I, too, would like to welcome members of the Catholic Health Association of Ontario, with a special shout-out to John Woods, interim president of St. Joe’s health care in Guelph. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I need to correct my record from yesterday in question period. I made a mistake, I will admit—

Interjections.

I didn’t hear you, sorry. Did you say “Guelph”?

I want to ask the members opposite, are you going to take away my carbon rebate? Are you going to take away the carbon rebate cheques of the people of Ontario because you want to get rid of carbon pricing? Is that what you’re suggesting with this? Because I don’t know about the rest of you, but at least last year—I haven’t seen the numbers for this year—myself, like most Ontarians, got far more back in the carbon rebate than we paid in carbon pricing. I used that money—

Interjection.

I don’t know about the rest of you. I got my cheque a little bit ago, I deposited it in my bank account, and I used it to help buy groceries. That’s what I used my carbon rebate cheque for. I don’t know about the rest of you, what you use your rebate cheques for, but we used ours to help address affordability concerns.

You know what? I was going to say something nice about the minister of industry over there, so give me a second; I really was going to say something nice about the minister, Speaker. If the heckling can die down a little bit, I’ll get to the point in what I want to say, and I’ll say something nice about the industry minister. Okay.

The rebate: More people in Ontario receive more back in a rebate than they pay out in carbon pricing, and it creates an incentive—

Interjections.

Let’s look at what is driving the affordability crisis—

Interjection.

Three things—

So what is driving the affordability crisis people are facing? It’s primarily food, fuel and housing. So I want to start by focusing on food. If you look around the world, if you talk to food economists—and I’m lucky, I represent the riding of Guelph that has the University of Guelph which has most of the country’s leading food economists—at the University of Guelph. So I have the opportunity to chat with them. They will tell you there are three, well, four things—two of them are kind of related—driving up food prices. The first are supply chain disruptions partly due to the pandemic and partly due to the concentration we have in the food sector. Second is conflict—global conflict—primarily the global conflict in Ukraine. The third is all these changes in the weather: All the major food-growing regions in the world are experiencing significant droughts and have been experiencing them over the last five years. Then, oftentimes, when the drought ends, it’s because extreme rainfall comes and floods their crops. It’s one of the reasons the Salinas Valley in California was flooded, and we get a lot of our produce from California.

So when they say these weather events are causing food prices to go up, what is causing these weather events to happen? The climate crisis. It’s all being fuelled by the climate crisis. If the reason was because of what the government is stating—they’re saying it’s due to carbon pricing—if that was the reason, we wouldn’t see food inflation in countries without carbon pricing, but yet we’re seeing food inflation in countries all over the world.

As a matter of fact, food inflation in a number of other countries is higher than it is in Canada, even countries without carbon pricing. So we have to be honest with the people of Ontario. What is driving up the cost of food? Supply chain disruptions: There are two drivers of that. One is primarily due to the pandemic, which is exactly why we should be doing everything possible to support local supply chains. As a matter of fact, during the pandemic, one of the things the Premier said that I agreed with was the absolute need to protect local supply chains for PPE, food and other things.

So I asked the members opposite, will you work with us to end the loss of 319 acres of farmland each and every day in this province? We simply cannot allow more farmland to be lost in this province, because we need to have strong local supply chains. We have to grow food in this province for the people of this province so we’re not so dependent on international global markets affected by supply chain disruptions and conflict. So will you support protecting farmland in this province and actually start building homes and communities people want to live in on land that’s already approved for development, not on farmland?

Secondly, will you help—and this one we need the federal government’s help on, but we can have a role here in Ontario—in the extreme concentration in our food sector? Five retailers control 85% of food sales in this country. That hurts farmers and it hurts consumers. We’re both paying the price for that. That’s exactly why you have things like the price-fixing scandal of bread and other things. That’s why you see food producers, farmers and processors not making as much margins, even though you’re seeing record profits by grocery retailers. It’s why you’re seeing us, as consumers, being gouged at the marketplace. We do need the Competition Bureau and federal government to deal with this issue, but we can also push for a grocery code of conduct here in Ontario modelled after places like the UK and other countries to protect both farmers and producers and to protect consumers from extreme concentration in the retail market.

Now, conflict—I don’t know if there is much we can do about that. I mean, obviously we’re supporting Ukraine; obviously the Canadian government is supporting Ukraine. To me, the disruption increase that conflict is creating—one of the best ways we can combat that is actually being more self-reliant, producing our own food, which is exactly why we need to protect the farmland that grows that food, Speaker.

The big one is climate. The reason you’re seeing huge food inflation across all countries around the world is weather-related drought and flooding, and it is getting more extreme, it’s getting more severe, and it’s damaging more and more crops each and every year. Our farmers are on the front lines of that, and I’m very confident, as someone who grew up on a farm, that farmers are going to help us deliver solutions to that. But we also have to make sure we do our part to reduce climate pollution in Ontario, so we can reduce the impacts of the climate crisis on Ontarians.

As a matter of fact, I would argue that the climate crisis is nature’s tax on every single one of us, and we need to do our part to reduce pollution. Last year alone, insurance claims, because of the climate crisis, were $3.4 billion in Canada. The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimates that the public infrastructure costs are generally about three times higher than that, so that would be around $10 billion last year alone. All of us have to pay for that.

Ontario’s Financial Accountability Officer estimates that this decade alone, the cost to infrastructure just in Ontario is going to be $26.4 billion. That’s damage to our transit lines, our roads, our bridges, our storm waters, our sewers, our communities. So we (1) have to do more to invest in strengthening our infrastructure from damage driven by the climate crisis, but (2) we need to reuse climate pollution because that will help mitigate that damage and those financial losses.

So how are some of the ways we can do that? Well, one of them is that we can electrify our transportation system. This is where I was actually going to compliment the Minister of Economic Development and Job Creation: We are seeing increased investment in electric vehicle manufacturing in this province, and I hope that is something we can all celebrate. We’re behind other jurisdictions—China, the EU and the US are ahead of us—but we’re catching up, and that’s a good thing. But we also need to make sure that those electric vehicles that we produce in Ontario—that Ontarians can actually afford to drive them. That’s why I’ve supported things like rebates for new and used electric vehicles, so people can take advantage of the cost savings. If you want to help people save money at the gas pump, get rid of the gas pump.

I’m lucky; I drive one of the least expensive electric vehicles out there, probably. I’m lucky I drive that. Do you know why, Speaker? Because it costs me about one tenth to fill my car up with electricity as it would to fill it up with gas. I want all Ontarians to be able to realize those savings. That’s how we can significantly drive down costs. We can also invest in better transit. We can also invest in bike lanes and communities that are walkable, so people don’t have to drive as much, but for those who do, let’s electrify transportation and cut their fuel costs.

Housing: If we can electrify housing, especially heating costs, through heat pumps, we can save people money and reduce climate pollution at the same time. I’m working on a project in Guelph with Habitat for Humanity to build a 72-bedroom, multi-unit family housing project for obtainable home ownership for people. It will be covered in solar panels. It’s going to save those residents $62,000 a year on their heating and cooling costs. So we can drive down climate pollution; we can address the real affordability challenges people are facing for food, fuel and housing; and we can increase our economy and benefit at the same time.

I want to close with that: $1.1 trillion invested in the clean economy last year, about half of that in renewable energy; slightly less than that in electric vehicles. And like I said, I’m happy we’re seeing more of that investment in Ontario, but we are missing in action when it comes to attracting that investment for renewables and for heat pumps. I want Ontario to be a global leader in both of those areas too because I want to attract those investment dollars. I want to see the jobs and prosperity they create because we know that’s going to benefit our communities and help pay for things like health care and housing and education.

This year, Bloomberg estimates $1.8 trillion will be invested in the climate economy. Solar alone will exceed investments in the oil and gas sector. Why? Because solar energy is now the cheapest source of energy anywhere in the world. That’s why global investment dollars are flowing to solar.

We can utilize that solar to help reduce food costs. A great example of that is barns. I know solar companies now that are installing solar projects on chicken barns, hog barns, dairy barns, saving those farmers significant money, especially when it comes to chicken farming because of the amount of light required.

We have solutions to lower costs, increase jobs and lower climate pollution at the same time. The question is, are we going to implement the policies to do it? Because right now in Ontario, we’re hardly installing any solar. The government seems to be actively hostile to it. I don’t know why; it’s the lowest-cost source of electricity generation. In the same way that we can attract capital investment in electric vehicle manufacturing, why not in renewable energy manufacturing? Why not in heat pump manufacturing? A 40% increase in demand for heat pumps in the EU last year alone: That’s where the world is going. That’s where the economy is going.

I only have a few minutes left. I want to close by saying that there’s a lot of talk about the cost of carbon pricing, but not a lot of talk about the cost of the climate crisis—not a lot of talk about the climate crisis cost, even though it’s driving up so much of the food costs we’re experiencing. I want to work with government to protect our farmland, so we have those local supply chains.

Let’s build homes in existing urban areas: big cities, small towns. Let’s build homes there, where we have already paid for the servicing for those homes, where we can build more affordable communities and we can protect that precious farmland so not only would we feed our people, but we can export that, generating good jobs and prosperity for Ontario. Let’s invest in solutions like helping people reduce their fuel costs by making it easier to choose things other than a car or a pickup truck, and when they need a car or a pickup truck, they can afford to choose a low-cost electric because it’s going to save them money. Let’s address the housing affordability crisis, and let’s make sure we do it in a way where we build homes that are highly energy efficient and—

Interjection.

I’m sorry; the member opposite said “lollipops.” I’m talking about solutions to the climate crisis that are being implemented across the world, helping people save money, benefiting their local economies, attracting the $1.8 trillion in global investment that’s going to these solutions. Why not have that in Ontario? Why lose that investment to the EU and US and other jurisdictions?

Let’s make those investments right here in Ontario, address the climate crisis, address the affordability crisis and improve our economy at the same time. Those are the kinds of solutions that are going to address people’s affordability concerns, improve their quality of life and ensure their children have a better future. Speaker, that’s what I’m hoping we can deliver on in this Legislature and in this province.