I think I have just a short period of time to speak. I’m not entirely certain how much time, but I’ll continue on, Madam Speaker.

First, let me just congratulate all members. I think members will know that today was another historic day in the life of this Parliament: A budget motion, a motion of confidence in the government—that’s what a budget bill is—and we received 100% support of all members of this House. One hundred per cent support, colleagues. Now, that has happened twice, to the best of my knowledge, in the entire length of time that Ontario has been in existence and, both times, it has been this Progressive Conservative government that has received the unanimous support of all members, colleagues. So that is a very, very good day, so I want to just thank all members and all parties for their unanimous vote of support in the government and the policies of the government. They will, of course, frame how we move forward.

I wanted to just talk a little bit about this. We’re now focused back on the carbon tax on this motion. It is also a good day because we will be talking about taxes and cutting taxes over and over and over and over and over again until this House adjourns on the 14th, and I am looking forward to that.

One thing I do want to start with: We talked about it in a previous motion and I’ll get back to it—it was disappointing to hear that the NDP—I thought they actually wanted to get rid of the carbon tax because they believed in putting more money back in the pockets, but what they want to replace it with is a cap-and-trade system. Now, colleagues, apparently the cap-and-trade system doesn’t cost you anything, right? The billions and billions of dollars that the cap-and-trade collects, according to the NDP, it doesn’t cost you anything, right? So they’re complaining that they want to get rid of the carbon tax but replace it with cap-and-trade. Now, cap-and-trade costs billions upon billions upon billions upon billions of dollars, and who has to pay those billions upon billions of dollars? Well, guess what? All of you have to pay.

Here I thought that the NDP had somehow seen the light, had a conversion on the road to Damascus and were seeing and understanding that when you cut costs for people, that it means more money in their pocket, but I was wrong. I was duped. I feel slighted. I thought that the NDP actually cared about people, but I now know that it was all a ruse because they actually want to replace one big tax with another big tax and just call it something else. Now, that is a trick that they have learned from the Liberals, right? That is 100% a trick that they have learned from the Liberals. We’re going to be talking about this a lot, and I can’t wait to talk about this further.

I’m hopeful that we will pass this motion brought forward by the member for Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston. I know the last time we brought a carbon tax motion forward, the Liberals voted against it. I know on this, they have not had the courage to get up and speak about it even once. But we’ll have until midnight tonight and, hopefully, they’ll rouse up the courage to speak it to it and actually vote in favour of eliminating the carbon tax.

I can tell my friends in the NDP that we aren’t going to eliminate one tax to put an even bigger tax on top of it and just call it something else and say, “Well, we’ve done our job.” I’m glad that the opposition House leader has really come clean and explained what the position of the NDP is; that removing the carbon tax is only supported by the NDP if it is replaced by an even bigger tax that hurts even more people across even more parts of the—it’s hard to believe that you would think that the carbon tax can’t hurt anymore than it does, but now the NDP want to layer something else on top of it.

Now, the Liberal member for Beaches–East York was talking about dinosaurs, right? She’s talking about dinosaurs in her dissertation. That is where the Liberals are at, right? It’s not about technology. It’s not about putting money back in the pockets of the people of the province of Ontario. It’s about collecting money, hurting people, ensuring that they do, in co-operation with the NDP, what they do best. That’s what it’s always been about. We believe and we’ll always believe that when you give people the tools to succeed, they will take you up on it. The opposition coalition believes one thing: that the people shouldn’t have the tools to succeed; that the more you take from them, they will rely more on government. That is the philosophy of both these opposition parties, and it is a philosophy that we will attack each and every day.