I’d like to thank the member for the question.

This bill is about long-term care. Twenty-five years ago, we started an experiment in long-term care here in this province, bringing in for-profit long-term care, and successive governments, of which I was a part, continued it. I have to say, during the pandemic we all saw the results of that experiment—not good results. It’s not a path we should have gone down. It doesn’t work. You can’t serve two masters. You can’t pay dividends and care for people.

The homes that generally aren’t on people’s list of choices are the for-profit homes. The lists for non-profit homes are very long.

What this bill is going to do right now is, it’s going to send people where they don’t want to go. It’s not right. This is kind of a continuation of that legacy.

I think we all care about seniors here—people in our families, people in other people’s families. But I kind of feel like I’m in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. There’s a bill that says you can move people without their consent, and the government continually says, “You can’t do that”—but it’s in the bill.

Then, nobody says how far people are going to move—“Well, just leave that for regulations. We’ll find out later.” No one says anything about how it’s going to cost you more money if you decide not to go.

I think it would be easier to have a reasonable, positive debate if we could actually debate, if we could actually put it to committee, if we could actually let people come and tell us what was going to happen. That’s why we have committees—because we don’t all work in that sector; we don’t all know that sector. But I’ve been doing this for 20 years in a community office. I know what happens when couples get separated.

What I’m saying is, this bill is going to create more problems. It’s going to hurt more than it helps.

I think we answered the question about how long—this is being put out as a temporary measure, but it’s permanent. There’s no sunset clause in here.

Interjections.

I’m sorry I missed the member’s press conference, but I think Ontarians deserve these answers. That’s why we should be debating it and putting it to committee. The government should be forthright about it. It’s obviously something that they’re proud of.

I think that your question is spot-on.

What I would say, respectfully, is, Bill 124 has done more damage to our health care human resources—

Interjections.

Interjections.

Respectfully, if you don’t have a nurse, it’s pretty hard to get someone off a gurney into a bed. But I would also say to the person who’s in that bed, who’s 80 or 90, who has a spouse—the farther you move that person away, the harder it is for that spouse. It’s about their quality of life. Just because they’re old doesn’t mean they don’t have rights. Just because they’re old doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a quality of life. So that shouldn’t happen.

I would, respectfully, submit that actually repealing Bill 124 about 18 months ago would have made a difference in this province, and actually respecting nurses and front-line health care workers, and not saying wonderful things and then not following it up with action.

Do you know what? When they engrave this Ford government in granite, it is going to say, “Here lies the Ford government—I need a plan in two weeks.”

During the course of this election, we promised Bramptonians that we would never leave them behind, that we would be their strong voice in Parliament and be here every day to advocate on their behalf. That’s why our government is building Brampton’s second hospital. That’s why our government is investing in a lot of long-term-care homes for our beautiful city of Brampton, which I may highlight again. It is an extreme honour to say that the communities have been asking for this for decades on decades on decades, and this is the government that delivered long-term-care homes, that will have nurse practitioners speak in their own native languages and provide food that is native to their home country. That makes a huge difference for seniors, who are used to living at home with family or with other relatives, that they have those same services and that those services continue, and they feel like they’re at home. These are the things that we’re delivering.

In my campaign, I also talked a lot about strengthening our police services and—

It’s always a joy being in this House for the maiden speeches. I want to thank the member from Brampton East. His frame of his maiden speech, when he’s talking about family, then talks about his support network, talks about his drive that got him here. And then the last moments of his speech—I don’t agree with a lot of what he said, but it was good; it was good, I tell you.

The part that I really enjoyed is your family. That was awesome. That was beautiful. My mom, unfortunately, didn’t see me come to the House or be elected, but she would have loved it, because she tried to get me involved in politics, and I just hated it with a passion. It’s funny. It took me 43 years to find out what my calling was, and I’m supposed to be here. I love being here, and I have always remembered that it’s a privilege and an honour to be here. Don’t forget that, you know? Your family, your loved ones, don’t forget them behind. Don’t let this place overwhelm you. Don’t forget that it’s your constituents—you knocked on their doors—that have given you that honour and privilege to be here.

Having said that, my question to you is: What can your constituents expect from you over the course of your term?

Questions to the member for Brampton East?

Sorry, Speaker, have I hit the clock? I apologize.

Not only when we talk about the global effect—we talk about creating a manufacturing hub in Ontario. It is only with the new highway infrastructure investments that we’re going to get goods moving faster and provide better service at a faster speed, while having a solid, quality transportation network throughout the entire Peel region.

I know the residents of Peel, especially Brampton, thank the government for supporting their new highway, Highway 413.

The biggest surprise that has come to my family is that I’m out the door every single day at 6 a.m. and I’m not home till 7, and on the couple of days that I do have off, I’m attending events from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. at night. They’re just astonished at the level of commitment that I have put into this job. I will continue that commitment for the remainder of my time here. That commitment stands for the residents of Brampton East. I’ll always be there, and I’ll always be their strong voice in this House.

When you’re stuck in traffic all day and all that time is spent in your car, when that time could have been spent with your loved ones at home or that time could have been spent doing something productive—the residents spoke up loud and clear that they need new transit and new highway infrastructure.

When it comes to, especially, Highway 413—if you ever try to travel from Brampton East to Brampton West, due to the lack of transportation, you’ll see us take between 45 to 50 minutes to get from one end to the other end, which isn’t even a very long distance when it comes to kilometres. Highway 413 will increase travel within the city, and not only connect us further to the east and west corridor—when it comes to travelling towards Barrie or driving towards the Detroit border—but also intercity travel for the residents. It’s going to be an amazing thing, not only for transportation, goods and services, but for the residents locally to get around a lot easier.

Yes, it is true; we did run a nomination against each other. But I’m also proud of the fact that we’ve been able to maintain a very healthy and friendly relationship with each other, and I’m proud to call the member from Mississauga–Malton a very good friend. It is true, in fact, that we campaigned alongside each other for my father in 2015, when he ran for the Conservative Party in Mississauga–Malton. I do thank him for helping our family during that time.

The legacy that I want to leave behind is a legacy of hard work, a legacy of somebody who has always been there for the community, always answers their phone; is always at their events, is always listening to their concerns; and not only just listening to those concerns, but delivering on those concerns. When it comes to issues like community safety, health care, infrastructure, I want to be their number one advocate on providing those supports, working with our municipal partners and federal partners to help deliver those changes—because those are non-partisan changes. Those are things that we need to do collectively to serve the great people of Brampton and Ontario, and that’s what I’m looking forward to doing.

I’d like to thank the member from Brampton East for his inaugural speech. I thought it was excellent—hearing about how you came to this place, your history, and what your vision is.

It was also interesting, in your comments, when you were talking about all the backyard barbecues, which reminds us all that we are elected by the grassroots, we are elected by the people in our community.

I was also especially pleased with your recognition of your parents, your siblings and your grandparents. It makes me think: Who’s the tougher questioner, the official opposition or your grandfather?

In all seriousness, family is the glue that holds us all together, that makes it possible for us to have this political life.

My question is: Since you’ve been elected, what is the thing that surprises your family the most?

It is always a pleasure to rise in this place and speak on behalf of the people I represent in London West. I’m pleased to contribute to the debate that has unfolded in this Legislature over the past four weeks on the address from the Lieutenant Governor in the government’s throne speech.

A throne speech is what opens a session of a new Parliament. It is a big picture of you, of the government’s priorities, and the issues that it is planning to focus on in this session of government.

It’s interesting; as I’ve said, four weeks ago we all gathered here to listen to the address from the speech from the throne, and now, in the waning days, we understand, of this very rare summer session, we are continuing to debate that speech.

Speaker, the context in which this debate is taking place is certainly of huge concern to all of us in this place, and, in particular, for the people we represent.

Our health care system is crumbling around us, and we hear this all the time in the stories that constituents bring to our offices. Some of us have had personal experiences with family members who have also encountered the fraying of that health care system that we need to be able to rely on.

Housing is a major concern for every Ontarian in this province, every constituent who is represented by MPPs in this chamber. In London, our wait-list for subsidized housing has grown to over 6,000 people; it’s an increase of over 1,000 in just the last four years.

We also have a climate emergency that has never been more apparent and more frightening, when we consider the implications of not taking action to address climate change.

Unfortunately, this throne speech is not a document that gives Ontarians hope that any of those issues will be addressed.

It doesn’t give Ontarians hope, who are grappling with the reality of an 8.1% inflation rate—unprecedented. I read a petition just earlier today that referred to the first-ever 4.5%, I think, inflation rate. That petition was written just a year ago, and now we are looking at inflation of over 8%.

The affordability challenges that people in this province are facing are very real, and they are having an incredibly difficult impact on people’s lives. People need to feel hopeful that the government, the people they have elected to govern in the best interest of all of the citizens in this province—they need to feel hopeful that the decisions that are made are going to be ones that help them in their daily lives, that help them with the health care system, that help them with housing, that help them with affordability, and that take bold action to address the climate crisis.

I want to get back to health care. I’m going to spend a significant amount of time, during my remarks, on what is happening in our health care system and what I am seeing in London and the surrounding areas.

As you are probably aware, Speaker, there are about 25 hospitals across the province that have closed or reduced hours in their emergency rooms and other areas of the hospital. This includes many of the small hospitals surrounding the city of London.

We had St. Marys, Seaforth, Clinton, Listowel, Wingham, Walkerton, Chesley—all of those are small hospitals in southwestern Ontario, in the immediate vicinity of London, that had to either close their ERs or cut back services.

The reality is, in these small hospitals they only have, typically, a very small number of staff. So when you have staff who are on leave or who are sick with COVID, it can have a dramatic effect on the hospital’s ability to operate.

So, in the case of those small hospitals, the pressure that’s being experienced is directly related to the health care worker staffing pressures, and how that has manifested in London, at London Health Sciences Centre, are some cutbacks in some hospital programs. We heard that the maternity ward at LHSC was preparing pregnant women that they should be ready for the possibility that they may not be able to get a scheduled induction if they need one. The epilepsy unit announced a temporary closure because of the staffing shortage.

In addition to these cutbacks in hospital services, we’re also seeing a growing list of people in our communities who don’t have access to family doctors, and we know what happens when people don’t want have access to primary care. They can’t get access to the preventive screening tests that they need to prevent a visit to the emergency room. They are not able to get things looked at before they become acute and lead them into a crisis situation in the hospital. This is a problem that I certainly encountered from the very beginning, when I was elected in 2013, but I have never seen it as bad as it has been. Every day, we hear from two or three constituents, at least, who can’t get access to a family doctor.

I want to give you an example of one of the recent calls that we took. A 90-year-old man had a heart problem and called his family doctor, but his family doctor was fully booked and ready to leave on vacation. They had someone to cover, but there was a gap of three or four days until that coverage was going to be in place. He tried to go to urgent care in the city, but it was closed. He was going to try to go to emergency, but he was concerned about how hard it was to be seen and was reluctant to go to emergency, and with good reason. We just saw, over the weekend, in London, the emergency room posted a sign that prepared people in that room to be ready to wait 20 hours. That was the number that was written on the sign. People are looking at a 20-hour wait to have their health issue looked at.

Speaker, I want to get back to what I said initially—that this is very directly related to the shortage of health care workers that we are experiencing across the system.

I want to read a quote from one of the CEOs of one of these small hospitals, Michael Barrett. He is the CEO for the South Bruce Grey Health Centre hospitals, and he talked about the fact that the hospital corporation is using private agency nurses to fill the gaps and help maintain some coverage of the ERs. He told a reporter, “It is concerning that a considerable amount of money is being spent on agency nurses and we’re not in a position because of the collective agreement to be able to do the same for our own staff.

“We pay agency nurses considerably more than what we pay our staff.”

He said he wants to do everything he can to entice his staff to work these difficult shifts. But other than raising the concern, as he said he and others like him have—he was unaware of the government doing anything to help hospitals like his deal with this staffing pressure.

We know what the government needs to do. The government needs to repeal Bill 124. That has been the universal refrain of health sector workers and public sector workers since that unconstitutional—as we will find out—legislation was brought forward in this place.

The government needs to take some action on the violence that health care workers are experiencing in the workplace. I want to commend my colleague the member for Nickel Belt on her perseverance in trying to get legislation passed that will address the escalating violence that health care workers are facing on a daily basis.

We saw that a physician in London, actually, in the spring, was attacked by somebody with a knife and a hammer. Somehow, that person got into the hospital and assaulted the doctor.

We just recently saw an incident in Goderich where an armed man came in and threatened health care workers.

So, clearly, there is a need to take action on the violence that health care workers are facing.

But to get back to Bill 124 and the urgency of repealing that bill: We know that what that legislation does is cap any wage increases for public sector workers at 1%, and when you have a period in which inflation is 8.1%, a 1% increase is very clearly a loss of pay. It’s a cut in pay. It is not a wage increase at all. And it is just so disrespectful to these front-line workers who have been there for us throughout the pandemic, all through every single wave and I know will be there for us in the fall as that inevitable new wave materializes.

This is good for me to share, Speaker. I want to just read from an email I received from a nurse in London West. Her name is Lindsay Smale. She says, “Many of my co-workers chose to leave. They retired early or they moved to a position in a much less stressful environment”—she counts herself among them. “Many have left the profession entirely.” She says, “We are no longer able to provide the same level of care. Patients are suffering....

“Bill 124 is the biggest slap in the face to the very people who stepped up in a time of uncertainty, when we didn’t know if we were going to get sick at work or bring it home to our families.” She says she’s currently looking at obtaining an American nursing licence so she can go practise in the US, and she’s not the only health care worker who is looking to relocate because of the disrespect that they feel from this government, the inadequacy of the compensation and benefit packages that are offered and just the challenges working in such a high-stress environment.

Speaker, in the face of these issues with our health care workforce, one would have hoped that the throne speech would have offered some solutions. The Premier—the throne speech claimed that they would implement whatever measures are needed to deal with the health care pressures, and yet they didn’t. They did not repeal Bill 124. That should have been the very first bill that we were dealing with in this place. Instead, we saw this government bring forward legislation that is going to force—through financial coercion, if nothing else, but it’s going to force vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities who are in alternative-level-of-care beds in hospitals to move to a long-term-care home that is not of their choice and where they will very likely end their days. It could be miles away from their family, and this legislation shows no regard for the actual needs of those patients, those frail people, to have family members around them.

But worse than that is this government has pushed through that bill with no opportunity for public consultation whatsoever—no opportunity for experts to propose amendments that could possibly improve this bill; no opportunity to hear from people who have loved ones in long-term care and could talk about what it would mean to them if their loved one was forced or coerced—pressured to move from a hospital or else face a big bill, but pressured to move into a long-term-care home that was not of their choice.

The other thing that we have seen this fall is messages, signals from this government that they see privatization as the solution to Ontario’s health care woes. The research has confirmed what happens when you introduce a profit motive into the health care system: equity suffers; access suffers. Health care providers, who are treating patients—when there is money involved, they may be less likely to say that’s not actually a treatment you need, because they know they get a profit for providing that treatment.

The minister has talked about how Ontarians will get health care with their OHIP card and not their credit card, but the reality is, when you go to a for-profit clinic, that for-profit provider can charge you for a wide gamut of services that you will receive. From the food or the pain medication, there are lots of ways that for-profit providers can make a buck off services that are covered by OHIP but are delivered in a private for-profit system. The people I have heard from in London West are vigorously opposed to any privatization of our health care system.

Speaker, I want to just close by saying that this government, as we have seen so often over the last four years, missed another opportunity to actually engage with Ontarians, to actually put forward positive solutions that would address the pressures that people feel every day in their daily lives.

One thing I didn’t address yet when talking about affordability is the issue of ODSP. We saw, again, a budget that was rammed through without any opportunity for public input, a budget that includes only a paltry 5% increase to ODSP. That’s $58 more a month. That’s $14.50 more a week. For someone who is struggling to try to get by on $1,169 a month, when you can’t find housing for less than $1,200 a month in my community and many communities across the province, that is insulting. It is legislated poverty, as many people have pointed out, when this government uses the social assistance programs to keep people in a condition of poverty which they will never be able to get out of. We have heard from many people that a 5% increase is not enough. What we need to do is to double social assistance rates.

I want to congratulate the member from Brampton East for an excellent presentation. He made a couple of really important points. He talked about the historic level of investment in health care and the effect it had with new hospitals coming to Brampton and a new medical school coming to Brampton. He also talked about the global effect, because we’re building new facilities in Niagara, we’re building new facilities in Windsor and also Ottawa—and, taken together, what the effect of that is in lifting people up and providing more care, and better care, across the province.

To the member from Brampton East: Take a little bit more time and talk about the effect in Brampton East with this historic investment, led by our finance minister and Premier Ford, to better health care in Brampton East.

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to welcome the member from Brampton East to Queen’s Park. I actually had done door-knocking for your father. Not many people know, but we actually ran for the same riding at the same time as well.

He’s young; he’s going to be coming many, many times again.

After all these years of being an MPP—hopefully, you’ll never retire, but if you do retire at some point—what kind of legacy do you want to leave for Brampton East?

Response?

Further debate?

Just for those people who might be tuning in now or have been listening, what we’re debating is the motion in reply to the speech from the throne.

An important aspect in that particular speech, Speaker, and you’ll remember this—I’ll put my glasses on so I can quote it correctly. This is an investment of “more than $1 billion in a skilled trades strategy to reduce the harmful stigma around the trades, particularly for women and young people, while expanding training opportunities to help build the most highly skilled workforce in North America.” That’s been led and led well by our Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. It also includes a partnership of several unions who, yes, supported us during the election, but who have been a key part of the success that we’ve had thus far.

From time to time when we’re debating this particular motion or other important motions or subsets coming out of what we’re debating today, all we hear is no. More stalling. More of the status quo. Are we going to hear that again? Skills development, opportunities for young men and young women in this province they haven’t had before—because of the leadership of that minister, the leadership of our Premier and of our cabinet. Is the member from London West going to stand in her place again and say no?

Thank you very much for the presentation. Questions or comments?

I can assure the member from Whitby that the NDP would never say yes to privatization. The NDP would never say yes to watering down climate targets. The NDP would never support some of the initiatives that this government has brought forward that are going to make people’s lives worse, not better.

What we have heard from the labour movement consistently is a campaign for paid sick days. For goodness’ sake, workers in this province need access to 10 permanent employer-paid sick days. Instead, we have a government that cancelled the paid sick days that were available to workers before they were elected and has now brought in three inadequate paid sick days to cover three years of the pandemic, when we’re looking at a seventh wave. Workers who had to access those three paid sick days in an earlier wave have no recourse if they get COVID. They’re going to have to make that choice: “Do I go into work infected—tested positive for COVID—so I don’t risk losing my paycheque? Or do I stay home and possibly not be able to pay the rent?”

I would like to thank my colleague for the question. And certainly I think that the most important thing, the thing that would have the most meaning for front-line health care workers, is to repeal Bill 124, because not only does it suppress wages, as the member said, but it also conveys a message to front-line health workers from this government as to what the government thinks of the contributions that these vital workers provide. That would make a powerful statement, if the government moved forward with that repeal.

They could bring in paid sick days for workers. We know lots of workers in our health care system—PSWs, nurses—don’t even have access to paid sick days, even in their collective agreements. We could bring in unlimited mental health supports for health care workers. When you think of what they have gone through in this pandemic, the violence in the workplace, that would make a big difference.

This is a government that is not working for workers, and the program that the minister is so proud of is a program that is set to expire. It does nothing to help workers who are getting reinfected by COVID, and we know with Omicron that reinfection rates are growing.

Workers need to be able to access paid sick days. If they have COVID, if they have any illness in the workplace, they should be able to stay home and recover without risking losing their paycheque.

I like to think I’m taller than the member from Oshawa and younger, but that’s not accurate.

To my colleague from London West, I appreciate your presentation, your remarks. I was listening intently. What I did notice, though, is that the member from Whitby just got up and talked about training, especially for women, skills development for women. Yet when my colleague was talking about nurses, when she was talking about the wage suppression bill, Bill 124, and their working conditions, when she was talking about how nurses—again, a largely women-led career—the Minister of Labour was heckling her. She’s talking about women in the workplace and violence in the workplace and the Minister of Labour was heckling her.

So I’m wondering if the member for London West could take another opportunity—maybe this time the gentleman on the other side of the House won’t heckle and won’t yell over her—to talk about what we can actually do for the front-line workers in our health care system; what is it that we can do to actually honour the skills that they have, to ensure that they are having a career that they want to stay in, so that the people who need health care have those front-line workers there to support them when they need it.

It’s always an honour to rise and today to participate in the debate in responding to the speech from the throne. Before I get into the meat of my remarks, I just want to once again take an opportunity—I know I’ve privately congratulated most of you, if not all of you, on your election. I just want to publicly congratulate every MPP in this House on your election.

I want to take a moment to thank the people who supported me to be here for a second term. I especially want to thank my family: my wife, Sandy; my daughters, Isabelle and Beata; as well as my parents, my mom and my late father, Ron. I grew up on a farm, and both of them gave me the values that have led me to be here today.

Most of all, I want to thank the people of Guelph who have had the confidence in me, the trust in me, to send me back to this House for a second term. I will work hard to be your voice, I will work hard to deliver solutions for our community and I will work hard to be the best MPP I can be.

Speaker, Guelph is a caring, politically engaged and entrepreneurially oriented community. I can tell you, first-hand, as someone who started two food-related businesses in and around Guelph, that’s why food and farming and the protection of farmland will always be a top priority for me in this Legislature.

I asked my constituents, and I asked people across the province what kind of Guelph, what kind of Ontario you want us to build. People said affordable, caring, connected and climate-ready communities. So I’m here in this House as an opposition member to hold government accountable and to work across party lines to deliver the solutions for the kind of Guelph and the kind of Ontario people want.

I think there are four key issues that lack the urgency of the moment in the throne speech that I want to bring forward today. The first is addressing the health care crisis. It’s been interesting to see the evolution of the government’s speaking points on this too: “there is no crisis,” to the actual words in the throne speech, “it’s going to be very complicated to address it,” to subsequently saying that we need to explore privatization.

I think we need to increase investment in publicly funded, publicly delivered health care, and drive innovation through a publicly delivered system. That starts by investing in the people who deliver care, by repealing Bill 124 and allowing front-line health care workers to negotiate fair wages, fair benefits and better working conditions. It’s about fast-tracking the accreditation of internationally trained health care workers. It’s about spending the budget you’ve actually allocated for health care and doing it strategically by investing in primary health care, expanding access to mental health care and home and community care, and addressing the social and environmental determinants of health, which I’ll elaborate on more in my remarks.

Secondly, on education: We need a firm commitment that students will have stability in their educational year this year and that we’ll hire the staff we need to deliver the education our students need in our schools.

Speaker, on social supports: Poverty costs this province $33 billion a year. The government has an opportunity to double social assistance rates so that people on disabilities no longer live in legislated poverty. It will take stress off of our health care system and it will strengthen our communities.

On housing: The government has an opportunity to follow recommendations that the opposition has been putting forward and that their own housing task force has recommended, things like ending exclusionary zoning so we can rapidly build homes in our existing communities without paving over the farmland that feeds us and the nature that protects us; and investing in permanent supportive and deeply affordable housing, so that everyone in our communities has an affordable place to call home.

Finally, on the climate crisis: I did not even hear the words “climate change” in the throne speech. This is the biggest crisis our generation has ever faced. Scientists are clear that if emissions don’t peak in 2025, we will unleash irreversible climate catastrophes. We’re already feeling it: the floods, the droughts, the extreme heat. The bottom line is, we can solve this crisis while also addressing people’s affordability concerns—lowering their transportation costs by electrifying, lowering their home heating bills by investing in retrofitting homes and buildings to help people save money by saving energy, and investing in nature-based solutions, saying, “We’re not going to build billion-dollar highways, but we’re actually going to protect the farmland that feeds us and the wetlands that protect us.” Those are the issues I wanted to hear—

Questions? Member from Oshawa—no, Windsor.

Interjections.

The member from Mississauga.

Mr. Speaker, I was listening and I just want to talk about the government—when there was a pandemic, we were the government who were here to bring the job-protected leave. We did not want any worker in the province to choose between their health and their job, and that’s what we did, thanks to the leadership of Premier Ford and the best-ever labour minister we have who’s delivered this.

Interjections.

On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, we’ve seen there are 370,000 jobs going unfilled. The question to the member opposite for London West is simple: Do you think we need to support these workers so we can fill these jobs?

I think the member from Guelph would agree with the following analogy. This government has been in power for the last four years, and prior to them, we’ve seen the boondoggle of what the Liberals had done to our energy system. We’ve seen when the Conservative government was actually sitting here fighting with the Liberal government in regard to, “No, you should privatize hydro this way.” And they’re saying, “No, no, you should privatize it this way.” They disagreed on how to privatize it, but they agreed on the privatization.

The result of that was the deregulation and the high cost of hydro. I’ve got a couple of bills, and I’ll be talking to it hopefully today, over my opportunity to bring in the statements. But here’s a bill from someone where their consumption—their actual usage was $1,600. Their actual bill, after delivery charges are added to this, was $3,800. Is that saving dollars for Ontarians? Is that bringing the hydro cost across this province in line with the actualities of what people are facing when they’re opening up their hydro bills? Everybody is opening up their hydro bills and they’re, “No, no, no.” But those are the facts that are happening.

Has this government, in your knowledge—have they actually brought down the price of hydro?