Thank you to the member for Whitby for that applause.

I want to acknowledge again the great mayor of Pickering, Kevin Ashe, joined by his wife, Karen O’Brien.

Kevin and Kim Cahill also did a great job. Thank you for being here.

Theresa Deboer and Ajax ward 2 councillor Nancy Henry, welcome to the House.

And my constituent manager, the great Edward White, is up there.

Thank you to the great member from Whitby for that question. He’s a champion.

Interjection.

It’s a Durham day. We’ve got the mayor of Pickering here. We’ve got members from the council in Ajax. Guess what they have to do? There’s no subway in Pickering. Many people have to drive their car to work, take their kids to school, move around the great riding of Pickering. That’s why I was disappointed by the lack of action on the carbon tax by the federal government’s fall economic statement.

Like the member from Whitby, I was hoping that the Liberal government would finally come to its senses and end the carbon tax, which seems only effective in hurting the pocketbook of Ontario families.

Sadly, the Liberals’ attachment to the carbon tax seems to far outweigh their concern for the economy. While families and workers are calling for a break from this regressive tax, the federal government is ignoring their voices. So we’re asking the federal government, don’t just help Pickering; don’t just help Ontario; help all of Canada with this—

Mr. Speaker, the other part of my riding, Uxbridge—guess what? People use their cars not only to get around in Uxbridge. Guess what the farmers do? They have the tractors in Uxbridge. They use energy and power. They need a break as well, the hard-working people and farmers of Uxbridge who grow the food, and obviously the food gets shipped and then we buy the food. We need to all work on affordability in this country, and it starts with the carbon tax.

We took action by lowering the gas tax, when combined with other measures, 10 cents a litre. And when we table the fall economic statement, I’m highly confident the members opposite will vote to reduce that gas tax and join us as we work all across Canada to make life more affordable for—

Thank you—through you, Mr. Speaker—to the member opposite for that question. We’ve been acknowledging and we understand that many have been hurting in this province for some time. That’s why we moved early to reduce the gas tax back in the spring of 2022. Now we just are debating the fall economic statement, which extends that gas tax—so the member opposite has an opportunity to make life more affordable for the people of Kitchener and Waterloo. Not only did we do that, but we rebated the HST on purpose-built rental buildings to encourage more rental, which will help many people in this province. And of course, we didn’t stop there to encourage more housing—the water systems infrastructure fund, $200 million, so that we could build more affordable housing in this great province.

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite has an opportunity to support Bill 146 and make life more affordable for her constituents.

We also announced a historic deal with the city of Toronto which will benefit not only just Torontonians, but people in the GTA and, frankly, the whole province of Ontario. Included in that deal, of course, is to help transit, to help housing, and yes, to help homelessness and shelters for those people the member opposite is talking about.

In fact, in the budget that she didn’t vote for and her party voted against—the budget from last year—we increased the Homelessness Prevention Program by 40% for all Ontarians. Mr. Speaker, the facts are in: This is the party that supports the people of Ontario. The facts are in: That’s the party that votes against it.