Through you, Speaker: Every family in Ontario is feeling the pinch of inflation in rising interest rates, groceries going up, gas, but especially hydro. This omnibus bill makes changes to the Ontario Energy Board Act; however, it does nothing for families that are struggling right now to pay the necessities.

This is a situation where the government does need to act. They need to immediately be looking at a program of support for those with the lowest incomes, who are going to have the toughest time keeping themselves warm and fed this winter. Why are we debating energy legislation when we should be bringing forward solutions for families in the face of rising costs of living?

Thank you very much to the good member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore. I really appreciate and value your question.

This is kind of why I alluded to the fact that the title and the content don’t always line up. Bill 23 is a great example, where the government has said, “We’re going to cut red tape so that we can allow for a lot of development, and this is going to save money.” Well, it’s actually not saving money. What we’ve heard is that municipalities are going to be paying a heck of a lot more to make up for the loss of revenue, so it’s not revenue–neutral.

Recently, I’ve heard there are mayors who are now putting forward motions and considerations to their council to create a new category within their tax bill and to call it the “Ontario property tax section.” So is it saving money—all these proposed gestures? Some would argue that it’s not.

Questions?

I want to thank the member opposite for her comments.

With this bill, we are helping create the conditions for businesses and people to thrive, and we’re not going to stop until the job is done.

One thing the member mentioned was that Toronto is a magnet for employment, and she’s right—through you, Madam Speaker. But to be a magnet for employment, we have to create the environment—and that is what this government is doing, by cutting red tape, keeping taxes low and building houses.

Since being elected in 2018, our government has taken over 400 actions to reduce red tape while maintaining important regulations that provide people’s health, safety and the environment. This has led to savings of almost a half a billion dollars in annual compliance costs—$500 million.

Will the member opposite agree that cutting red tape saves people and businesses time and money so they can grow their businesses and spend more time with family, therefore creating more jobs in Toronto?

Questions?

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

The House adjourned at 1758.

The government side keeps talking about reducing red tape. Those of us on this side of the House are very leery when the government—any Conservative government, like the previous Mike Harris government—talks about reducing red tape, because what you often find is something like Walkerton, where people were very ill and died because the Conservative government cut red tape and the water was contaminated.

Speaker, I want to ask my colleague from Toronto Centre to speak a little more about access to justice. She talked about jury duty. I don’t think many people would know that if you are called for jury duty, you are not paid for that duty, you lose time at work and pay, and child care costs are not covered. So I’m wondering if my colleague from Toronto Centre could talk about how that, in itself, is a barrier to access to justice—because you’re talking about people not being able to keep a roof over their head or food on the table or take care of their children if they actually are called for jury duty.

Thank you to the good member for the question.

That’s exactly what I’m saying. I think that the way schedule 5 is written, it looks like a red herring to me. I guess the challenge before us is that we’re not going to go through a fulsome debate. That’s just a fact of where this bill is headed. I am very concerned that schedule 5 is opening up an extremely large hole in the legislation that you can’t reverse. Once the environment is gone, it’s really hard to come back. We need to think twice about moving something like this without any type of research debate or any type of background—and it can’t be because we’ve consulted with business. I’ve heard that time and time again from the government—that you’ve consulted with somebody, but then there’s no document to say, “This is what the consultation produced.”

This is complicated legislation that’s going to have multiple effects—not even just in one act or one piece of legislation, but multiple pieces of legislation, and then you’re going to be dealing with years, generations of impact.

I think it belittles the people of Ontario when we actually don’t put our heart, energy and grey matter into making good legislation.

I just want to start off by saying, whenever there’s any talk about red tape cutting, oftentimes that’s coded language for deregulation. I’m not going to be fooled—that you can get me to vote for this because you want me to cut red tape—because you’re asking me to support deregulation, which I cannot do.

Back to jury duty: For a lot of folks who are trying to get access to justice—the best trial lawyers in the country have said that every other province has moved in a direction where you don’t have to have an option for civil juries. Therefore, why is Ontario lagging so far behind? For a government that talks about modernization and embracing change and about moving forward with innovation—we’re one of the laggards. So why be the outlier and not be the leader? This is a great example of how you can eliminate the option for some civil juries to actually cut the red tape and to get us moving faster—not to mention the fact that it’s good for business.

I really think that one of the best ways for us to go about this debate is not to try to create it into a binary—because when you do that, you actually eliminate what is really at the heart of it. There are going to be some conflicting reports—some of them are actually produced and funded by the big fossil oil companies—that are going to give you one result, and then there are going to be other studies—perhaps our noted scientists and third party reviewed—that will give you others.

What I’m interested in doing here is to actually just raise the question that the premise right now that’s in this bill—you’re assuming that carbon capture is neutral, but studies have shown us that it’s not. Studies have shown us that it has failed to be neutral and it’s actually going to have longer ramifications in the future that we can’t necessarily undo.

Our government has taken relentless action to reduce red tape across the province. The opposition has continuously voted against the actions we are taking, which have saved businesses over $500 million in annual compliance costs.

Will the opposition finally correct their record and vote in favour of this bill?

Thank you to the member from Toronto Centre for your comments. It’s always interesting—I’m always learning when you’re speaking.

You mentioned that this bill is not going to get the attention it deserves, because right now the government just passed Bill 23, which paves over the greenbelt, and they’ve got Bill 39, which overrides the last municipal election results. Now they’ve got this bill, which is going to promote carbon capture, and you’re saying that in Australia, where they tried this project, their government put in $60 million of taxpayers’ money and didn’t get the results.

Are you afraid that this carbon capture is actually just a diversion to allow oil companies to continue to drill and to burn oil?