SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
October 17, 2023 09:00AM
  • Oct/17/23 10:50:00 a.m.

Colleagues, the leader of the NDP said that she doesn’t believe a carbon tax is costing the people of the province of Ontario anything. So I ask my colleagues, do you believe it’s costing us more? Yes—

Interjections.

I was speaking to Larry Simpson in my riding, a magnificent potato farmer, who was talking about a great crop this year, but the cost of taking that crop out of the ground and then delivering it across the province of Ontario is exorbitant. The cost of heating the potatoes over the winter to keep them available for delivery is incredible, and it’s because of the carbon tax.

If the Leader of the Opposition doesn’t believe that it is costing the people of Canada enormously, I ask her to call a few people who are struggling each and every day because of a carbon tax.

But we’ll continue to work for all people, to put more money—

They can talk about it as much as they want—what they really are saying, and we all know it, is that they want to put obstacles in the way of building more homes for the people of the province of Ontario, because they were so effective at doing it with the Liberals, right? They were so effective at putting obstacles in the way that they put Ontario into a housing crisis. Every single year that we have been in office, we have put measures on the floor of this Legislature to remove those obstacles, and they have voted against it. But we will not stop.

We will continue to make life more affordable for the people of the province of Ontario. We will continue to fight against carbon taxes. We will continue to build infrastructure. We will continue to build long-term care. We will continue to build roads so that we can get our product to market faster. And we will continue to see massive investments, like the over $27 billion that has come to Ontario, that has created over 700,000 jobs. That is what we’ll continue to do each—

I’ll tell you what we have here—we have the mayor of Brantford here. Do you know what he’s excited about? He’s excited about the groundbreaking of a brand new long-term-care home in his riding. That’s what he’s excited about. He’s excited about the jobs and opportunity that come with that investment. Do you know who never brought that investment? It was the Liberals and the NDP—because in their time, they brought 611. There are more long-term-care beds being built in that community, in Brantford, than there were in the entire province of Ontario when they had the opportunity.

That’s what people are excited about. It’s not a rant. It’s fact. And that’s what the people of Ontario care about.

Interjections.

It is they who have been dragging their heels, voting against every single measure that would grow the economy. They dragged their heels when it came to investing in hospitals, building new hospitals, refurbishing some of the old hospitals. They dragged their heels and continue to drag their heels when we talk about building the 413. They’re absolutely dead set against people bringing their product to market. They have voted against the investments that we’re making to bring back our auto sector. They have voted against the expansion of our colleges and universities. They voted against the changes that we’re making to our education curriculum that are finally seeing results for our students, who stagnated over 15 years of policies of the Liberals and NDP.

So when she talks about dragging your heels—the only people who are dragging their heels are the Liberals and NDP, a coalition of the doomed that saw this province brought to its knees.

We’re rebuilding this province and we’ll continue to do it, and 700,000—

Interjections.

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