My question is for the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry. The independent Liberals and the opposition NDP members in this House support increasing the federally imposed carbon tax. They know that increasing the carbon tax will result in a significant spike in fuel prices, setting off a chain reaction of increased costs across our economy. For instance, the cost of manufacturing raw materials will increase dramatically. Businesses, particularly those in rural, remote and northern communities, are already struggling to keep prices affordable for their customers. We must do everything we can to reduce taxes for all Ontarians during this period of economic uncertainty.

Speaker, can the minister please explain how the carbon tax is negatively impacting Ontario’s natural resources sector?

Yesterday, I had a chance to talk about how negative the carbon tax was on the forestry sector and how the cost of the carbon tax is now getting built into every home in Ontario. That means every bolt, screw, two-by-four, fence board—it’s got carbon tax in it. It doesn’t need to be that way. It can be a lot simpler than this. Our Premier and our finance minister showed the way again this week of how easy it is to reduce taxes and reduce that burden, so the federal government needs to step up and do the same thing.

We heard yesterday from the OFIA, our forestry industry association, how damaging the carbon tax was for them. Here’s what they had to say about the fuel cut: “This has a significant impact on small businesses and their employees operating in northern, rural and Indigenous communities in Ontario.” It’s easy to do it, and our friends across the way here, they can pick up the phone, they can send an email, even pick up some carrier pigeons—

Interjections.

Let’s think about how many loads of aggregates go into projects: for one kilometre of subway-building, 4,500 loads; to build a hospital, 3,700 loads of aggregates. I left off the great Minister of Education and the schools that he wants to build in Ontario yesterday. What’s in those now? Carbon tax.

We could do more if we had more here in Ontario, but the federal Liberal government insists on charging a carbon tax on every single thing we do. It’s insidious, but it has to stop. We are doing such a great job in building Ontario. Municipalities are impacted as well, by the way, in the work that they do. This tax is easy to stop; it just takes a phone call from our friends here in Ontario. Let’s scrap the tax, get it done, help Ontarians—