’s economy, Our Plan to Protect Ontario includes immediate supports for workers hit by whatever tariffs President Trump imposes, as well as significant investments to retrain workers, help Ontario companies retool their operations and reshore supply chains.

Building Ontario’s Economy

• Providing immediate support for workers, businesses and communities hit by tariffs, including tax relief, cash-flow support and targeted support for impacted industries and communities.

• Investing an additional $22 billion in our plan to build, for a total of more than $200 billion over 10 years, to keep workers in the construction and skilled trades sectors on the job building roads, highways, transit, homes, hospitals and schools.

• Building the true north, strong and free by abolishing internal trade barriers, expanding labour mobility, supporting cross-provincial infrastructure like pipelines and railways, and pushing the Trudeau government to scrap unnecessary federal barriers and red tape that raise costs and slow down nation-building projects like new nuclear power plants and critical mineral projects in the Ring of Fire.

Protecting Workers

• Investing in skills training for workers, including an additional $1 billion in the Skills Development Fund, for a total of $2.5 billion, and $165 million for a new Learn and Earn Initiative that helps workers earn a paycheque while receiving in-class and on-the-job training.

• Expanding training capacity in union-led training centres and publicly-funded colleges and universities with $705 million in support to train thousands more students for in-demand roles in critical sectors.

• Protecting hard-working taxpayers by permanently cutting the gas tax, axing tolls on Highway 407 East, banning congestion charges and fighting the job-killing Liberal carbon tax.

Keeping Ontario Competitive

• Making Ontario the most competitive place in the G7 to invest, do business and create jobs.

• Unleashing the potential of Ontario’s critical minerals by designating the Ring of Fire and other major critical mineral deposits as regions of strategic importance, investing in critical minerals processing and providing new funding to support First Nations equity participation in critical mineral exploration and development.

• Building Ontario’s capacity to provide affordable and reliable energy to homes and businesses, including by expanding nuclear energy generation, building new transmission infrastructure and keeping our energy supply secure by banning Chinese components from future procurements.

• Protecting and building on the growth and investment we have achieved over the past seven years in Ontario’s auto and advanced manufacturing sectors by maintaining Ontario’s support for the electric vehicle and battery auto pact and investing $300 million to expand the Ontario Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit.

• Helping secure our borders by pushing the federal government to meet and exceed its two per cent of GDP NATO commitment and doing our part by supporting new investments in shipbuilding and defence in Ontario.

• Cutting an additional $1 billion worth of red tape to support investment and reduce costs for people and businesses.

Cleaning Up Our Streets

• Protecting our borders with Operation Deterrence, a joint partnership between the Ontario Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that is cracking down on illegal cross-border activities, including drug and gun smuggling.

• Investing in new resources, including two new police helicopters, to keep our borders secure, and holding criminals and drug traffickers responsible with stronger sentences.

• Making parks and public spaces safe again by enforcing the ban on drug consumption sites near schools and daycares and removing encampments from our public parks.

• Keeping criminals behind bars by hiring new tough-on-crime judges and justices of the peace, building jails and pushing the federal government to fix its broken, catch-and-release bail system while making bail payment real and effective by mandating upfront payment of bail bond deposits.

Delivering Better Care and Services

• Investing $1.8 billion to connect every person in Ontario to a family doctor and primary care by 2029.

• Training and hiring more health-care workers, including by opening Ontario’s first new medical schools in decades, expanding existing medical schools for doctors and nurses and continuing to invest to help address immediate health-care staffing needs.

• Continuing to invest $50 billion in more than 50 hospital construction or expansion projects across Ontario.

• Supporting our education system by continuing to implement back-to-basics learning that prepares students with the foundational skills they need to succeed and investing $1.3 billion to build and expand schools across Ontario.

As Ontario enters a period of unprecedented economic uncertainty, a re-elected PC government will be ready for anything. Our Plan to Protect Ontario includes over $40 billion in new investments, loans and other financial supports that will be made available to workers, unions, businesses, municipalities and communities to protect them from the impact of U.S. tariffs, alongside billions more for our plan to build.

Doug Ford will never stop working to protect Ontario. Read our full plan to protect Ontario here.