I apologize to the member. I recognize the member from Orléans.

I will ask the member to resume his debate.

How many reminders does he get?

Good morning, everybody. It’s a pleasure to be here to have the opportunity to debate this fine motion and amendment to it. As many of you have heard me say, when I speak and when we look at the types of resolutions that we look at to fix the various problems that we try to fix, I always like to begin with looking at what is it that we are trying to solve and what’s the problem we’re trying to solve.

Well, obviously we’re dealing with some significant cost increases across the board. People are dealing with inflation. They’re struggling to be able to put food on the table. They’re struggling to be able to pay their rent. They’re struggling with being able to buy their groceries and heat their homes and put gas in their cars, or struggling to be able to get a bus pass. The struggles just are quite significant.

We are the government, and the reason why we are the government is because people have a lot of problems and they have elected us to fix those problems, because when the coalition of the Liberals and the NDP were in power, they caused all these problems. While they were causing all these problems, the people saw how terrible they were at effectively managing anything, so they decided to elect some people that they thought were going to be a lot better at managing things. I think the people have spoken, Madam Speaker.

Interjection.

So it’s incumbent on us as members in this House to recognize what the people of this province—all across this province in every single riding and every corner of it—what they are saying and what they’re concerned about. Right now, one of the principal concerns is affordability. It’s a basic reference. So, again, back to the question, what is the problem we need to solve? And the problem is affordability. Now, the nature of the motion that is before us and the amendment to the motion is to call upon the federal government to do something. So in this case, we’re calling upon our brothers and sisters in the—

Interjections.

And so, again, I ask, what is the problem we’re trying to solve and how will this amendment or this motion address that? I challenge myself because in order to answer that question, you have to get to the root, right? You must come to the root, and the root, ultimately, as the amendment is addressing an HST issue, the motion is addressing a carbon tax issue—which is all, again, aimed at how do we fix this affordability problem.

Well, you have to ask yourself what each one of those taxes—what they were all about. The HST, obviously, has been around for a very long time. The GST before it was around for a very long time. The carbon tax is a recent issue, and it comes about for very different reasons, so let’s focus there as a starting point.

The carbon tax: My understanding—I stand to be corrected, Madam Speaker—is, somehow, a tax that was contemplated, envisioned, would solve certain environmental problems. They would produce people’s environmental impact. It would protect the environment. Okay—in theory, I can understand how that works. But in so doing, we’re taxing businesses on just about everything we do—literally, quite frankly, everything, whether it’s your food—you know, we’re hearing people talk about what it costs to run a fan, to dry our foods off before we can put them out to market so they don’t rot or mould.

We’re talking about how much it costs me to fuel gas in my home, and I don’t even use that much. My own home—I burn a lot of wood. I just had my three sons and myself getting ready for the winter. We’re prepping our woodshed. We’re getting everything set. My wood cost has gone up $10 a cord and they’re telling me it’s because of the cost of fuel. All of these costs just keep on growing and growing and growing.

Me heating my home with wood is a little bit more environmentally friendly than using natural gas. Now, I’ve got to pay more money for that. Okay, I can understand that. But is it going to fix the problem? Is it going to fix the grander issue of protecting the environment? Those costs are just getting pushed on to me, the end user. The cost of that bologna sandwich is just going up, but the person who is paying for it is that end user. I used to bring my kids to Subway a lot after soccer practice. We used to always go to Subway; it was a thing. Until I went to Subway recently and a sub cost me, and a diet Pepsi—it was like $18, for one. I mean, you multiply that out by the whole family and I’m thinking, that’s a really expensive lunch, right? That’s a really, really expensive lunch. Why am I paying that price? It’s because of all of these costs going up, and I’m just paying for it.

So, is the environment getting protected? Did anybody stop doing anything to hurt the environment because they had these taxes? No, they’re just paying more money to do the business that they’re doing, and they’re making me pay for it. It’s a really challenging situation that now I’m just paying for and you’re paying for and the member for Niagara is paying for and all of his constituents are paying for—but again, are his constituents seeing any changes in the world? Are they seeing the impact of the carbon tax fixing the environment? I’d love to know if the member actually sees a change in the environment because of all the extra costs his constituents are paying, for basic items like a fried egg in the morning.

Interjection.

Further debate?

The motion that is the amendment states, “amended by removing everything after the word ‘should’ and inserting ‘in conjunction with the government of Ontario, remove the harmonized sales tax on fuels and inputs for home heating.’” Please speak to the amendment to the original motion. Thank you.

I will recognize the member from Sault Ste. Marie.

Interjection.

Point of order, Madam Speaker.

Merci, madame la Présidente. Si vous voulez prendre un moment pour avoir la traduction, s’il vous plaît, allez-y.

Je me lève sur une motion de procédure conformément à l’article 25(b) du Règlement, qui stipule que le député ne peut parler de sujets autres que la question à l’examen.

La motion sur la table est d’éliminer la TVH sur le chauffage domestique. Ce n’est pas une question de demander au gouvernement fédéral de changer la taxe de carbone.

I will remind the member from Niagara Falls to come to order.

On a point of order, Madam Speaker.

Gouging.

Further debate?

It’s a pleasure to rise to debate this motion. Before I get into the need to address the affordability and climate crisis that we’re facing in Ontario right now and the fact that this government has failed to address both of those, I’ve got to say it’s been interesting listening to the member from Sault Ste. Marie defending taxes. I’ve got to say, folks on the other side of the aisle oftentimes don’t defend taxes. It was interesting hearing the member defend taxes, because we know taxes pay for our health care system. They pay for good education, universities; addressing the housing affordability crisis; addressing the climate crisis; basically, making life livable in this province.

They say taxes are what fund civilization. So I was happy to hear the member acknowledge that. I’m hoping that the government members, when things like gimmicks like licence plate stickers come up again—and being the only MPP in this entire Legislature to vote against that, because I wanted to see the $2.5 billion that was lost in the first year and the $1.5 billion we’re losing each and every year actually going to helping Ontarians access high-quality health care or education, better long-term-care services, building affordable housing. So the next time the government brings up a gimmick like that, I’ll be reminded of the member’s elegant defence of the role taxes play in funding our government and our society.

Speaker, we are facing an affordability crisis and a climate crisis. And I would say to all members of this House of all political parties, you ignore them at your peril. We have to address both, and we can address both at the same time, but not by the actions of this government.

Think about the fall economic statement. There wasn’t a single measure to address affordability in the fall economic statement, nor were there any measures to address the climate crisis. As a matter of fact, since this government took office, they ripped up Ontario’s climate plan. They cancelled 750 renewable energy contracts, costing the province $230 million. They cancelled EV rebates, which would help people drive lower-cost cars. They ripped out charging stations to help people charge those cars at a lower cost. They changed the building code to make building retrofits—

So we have an amendment here to take the HST off home heating, to a motion to remove the carbon price from home heating. If people really want to address the cost associated with home heating, the best thing we can do is to help people avoid both of those costs: the HST and the carbon price. How do we help people do that, Speaker? We help them save money by saving energy and by helping people reduce the need to purchase fuel to heat their homes.

Unfortunately, when the current government took office, they cancelled all of those programs to help people save money by saving energy. The Ontario Greens are saying, “Let’s bring those programs back.” I want to give you just one example: Corporate Knights hired a number of economists to do an analysis of what it would look like if we brought in a building retrofit program in the province of Ontario—or across Canada, but I will give you the numbers for the province of Ontario. A $5-billion investment in building retrofits would leverage $83 billion of additional capital investment in the province, creating over 800,000 jobs, contributing $196 billion to Ontario’s GDP, reducing climate pollution by 14 metric tonnes, and saving energy consumers $4.8 billion each and every year. To me, that’s the most logical, sensible, fiscally responsible and economically responsible way to help people with home heating costs and be more effective than removing the HST or carbon price from home heating fuels. Why don’t we invest in that? Why don’t we actually help people save money by saving energy—not just this year, but the next year and the next year and the years after that? That’s how we can address both the climate crisis and the affordability crisis that people are facing.

There has been a lot of talk about the cost-of-fuel inflation that we’re facing, whether it’s home heating, at the gas pumps, or whatever. If you look at what is driving it—this is according to PBO—the carbon price went up two cents last year—that’s per litre; it’s two cents per litre. Profits for the oil and gas companies, last year, went up by 18 cents a litre—

I would say to your average consumer looking at heating their home, “What’s hitting you harder: the two cents that the carbon price raised per litre last year or the 18 cents that went to oil and gas profits last year?” If we’re going to write letters—essentially, what these motions are about is writing letters to the federal government. If we want to write a letter to the federal government, why don’t we write a letter to the federal government to bring in the exact same excess profit tax, they brought in for banks and insurance companies, to the oil and gas sector? That would raise $4.2 billion. We could then take that $4.2 billion and follow the analysis that the Green Budget Coalition has done showing that we could actually do zero-cost energy retrofits for low-income households, including providing them with a heat pump at the exact same price, saving them far more money than either the original motion or the amended motion provides for people.

Speaker, the point is, we have solutions. As a matter of fact, the province wouldn’t even have to write a letter to the federal government on carbon pricing if we would just actually bring back the programs that would help people save money by saving energy, which, by the way, would benefit our economy and reduce climate pollution at the same time.

Speaker, the other thing that I, when I’ve heard the government discuss this—I see the energy minister here. I love debating the energy minister.

It’s an honour to rise today and speak to the motion. Madam Speaker, I know there is an amendment on the floor, and I can speak to the amendment as well, but before I do that, I want to move the following:

I move that the amendment be amended by deleting everything after “remove” and replacing it with “the carbon tax on fuels and inputs for home heating.”

Colleagues, you will know that the focus of today and this motion has been on the carbon tax. That is what we have been debating about. That is what is seizing the country right now, the value and the impact of the carbon tax on families; the fact that a federal Liberal government has brought forward an amendment to the carbon tax which favours one region of the country over everybody else, a decision that was plainly made for political purposes.

We saw that the member for Essex and a number of other colleagues last night were talking about why we were bringing this forward, why it was important for us to do that. It’s not only just because of the fact that the carbon tax is hurting every single person; it is because of the fact that the federal Liberal government, a minister of that government, has admitted that the decision to remove the carbon tax on fuels in Atlantic Canada was based solely on politics and no other reason. So for that reason, provinces and communities across this country—our federal Parliament has been seized on what has happened with respect to the carbon tax and why it is not only a bad tax, but why the Liberals have now made it even worse, turning it into a national crisis.

Now, I can appreciate the member for Orléans wanting to distract from that with another motion. Let’s talk about it. We were here last night until midnight debating this motion. Not one member of the Liberal Party felt it was important to get in their place and defend the amendment that was brought forward by the member for Orléans—not one. In eight hours of debate, the Liberal caucus sat on their hands and spoke not even once on the amendment. They didn’t get up and speak on the carbon tax. They didn’t speak even once. They just sat there in agreement all night.

And now, this morning, they get up in their place—the same group; the member himself, the member for Ottawa-Orléans—to defend the sanctity of the amendment that he brought forward on the HST. But a speech to defend it? No. Did any other members of the Liberal Party feel that it was important for them to get up and talk about reducing taxes? No. Have they? No. We will continue this debate, and I guarantee you, Madam Speaker, that not one more Liberal will have the courage to rise in their place and talk about either eliminating the carbon tax or the Harmonized Sales Tax.

Let’s be very clear: I will give credit to the NDP. Having said that, they didn’t speak either last night on the carbon tax motion, but I will give credit where credit is due. They themselves could see the damage that this tax was causing on the people of Ontario, and when we brought another motion last week with respect to eliminating carbon taxes on groceries and on inputs, the NDP voted with us—with the people of Ontario, frankly—to remove that tax.

That was a big change for the NDP. It was a big change for the NDP. What they had said, the NDP, is that after all of the huffing and puffing and talking about how important a carbon tax was, that finally—and you will know, Madam Speaker: The NDP have come a long way. They’ve come a long way.

The member for Sarnia–Lambton—you’ll remember in the last Parliament we had a motion to protect—I think it was line 9?

Further debate?

Further debate?

Keep talking.

I know. I need to start asking you some questions.

I’ve had to ask the housing minister a lot of questions lately, but I’ll get to the energy minister soon enough.

He talks about energy poverty, and that is a real issue, but most of the measures the government has brought forward to address that issue actually disproportionally benefit high-income households—including the original motion and the amended motion; including the $7 billion that we’re spending to subsidize electricity prices in Ontario. The FAO has done an analysis, and that disproportionately benefits high-income households at the expense of low-income households. When you look at carbon pricing, it’s the low-income households, according to the PBO, who receive more money back through rebates than they pay in to carbon pricing. So if the government’s concern—and I think this is a valid concern—is energy poverty, we’d be much better off having income means-tested programs and/or just doing what I’m suggesting: having programs in place that would help working-class, middle-class families be able to save money by saving energy. That is the most effective way we can address the affordability crisis and the climate crisis.

I know the members opposite have talked a lot about food inflation and how carbon pricing can connect to food inflation. But if you talk to food economists, do you know what they’ll tell you the number one drivers of food inflation are? The climate crisis—they usually say weather; they say there’s drought in most of the major growing areas in the world. Of course, there’s conflict in the Ukraine; that’s contributing. There is grocery-gouging; that’s contributing. But the primary driver is the fact that we have drought and floods in the major growing areas, which is driving up prices, because it’s a supply and demand issue. So if we truly wanted to address that affordability challenge, we would address the climate crisis, and we would do everything possible to protect local food supply chains. That’s exactly why we need to be building homes in communities that people want to live in, on land already approved for development, so we don’t have to pave over farmland to do it—so we can protect those local supply chains, so we don’t have a handful of wealthy, well-connected speculators cash in billions at our expense. And when we build those homes—and this is where we need to change the building code—we need to ensure that they’re energy-efficient, so that way, they can save money by saving energy; they can avoid paying HST; they can avoid paying carbon pricing, because they’re using less energy. It’s common sense. It’s basic economics. And by doing it, we benefit our economy by creating jobs; we make our businesses—especially if our commercial, industrial buildings are more efficient, we make them more competitive, more profitable, saving money, generating more prosperity; we ensure that renters and homeowners save money, because they’re saving energy. So it’s a win-win-win—oh, and by the way, we reduce carbon pollution, which is driving the climate crisis.

I want to close by saying to all members of this House—

Interjection.

I want to ask members what message we’re sending to young people. What message are we sending to young people? Because when I talk to young people, they have two major, major concerns. They have lots of concerns, but the two biggest concerns they have are, “How am I ever going to afford to own a home or even pay the rent, given the skyrocketing housing costs and the skyrocketing costs of rent?”

Then the second one is, “What’s my future going to look like because of the climate crisis?” especially after the summer we’ve been through this summer, Speaker, with smoke from forest fires causing bad air quality here throughout Ontario. As a matter of fact, the lung association was just here yesterday talking about lung cancer, and they’re saying that the number one driver historically has been smoking, but now it’s becoming air pollution, primarily driven by the climate crisis, which is then going to put pressure on our health care system, driving up costs for people.

Young people are asking about their financial future. According to Ontario’s Financial Accountability Officer, the climate crisis is going to cost an extra $26.2 billion this decade alone just for public infrastructure if we don’t start reducing pollution. Over the course of this century, we’re going to have an additional $4 billion a year in transportation costs due to climate-fuelled extreme weather events; an additional $1.5 billion a year for costs associated to public buildings.

Young people are saying, “How am I going to afford a home or pay the rent? “They’re saying, “How am I going to afford these escalating costs due to the climate crisis?” Last year alone, $3.1 billion in insurable losses due to the climate crisis. So young people are saying, “How am I going to afford all of this?-

Then, they’re looking at what we’re debating right now in this House, and they’re saying, “Why don’t you take real action; real action to save me money? Build a home I can afford and make sure it’s energy-efficient. Make sure that I have a heat pump. Make sure that I have good insulation and good windows and that I can significantly reduce my home heating costs in that home.”

Speaker, let’s build homes people can afford in the communities they want to live in, that are affordable, that are close to where they work so they don’t have to have long, expensive commutes. Let’s build those homes so they’re energy-efficient, so that we can address the real affordability concerns people have, young people especially, about what it’s going to take to heat that home, and we can address the real concerns they have about the climate crisis.

We can do both. We can do it in a way that benefits our economy and creates more jobs. We can do it in a way that addresses the affordability crisis and the climate crisis. That’s the debate we should be having in this House today, not a debate about sending a letter to the federal government to maybe possibly do something that, quite frankly, is just yet another attack on taking action on the climate crisis. Let’s solve the problem of affordability and climate. That’s the debate we need to have. Thank you, Speaker.

You never ask me any questions, though.

I’d love for you to keep talking.

Or it might.

Line 5. The NDP has historically been against oil and gas, and they voted with the government to protect line 5. That was a historical shift with the NDP. And then, finally, last week they also then voted with us to eliminate carbon taxes.

Now, it wasn’t just here. To give credit where credit is due, the NDP in Ottawa also, after we resolved the incorrect phone number for Jagmeet—it was actually 613-JAGMEET, not 1-800; I beg you, don’t call the 1-800 number. It won’t get you where you want to go.

But all of a sudden, even the federal NDP realized that this is a bad tax.

Now, we have said, on this side of the House, right from day one, that the carbon tax will cost everybody, no matter what you do. It was going to cost you constantly, right? We have said that from day one. We took the federal government to court to try and stop the carbon tax, and we heard speech after speech after speech from the opposition, “No, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong.”

Now we have clear evidence of it. At least the official opposition here, whether they believe it or not, at least they understand that right now we are in a situation that the carbon tax is costing people and something has to give. So, I congratulate the NDP for supporting the motion last week. I hope that they will support—and I’m optimistic. I think that they will support this motion here today, Madam Speaker.

But let’s go back to the Liberals, right? Let’s go back to the Liberals. Now, I was a member federally, you all know, before I was retired by the people. I was first elected in 2008, and part of that election in 2008 was off of the success of what was the 2006 campaign—you will recall this—to reduce the GST at the time, from 7% to 6% to 5%. What did we hear from the Liberals? I mean, the NDP are consistent; I will give them this. They like to tax, right? The Liberals love to tax. The NDP like to tax, but I will give the NDP credit that they’re consistent. The Liberals will make you believe that they both like to tax and don’t like to tax. They try to hide what it is they want.

When we went from 7% to 6% to 5%—because that’s what Conservatives do, right? We reduce taxes and give you more for that. They said that doing that would cause an absolute collapse in the economy, that it is the dumbest thing to do, that you can’t do it, and blah, blah, blah—any host of reasons why you can’t do it. But you know what happened? When we reduced taxes, all of a sudden, the economy started to grow. More people had more money, and they were spending more money. And do you know what then happened? We actually got more tax revenue when we reduced taxes on people, and we were able to get through a global financial meltdown, put massive amounts of investments and infrastructure in place and then we balanced the budget federally. But we know that all changed, because then we have a Prime Minister who says that budgets balance themselves. We all know that they don’t balance themselves, that governments actually have to do work in order to balance budgets.

But let’s look at the record of the Liberal Party here in this place. The member from—I almost do it disservice. I would encourage all members, if you didn’t listen to the speech from the member for Essex last night, give yourself an opportunity. Go look up that speech because he really laid it out. I will do it disservice, but let’s look at the Liberals.

I encourage the member from Orléans, if he disagrees with anything that I’m saying, to rise in his place and standing-order me and tell me that I am wrong. And if he does that, I will sit down, Madam Speaker.

This is a Liberal Party, now, that wants to talk about reducing taxes but gave us the highest taxes literally in Canada. And what did you have to show for that after 15 years of Liberal government? Nothing. Nothing. The best they had to do was building a bridge upside down. That is the prowess of the Liberal Party. They got so bad that they started to build infrastructure upside down.

Now, we have a Prime Minister in this country who thinks that we should—

Interjections.

This is a government, the Liberal government, that, after 15 years, built bridges upside down; didn’t build roads; didn’t build transit; didn’t build transportation; allowed our hospitals to crumble; didn’t build long-term care; laid off nurses, for the love of God; laid off teachers; ruined the education system—

Interjection: Closed schools.

You know why the entire country is talking about a carbon tax, Madam Speaker? Because things have gotten so unaffordable because of the policies of the Liberal government federally, supported, really, by Liberals here. We won’t talk about the NDP for now because at least they remain consistent in bad policy, right? Which is fine, because at least I give them credit. They’ve never wavered from believing in bad ideas, right? But that’s fine. They will campaign. I’m sure the NDP think that the ideas that we have are not so encouraging, but at least they remain consistent.

That group over there, we have no idea what they’re ever talking about. They’re all over the place. One day they want to cut taxes, but then they’re raising taxes. One day they’re building bridges, then they’re building them upside down. One day they want transit, then the next day—they make all these grand deals, promises, and come through with nothing. They have a leader right now who wants to build on the greenbelt but maybe doesn’t want to build on the greenbelt. Like, this is a party that has shown absolutely no understanding of how to govern. This is a party that will not get the confidence of the people back again.

God bless the leader of the Green Party. God bless the leader of the Green Party. He as well stands on principle, none of which I agree with, but nonetheless, he stands on—oh, I shouldn’t say that; we agree quite often. That’s not true.

But we stray from these things because the Liberals are so desperate to distract from their record. Look, we’re not asking for a lot, right? The member for Orléans—again, I encourage him: Please, rise in your place and tell me I’m wrong. If you do that, I’ll sit down. But he’s not going to because he knows I’m right.

What I promised this House is this: Given the ferocity of the desire to cut taxes by the Liberals, I am going to spend the next five weeks in this place, sitting in this place every night if I have to, bringing motion after motion after motion to give the Liberals the opportunity to vote in favour of cutting taxes because I want to hold them on that record. I want to hold them to the record of that.

Look, this is a party that talks about the mean and nasty oil and gas sector. Now, the member for Essex laid it out pretty well: Who are we punishing? We’re punishing Canadians, Where do you think the oil and gas comes from for the most part? From western Canada—or it should. And it should go all the way to the east coast, but it doesn’t because there are NIMBY politicians even in energy, who won’t have Canadian oil being delivered to Canadian homes. As the member for Essex said yesterday, the policy of the Liberals, this policy which reduces taxes only for our Atlantic partners, means that we are subsidizing Saudi Arabian oil.

Now, the rest of the country is more than happy to take transfers of billions and billions and billions of dollars from oil-producing provinces in this country. So when the oil and gas sector improves the economy of the entire country and those provinces then transfer billions to other provinces, everybody loves the oil and gas sector. But what is the best they have? Punish them even more, Madam Speaker. That it’s thousands of jobs doesn’t matter. Thousands of jobs—“Oh, well, we can find it somewhere else,” because according to Liberal math, the more you spend, the more you save.

We’ve heard this constantly. The first Trudeau told us that the more you spend, the more you save, and then he literally almost bankrupted the country. And then the second one comes and tells us the budget will balance itself and, lo and behold, that has not happened. But then we had a Liberal Party here for 15 years who did the exact same thing. They increased taxes to a level that forced our businesses to flee the province. We were losing thousands of jobs because of the policies of the Liberals—