Back to the Premier: Ontarians are struggling under out-of-control costs of living, including food prices, leading over 800,000 more Ontarians to food banks and leaving them to make tough nutritional choices, especially those on social assistance, affecting their health and, ultimately, our health care system overall. Throughout this affordability crisis, grocers continue to post record profits and are making the situation even worse.

Why won’t this government stand up to these gouging grocers instead of making excuses for them?

Interjections.

From coast to coast to coast, Canadians have been clear: They want this tax scrapped. Let me point out that in Hearst, gas is $1.59; Sioux Lookout, $1.62; Terrace Bay; $1.54; Gogama, $1.51; Kirkland Lake, $1.54; Blind River, $1.53. This is a premium on gasoline that costs us more to fill up our pickup trucks, more for us to support the resource industries and drive larger distances than any other place in the province.

This is a premium on gasoline supported by the NDP. Now, that sounds like a New Democratic premium. What we call it is a carbon tax, and the carbon tax needs to go. Scrap the tax.

People who are running the district school boards in our vast region are now going to face cutting back on having children and high schools play against each other when they live 150 to 170 to 250 kilometres away. No more hockey or football for those schools, unless they want to play against themselves. This tax needs to go, and the NDP needs to stop supporting it.

Interjections.