Well, the OEB, in its own decision, said it was going to cost about $4,400, but they were looking at a cul-de-sac in the GTHA when they were using that analysis. We know and you know, certainly, being from Perth–Wellington, just how much more it’s going to cost to get that extra line out to your home or to the farms that are—boy, they’re starving for more natural gas in your community. I hear from them all the time at ROMA and AMO. It’s going to cost them tens of thousands of dollars more.

That’s why we won’t let this stand. That’s why we’re coming back with our natural gas policy, so that the Ontario Energy Board will be able to reconsider government policy and ensure that they’re hearing from the proper people, including the Independent Electricity System Operator, home builders, contractors, farmers and those who will be impacted by these additional costs that are heaped onto them as a result of this misguided decision.

In Niagara, where my colleague is from, a new business customer would see an upfront connection charge of approximately $53,000. That’s $53,000 more that they would have to pay up front instead of amortizing this over a 40-year period. Anybody who thinks that going from 40 years to zero years is rational is completely irrational—it just is. A recent restaurant project in Niagara would cost approximately $13,000 more up front. So it’s going to have an impact on the residents in Niagara, just as it would right across the province.

We have an opportunity, particularly in our greenhouse sector, to be a world leader. We already are, but we have an opportunity to grow that even more. And providing them with the ability to amortize the cost of pipelines up to 40 years makes a heck of a lot of sense and will increase our GDP dramatically.

The dissenting commissioner’s opinion, Allison Duff, was very, very clear as well: that the OEB commissioners didn’t hear from the stakeholders that they needed to hear from. They didn’t hear from the farmers, they didn’t hear from the home builders, they didn’t hear from the contractors, and most importantly, they didn’t hear from the system operator that manages our electricity grid. So we’re going to put this back in the OEB’s court once we set our natural gas policy.

I would like to thank my colleague from Toronto–Danforth. He kept coming back to $300 over the next four years—if we calculate that, that’s going to be less than 10 bucks a month—and thinking that this is big money and this is Enbridge, like we are helping Enbridge, while the whole idea behind that bill was to reduce the cost that a new connection would have to pay upfront. I don’t know how come he can say there’s no significant difference. This is simple math. You’re going to pay what you’re going to pay in the next 40 years in one lump sum upfront. Now we cannot start talking about the prices of the houses going up because, at the end of the day, it’s going to be passed to the end user.

My question is, what do you think about the savings of this lump-sum amount, kick-start initial cost, versus the $300?

I just want to focus on the fact that what we are focusing on and what the government seems to be ignoring is that we know, and the people of Ontario will soon know, that this is a bill that will keep Enbridge happy. This is a bill that will make customers pay and will make Enbridge continue to operate in the way that they have that is actually costing people money in a time when we have a substantial affordability crisis. So why would this government put forward a bill that is going to cost people and going to benefit Enbridge, particularly in the midst of an affordability crisis?