Ontario Government:1)Ontario minister picks up trade mission pace as tariffs heighten need to diversify; 2)Lack of planning, oversight led to Ontario home care supply shortages: ombudsman; 3) (Updated) Ontario plans to ban speed cameras; Ford frames move as affordability measure
1)Ontario minister picks up trade mission pace as tariffs heighten need to diversify
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Allison Jones, Sept. 23, 2025
Tariff tensions with the United States and a more pressing need to diversify Ontario’s trading partners are prompting the province’s minister responsible for economic development to pick up the already robust pace of trade missions abroad.
Vic Fedeli, who Premier Doug Ford has dubbed Ontario’s No. 1 salesperson, is in southeast Asia right now. By the end of his trip on Oct. 2 he will have marked trade missions to 15 countries, counting multiple visits to some countries he is more aggressively courting, and he has plans to hit another eight before year’s end.
“The boss (Ford) says to me — I sit beside him in the legislature — he says to me, ‘Buddy, what are you doing here?'” Fedeli recounted in a recent interview.
“You don’t make any sales when you’re sitting beside me…That’s what he reminds me of often. So we have his full, full support to continue to hit the ball out of the park like we did last year.”
Last year, when Fedeli went on 15 trade missions, the province landed 409 international companies who invested $40 billion in Ontario and created 24,711 jobs, he said.
The current trade mission to Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore is focused on life sciences and tech companies, Fedeli said.
“We want to continue our east-west travels around the world as we look to continue to replace trade with the United States,” he said.
“They’ve become an unreliable partner. We want to do everything we can to create economic growth here in Ontario.”
NDP economic development and trade critic Catherine Fife said she wants Fedeli to be successful on his trade missions as diversification is very important right now, but it’s hard to verify the return-on-investment numbers.
“I know that the minister’s job is to instil some confidence in Ontario’s economy, but there is obviously a disconnect between the lived reality of Ontarians, who can’t even find entry level positions right now in Ontario,” she said.
Ontario has lost 66,000 jobs since February and there are about 700,000 unemployed people in the province, according to Statistics Canada data.
Fedeli was also in eastern Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom earlier this year, where he said the push is on to secure more defence business. Ontario is home to some large defence producers and increased business could also be a boon to the Ontario steel industry, hard hit by American tariffs, Fedeli said.
Federal Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne was just in Denmark taking part in a summit with European Union finance officials, where he brought a similar message. Canada supplied munitions and other military equipment to Allied forces during the Second World War and Canadian businesses can again take advantage of increased European defence spending, he said in an interview last week.
In the remaining three months of the year, Fedeli plans to visit eight countries, including India, Brazil, South Korea, Japan, Austria, Sweden and Germany. He has already been to some of those countries earlier this year, including four trips to Germany, he said.
Not only is Germany a focus for defence business, it is also key to Ontario’s electric vehicle supply chain strategy. Volkswagen is building an EV battery cell “gigafactory” in St. Thomas, Ont., with production expected to begin in 2027.
Fedeli expects to see a supply chain build out around that production, similar to what is happening with a Windsor, Ont., NextStar battery plant — a venture between automaker Stellantis and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution.
“When we landed NextStar, the battery plant, very quickly, they surrounded themselves with a half a dozen or more South Korean companies,” Fedeli said.
“That, we expect, will happen now at Volkswagen. They will look towards European companies, German companies, because they know the best European companies — Canadian companies (too), of course — but that’s why we’re in Germany so much.”
— With files from Craig Lord in Ottawa
2)Lack of planning, oversight led to Ontario home care supply shortages: ombudsman
Lack of planning, oversight led to Ontario home care supply shortages: ombudsman
Ontario’s patient ombudsman says in a new report that medical supply shortages last fall for palliative and home care patients were triggered by one vendor, but the actions and inactions of a government agency contributed.
Patients reported they had to go to hospitals because their home care supplies ran out, and doctors and nurses reported dying people were unable to get sedatives over a couple of months starting last September.
Ontario Health atHome, the agency that co-ordinates home and community care, has pointed to new supply contracts that took effect Sept. 24.
The patient ombudsman says the issues lessened by December but has given the agency four recommendations to improve, including better oversight and giving patients advance notice of significant service changes.
Patient ombudsman Craig Thompson writes in the report that Ontario Health atHome also displayed an “attitude of complacency” about the major procurement project and did not focus on the potential impacts on patients.
The organization’s CEO at the time was let go, and in a letter today the interim CEO says they are fully committed to learning from the experience and improving, and are offering an apology to patients, families and caregivers.
3) (Updated) Ontario plans to ban speed cameras; Ford frames move as affordability measure
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Liam Casey and Allison Jones, September 25, 2025
Ontario will introduce legislation next month to ban the use of speed cameras across the province, Premier Doug Ford announced Thursday, framing it as an affordability measure.
Ford has been bemoaning the cameras in recent weeks as a “cash grab,” suggesting they don’t work to slow traffic and are only used by some municipalities to generate revenue.
“Governments need to be putting more money back into people’s pockets to help make their lives more affordable,” Ford said Thursday at the announcement in Vaughan, Ont.
“But unfortunately, too many governments are doing the opposite. They’re increasing taxes and taking more money out of people’s pockets. Over the last few years, we’ve seen municipalities across the province use municipal speed cameras as nothing more than a cash grab.”
Ford’s push against speed cameras comes a few weeks after 17 automated speed cameras were cut down in Toronto over two days, and the city’s mayor slammed the upcoming ban Thursday as wrong-headed.
“It signals to people that the provincial government is OK with speeding,” Olivia Chow said. “It will mean our roads are less safe.”
Ford believes traffic can be slowed down through alternate measures such as large signs with flashing lights, which the province will require municipalities that currently have cameras to use in school zones.
“Why do we have to charge people?” Ford said. “Why don’t we actually slow them down …rather than let them speed through a speed camera?”
Recent studies and municipal data, however, show that the cameras do reduce speeding.
A study from Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and Toronto Metropolitan University found the cameras reduced speeding by 45 per cent in Toronto.
A staff report earlier this month from Brampton said the city saw an average speed reduction of more than nine kilometres per hour across speed camera locations. Mississauga reported similar results. Five camera locations in Brampton saw reductions of more than 20 kilometres per hour, the staff report said.
Ford said the fact that tickets continue to be issued, including 65,000 from a single camera in Toronto, is evidence they don’t work.
“Speed cameras don’t slow people down, or they’d have zero tickets if they slowed them down,” the premier said. “Instead, we’re seeing hundreds of thousands of tickets. That’s the proof in the pudding, right there.”
The government says municipalities will also be encouraged to use speed bumps, raised crosswalks and roundabouts.