Thank you very much, Speaker, and thank you as well to the member from Guelph. You spoke a lot about environmental protection and the importance of recognizing it, and all the things the Conservative government has done to erode environmental protections.

We’re in an age right now where climate change is real, and we all—well, most of us agree with it. Most people outside of here, I would say, all agree to it. Sophia Mathur in Sudbury was the first young woman outside of Europe to do climate strikes on Fridays, starting when she was 13; she’s almost an adult now. I’m trying to understand where this climate change disconnect comes from, because Sophia is asking people to listen to the experts, to follow expert advice. Meanwhile, last term, the Conservative government’s environment platform was litter cleanup day. Litter cleanup day is something that we were doing when I was a cub scout. That’s not new policy. So why won’t they listen to expert advice? Why is there this disconnect with climate change?

This petition is titled “For Meaningful Climate Action Withdraw Bill 23,” and it reads:

“Whereas our planet is undergoing significant warming with adverse consequences for health, for agriculture, for infrastructure and our children’s future;

“Whereas the costs of inaction are severe, such as extreme weather events causing flooding and drought;

“Whereas Canada has signed the Paris accord which commits us to acting to keep temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius;

“We, the undersigned, call upon the government of Ontario to withdraw Bill 23 and to create a new bill to meet our housing needs that is compatible with protecting the greenbelt, creating affordable housing in the current urban boundaries, and meeting our climate targets.”

I fully support the petition and will affix my signature to it.

Thank you to my colleague the member for Ottawa West–Nepean for highlighting the financial costs of failing to act on climate change.

We recently received a report from the Financial Accountability Officer that failing to act on climate change, even in an optimistic scenario, would mean about $171 billion in costs over the rest of the century to deal with road, rail and bridge repairs alone. The Financial Accountability Officer also highlighted that that is the optimistic scenario, but costs could climb to as high as $322 billion because of damage to transportation infrastructure and other costs if there is an increase in heat, flooding and extreme weather events.

The problem is that environmental protections are not red tape. That is an issue that this government continues to fail to understand. You can’t erode clean water protections, you can’t gut conservation authorities’ responsibility for flood control, and you can’t water down the environmental assessment process in the name of eliminating red tape. That is not red tape. That is a threat to the health and well-being of the people of this province.