Good morning, Speaker. Yesterday, the government finally released its business case for relocating the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place, finally, after they tried to hide it for so long. It showed that the cost of building a new science centre at Ontario Place would be double the cost of repairing the existing science centre. All the so-called savings come from the lower cost of operating a half-sized science centre over 50 years.

So, my question is for the Premier. Why would this Premier force the people of Ontario to pay twice as much for a science centre that’s half the size?

Let’s talk about kids. Let’s talk about children. Schools from across the province visit the science centre. Kids and families learn about science and the world around us. The government is slicing it in half and reducing its capacity, planning to fire science centre staff—that’s how they’re going to find savings—and making it harder for kids to actually go there.

Back to the Premier: At a time when we need people to go into the sciences, why is this government making it even harder?

Thank you to the member for Brantford–Brant for the excellent question. It’s a topic that needs to be addressed, for sure. I do not want to be the bearer of bad news, but if the carbon tax persists, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that by 2030, the tax will cost families $2,000 a year, and that is after the federal government’s climate incentive program.

Speaker, it’s important for the federal Liberals to understand that our government has shown time and again through our programs that we do not need the carbon tax to cut emissions. We are currently looking at the expansion of the CHHI program, the Clean Home Heating Initiative, to cut heating emissions by a third, and Ontario already has one of the cleanest energy grids in the world. It makes no sense for the federal government to keep increasing this tax on the backs of families.

The increased fuel costs for a farmer in my riding, in Glengarry–Prescott–Russell, make the food they deliver to a Toronto supermarket more expensive, which in turn affects the buyer. In this case, one person affected by the carbon tax is felt by another person who lives across the province from them.