It’s interesting listening to the energy minister talk about the past and the history. I will say that when the Liberals were in power, the PCs used to criticize their politicization of the electricity planning and their disregard for evidence and professional independent analysis. And yet here we are, 2024, the first time ever overruling an Ontario Energy Board decision designed to protect homeowners and ratepayers in order to benefit a fossil fuel giant.

Kent Elson, a lawyer from Environmental Defence says that this legislation, and the choice of the title of this bill, is “Orwellian.

“It should be called the keeping Enbridge profits and energy bills high act....

“The OEB decision would have cut capital costs covered by gas customers by approximately $600 per customer.... Reversing the decision will certainly raise energy bills.”

Why did you not title this bill the pushing energy costs up act in Ontario?

I want to thank my colleague for his excellent comments, echoing the minister’s comments that we have a pragmatic approach here in Ontario. I would like the member to speak a bit about the difference between gas as a heating source as opposed to an electricity source. It makes up less than 8% of our electrical grid, yet we know that it makes up almost two thirds of our heating requirements across the province.

I’m wondering if the member could please speak to the ongoing role that natural gas is going to play in this province moving forward.

To the member across, thank you very much for your presentation. The OEB ruling could, in fact, make building new homes more affordable because it means you would have to build only one type of energy infrastructure—the electricity—and not require a very expensive and obsolete second one. And it will be obsolete at some point as we move towards a climate-neutral economy.

Reversing the OEB ruling could result in building methane gas infrastructure that will take about 40 years to pay for—infrastructure that will be delivering fossil fuels into the year 2064, Speaker, 14 years beyond the time when the world has agreed to achieve net-zero fossil fuel consumption; infrastructure that will be made obsolete by the ongoing energy transition.

To the member across: What in this bill will actually meet the needs of the citizens of Ontario tomorrow, because this bill is being passed and pushed forward today, but we need to plan for the climate emergency?