Okay, I’m just getting directions here, sorry. I’m looking right at the Speaker, so I’m kind of looking over John’s head. When you’re only five foot nothing like I am, it’s tough to see over people’s heads.

Anyway, it’s so important to me, in Niagara—the wine industry, the tender fruit industry. What are we doing? Why would we ever want to destroy that? Why would we ever want to destroy our food source? We thought we should have learned something.

I know during this time some people don’t listen, and I understand that they’re playing on whatever they’re doing, but this is important. It’s important that we understand that we learn from our mistakes.

And what was our mistake? Our mistake was that we were relying on other countries to provide our PPE when COVID hit; when people started dying, started getting sick, started being in our hospitals, and we didn’t have any PPE, we didn’t have any masks, we didn’t have any aprons, we didn’t have any gloves. Guess where they were being made? In China, and some in the southern states. And what did they say to us? “No, we need those for ourselves. We need those to take care of our own residents. We’re not sending them to you”—including the United States of America. And then what did we have to do? We scrambled. We had to have companies start to make gloves and masks and change their whole companies over to try to provide it.

But what will happen—

Interjections.

At the end of the day, what should we have learned? We should have learned that we can’t rely on other countries to provide important things to us. And what’s more important to us than our food and our water and our environment?

If you think that we can continue today, Madam Speaker—because I know you always listen; I appreciate that. We’re losing 319 acres of prime farmland every single day in the province of Ontario. And what I’m saying to my colleagues is, why would we do that? Why would we destroy our food source? In Niagara—I’ve given you examples of our grapes, our peaches, all the things. Our local farmers’ markets are incredible, and there are lots of them. If you go down a little ways, there are some on this corner. They’re everywhere. Why would we want to destroy that? That makes no sense to me. I’m trying to say to this government, why would we ever try to do that? We need to protect our farmers. We need to protect our food source.

What they were trying to do with the greenbelt was awful. I can use different words than that, but you’d have to stand up and call me out. It was one of the worst decisions ever made by a government, and I said, just like I said to Premier Wynne when she fell in the same footsteps as the Conservative government under Mike Harris, when they privatized Hydro and when they sold off Hydro One—I went right to the Premier then, and I said, “This the biggest mistake you’ve ever made, and if you don’t back down on that mistake”—and my good friend Jim Bradley, who I still go to hockey games and Blue Jays games with. He’s still a good friend of mine. He’s a Liberal, and I know some people think you don’t talk to the opposite side, but Jim is a good friend of mine. I said to Jim, “You’re going to lose your election if you can’t convince Premier Wynne to back down on hydro.” I know that he went to their caucus meeting—we all have caucus meetings—and he went to his cabinet, and he tried to convince her not to do it.

Guess what happened to Premier Wynne? Not only did she lose, but what have they got? They’ve got a van and a quarter there—and there’s nothing wrong with a minivan, by the way. They’re made in Windsor by good auto workers, so that’s not the issue. But it’s a good thing we make those vans, so they can take themselves around. And why did that happen? It happened because she decided to sell off Hydro One. That was the number one issue as we watched our bills go from $50 to $300, and people said that was wrong and they didn’t vote for her.

I’m telling you, the greenbelt will have the same effect on this government—that if they continued to go down the path of the greenbelt, they were all going to be defeated; they would have been the new minivan party, because people care with passion about the environment and they care about our heritage.

And there’s no bigger place in my riding—and quite frankly, I’m being honest with the member from Niagara West. His riding is the same as ours. A little bit in the Welland riding, as well, with my member; not as much in St. Catharines, but they also have it—but the Niagara area. I can ask my colleagues—they probably won’t put their hands up—how many have been to Niagara? Everyone goes to Niagara-on-the-Lake, I think, at some point in time. As a matter of fact, if I’m not mistaken—it just hit me—I think the entire PC caucus was in my riding when the Premier stood right beside the casino in Niagara Falls and apologized and said they’re not going to touch the greenbelt.

Now, we’ve still got lots of problems with it, obviously, because the RCMP investigation and all that is going to go on; it’s going to go on for a while. They’re going to interview people. That’s going to continue to happen.

So that’s how I know that the entire PC Party loves my riding. They were down there, and I was a little surprised—I’ll say this: Usually, when you come into somebody’s riding, you at least say that you’re there. Nobody called me up to go for dinner or go out and show the riding, maybe drive them around. I was so shocked at that; I couldn’t believe it. I’m thinking to myself, “They’ve got to be calling,” you know? I checked my cellphone to see if it was still working. Actually, I thought maybe the House leader for the other team might have called me and said, “Hey, do you want to go and watch the Niagara IceDogs play some hockey?” Nothing. You guys didn’t call me at all.

But the important part of that is that you have backed down on the greenbelt. That’s the important part. How you got there, other people than me, that are a lot smarter than me, are going to do that investigation. You’ve already lost a couple of your ministers. You’ve already lost a couple of your chiefs of staff. My concern is who’s next. Who’s next? Who’s the next one that’s going to end up under the bus on this issue?

The bigger issue for me, I’m going to say as I finish up, the most important part of all this for me is protecting our food source, protecting our environment, protecting our water. I want to be clear—because I know they stand up every day and say, “Well, that’s the party over there that’s hook, line and sinker with the Liberals, that didn’t want to build housing.” I want to be very clear: I have stood up in this House many, many times—you can check Hansard all you want—and said how important it is to build housing in the province of Ontario, the 1.5 million. Your task force said it was doable without touching the greenbelt. I’m going to continue to say, on behalf of my colleagues—because I know every one of these colleagues that are here today and knows that we’ll be here for question period have said the same thing—we want to build homes.

I want to be very clear. I know you’re all sitting out there thinking that, you know, I’m probably 35, 37 years old. Well, I’m a little older than that. I have three daughters and I have five grandchildren. My oldest grandchild is 19. You think about it. I want a future for my three daughters. I want to make sure that they can afford a house. My youngest daughter just bought a house a year ago; she’s struggling a bit with the cost of it, with interest rates, but she has had the opportunity to buy—guess what it was—a little starter home, something like a wartime house, but at least she got into the market. I want that for my kids. I want that for my three daughters. I want that for my grandkids. So when you stand up and say that we don’t want to build homes for our kids, that’s absolutely not accurate.

We love our kids just like the Conservatives love their kids, just like the Liberals and the Greens love their kids, and we want the best for them. You know what’s best for them? That we make sure that we have an environment so they have clean air, they have clean drinking water, and make sure they can afford to buy a house, that they have a good-paying job.

As a lot of you should know, I came out of the labour movement. I was a union president; I’ve done all that. I joined a union. I was lucky; I got paid fair wages. I made a good, fair wage. I got benefits. I have a pension. And guess what? I was able to raise those three daughters. I was able to provide for them, to play some baseball; I coached baseball for close to 20 years. They figure-skated. They got an education. They went to university. One’s a teacher, one works in special needs today, and the other one is in public health. How could I do that? Because I had a good-paying job. I had a house that I bought.

I want the same thing for my kids. So please don’t stand up here and say I don’t want to build 1.5 million houses, that I don’t really care about young people having a place to live, that I don’t care about students, that I don’t care about this—