It’s always an honour to rise in this House to represent the people of my good riding.

We here are members of His Majesty’s loyal opposition, and I am the official opposition critic for the environment, and we all take that responsibility and that role very, very seriously.

I have to say, as the critic for the environment, it has been a really demoralizing few years under this government—and not just for me, but for the people of Ontario. We have seen, in the last few years, under this government and under this minister—we have seen a minister preside over what we can only describe as the greatest assault on our public natural spaces, our green spaces, our natural heritage, our wetlands, our wildlife. It is something that has been unprecedented in the history of Ontario, and it begs the question as to why he’s even called the Minister of the Environment.

People in my riding and across Ontario are feeling nothing but despair. Young people who expected a government to protect their natural heritage, to protect what should have been a legacy handed to them from those of us who are entrusted to protect that, see nothing but a bleak future when it comes to our natural world.

There’s a real running tally, a real rogues’ gallery, if you will, of the things that have happened in this province under the nose of the Minister of the Environment. We have seen the loss of protection for our conservation lands, with this government kneecapping agencies that were once charged with protecting our wetlands. In fact, it’s unbelievable to think that this government, rather than protecting provincially significant wetlands, has chosen to charge conservation authorities—not only have they taken away their ability to protect these wetlands, but they’ve actually charged them with the task of finding land that is under their protection for development. This is unbelievable. The conservation authorities now are playing a role in delivering up more of our protected, provincially significant wetlands for development.

Not only have they changed the role of the oversight body, the conservation authority, we’ve also seen loss of protection for our wetlands because this government is in the process of declassifying provincially significant wetlands. For those of you who don’t—I’m sure many of you do understand, but it cannot be said often enough that wetlands are significant in protecting not just our natural heritage, but they’re significant in protecting our communities, our towns, our infrastructure from flooding. So wetlands are not just something that’s a bother that this government seems to see as in the way of development, but they’re something that’s a significant, important part of our natural landscape.

We have seen this government’s complete disregard, or complete disrespect, of the role of wetlands in conservation authorities, and clearly in the member from Oshawa’s neck of the woods. This government gave permission to pave over a wetland, in the case of Duffins Creek. Clearly, they don’t understand or they don’t care about the role of wetlands when it comes to protecting not only our environment but protecting communities from flooding.

We’ve seen the loss of protection for our wildlife species and their habitat with the watering down of the species-at-risk act. We’re talking about animals and habitat that we all love. We’re talking about the monarch butterfly. We’re talking about bald eagles. We’re talking about things that make us proud to be in Ontario, to call Ontario such a beautiful place for us to live and grow. Our habitat, our natural species are part of that. And we have a government that, instead of protecting these wildlife species, is watering down their protection. This government introduced essentially a pay-to-slay provision that would allow destruction of the species’ habitats, or species, and that’s okay as long as the person or the entity that is doing this destruction pays a fine. That fine goes into a fund that really has no connection to restoring the actual area that was destroyed. Who knows how that money will be spent? That is cold comfort, to know that the habitat of one of these species has been destroyed or damaged, with no provision to restore it in any way.

Can we talk about climate change? Because we’ve absolutely seen no progress to address climate change. In fact, under this minister, the carbon pollution in our province continues to get much worse. They do not have a credible climate plan. Their made-in-Ontario plan, really, is just a pamphlet. So we have a government that either doesn’t believe in climate change or doesn’t care about the impacts it will have on future generations.

We continue to see in this province water bottlers, big multinational corporations like Nestlé and like BlueTriton, continue to be given a licence to drain our aquifers for pennies. It’s pennies on the litre. In fact, these companies that are profiting from our water and our waterways pay less in fees than it costs this government to oversee and manage this. Why do we have a government that doesn’t understand that we think that large corporations shouldn’t be profiting off of our natural resources, which is water, and for it to be sold for a profit when the people of the province of Ontario have to pay those costs? Municipalities that do not have access to good groundwater—it impinges on their ability to grow. But companies are profiting, with no obligation to make whole these municipalities and those communities that are suffering from that.

And then I guess we have—I would like to say this is the mother of all, but we’ll get to the greenbelt. But we have Highway 413. As we know, this government is really ramming through this super-sprawl highway that we all know will pave over farmlands and wetlands. It will continue the carve-up of the greenbelt and, again, destroy the habitat of many, many more species at risk.

I just have to wonder—this government has decided that they’re going to look at a new biodiversity strategy. If you’re not aware of this, the government is looking for comment at their committee on the status of species at risk. My suspicion is that this is not to add species at risk to the list. My suspicion is that it will, again, be a diminishing of the protection for species at risk, and I can only suspect—only suspect, with the lack of transparency of this government—that this may be in anticipation of building a highway in habitats for species at risk, and if we take these species off the list, the government is under no obligation to protect them. That is something that remains to be seen, but given the current track record of this government, it’d be hard to think otherwise.