I would like to thank all party members for participating in our leadership process. I’d also like to thank everyone who supported me, including the thousands of people who for the first time ever joined the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. We’ve travelled far in the past few months, and I am proud of our accomplishments.

Together, we set out to rejuvenate our Party, to grow our membership and to share the Progressive Conservative values of fiscal and social responsibility with New Canadians and Ontarians across this province.   Together, we carried forward the message of recovery, prosperity and hope, a message that was enthusiastically received in every community that I had the privilege to visit in the course of this campaign.   Together, we ran a clear, focused and positive campaign, with the goal of claiming victory, not over my fellow leadership contenders, but over Dalton McGuinty, who has taken Ontario from first to last, destroying all that our Party has accomplished in the time I served as Cabinet Minister and MPP.

With this leadership campaign, our Party has taken the first important steps towards renewal. Today, the real work begins as we start to lay the groundwork for our victory in 2011. I look forward to working with you to rebuild our Party and create a platform that will return prosperity to Ontario, making it once again the best place to live, work and raise a family.