I want to thank my colleague for his presentation this morning. I appreciate his clarity on his position on the carbon tax. I think it’s clear that the Green Party leader supports carbon taxes and an increased carbon tax. Of course, on the PC side, we’re the only party that’s actually fighting to scrap the carbon tax.

I also have his position on nuclear power. On a recent decision we made around refurbishing Pickering nuclear, not only ensuring saving our grid but also saving jobs, he says, “It makes no sense for the government to pour billions into keeping it operational when lower-cost, cleaner solutions are available....

“The Ford government is making Ontario’s grid dirtier and more expensive by prioritizing ... the costly, poor-performing Pickering plant.”

In the member’s mind, we should all be on heat pumps to heat our homes. I’m just wondering: How would this member—if he won’t stand up for nuclear, how are we going to power the grid to make this happen?

Thank you, Speaker. It was nice of you to look my way. I appreciate that.

I would like to present this petition. I have over 16,000 names that were collected by Leadnow. It reads as follows:

“No Public Money for Private Care.

“Whereas on November 14, 2023, the CBC published documents showing that the Ontario government is paying a for-profit health clinic in Toronto more than twice as much as public hospitals to perform the same OHIP-covered procedure; and

“Whereas Ontario’s public health care system remains understaffed and under-resourced; and

“Whereas data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information indicates outsourcing essential surgery to private, for-profit clinics is a false solution to the health care crisis and instead lines the pockets of private investors; and

“Whereas the Ford government continues to hide the true cost of its expansion of for-profit health clinics;

They petition the Legislative Assembly “of Ontario to stop using public money to fund private, for-profit health care clinics and instead invest in our public heath care system.”

I fully support this petition, will affix my name to it and ask my good page Isaac to bring it to the Clerk.

Thank you for the applause. I appreciate that.

We are debating Bill 165. It is called the Keeping Energy Costs Down Act, which is a little bit of creative writing, I think, and we’re going to get into it.

I was here during the kickoff debate. I listened to the minister speak, I listened to our critic speak—and I have to tell you, Speaker, I’m pretty aligned with our critic. He said several times, when he kicked off his debate, “Premier Ford wants to raise your gas bill. That’s what this is about.” Quite frankly, that is the beginning and end of this debate. There’s a lot of meat to put on the bones about explaining why, but that is what this is about. This is a track history with the Conservative government, where they continually put billionaires ahead of average Canadian people. For the average person in Ontario who is worried about putting food on the table, they couldn’t care less—but for billionaires like Uber, billionaires like developers, they cannot do enough for them.

There is an article that was in the Toronto Sun—as we know, a very far-left-leaning paper. I want to read this too. It was an op-ed by Peter Tabuns. It starts off: “Doug Ford Wants to Raise Your Gas Bill....

“Just before Christmas, the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) issued an important decision affecting the gas bills of nearly four million Ontario consumers.

“The OEB ordered natural gas distributor Enbridge Gas to bear the costs of expanding its natural gas infrastructure,”—basically saying, Enbridge Gas, you pay for this; it’s your infrastructure—“rather than imposing these costs on existing consumers.

“The OEB decision acknowledged the obvious: At a time when Ontario is moving away from fossil fuels, any plan to expand natural gas infrastructure carries enormous risks—not just to the environment but to your pocketbook. And so, the OEB decided Enbridge’s proposal was not in the interests of consumers.”

I’m going to just repeat that—it’s not in the article, but this is not in the interests of consumers. We keep hearing from the Conservative government how great this is for consumers, but this non-partisan independent organization clearly spells out that, no, it’s not. You’re being sold a plastic carrot. This is not good for the consumers.

The article goes on: “The next day the” Conservative “government announced that it would reverse the decision and protect the interests of Enbridge. It plans to pass legislation in February that will raise energy bills across the province and make life more expensive for new home buyers.

“It all goes back to a subsidy that most gas customers don’t even know they are paying. Right now, your gas bill”—if you’re paying a gas bill—“includes a charge worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year to cover Enbridge’s cost of expanding gas pipelines into new developments. On Dec. 21”—just before Christmas—“Ontario’s independent energy regulator decided to put a stop to this subsidy because it raises energy bills for existing gas customers and new home buyers, while also increasing financial risks for the whole gas system.”

So you have a system in place where affordability is top of mind for everybody. It doesn’t matter if you have a decent middle-class income—especially if you’re really struggling to make ends meet. But if you have a double income and you’re making good wages, you’re feeling it at the grocery store. Your price of natural gas, if you have natural gas—there’s not a person who says, “Oh, I don’t know roughly what it is.” They know it’s a lot, and when they look on that fee, they see that one of the fees is basically for the consumers, the ratepayers, to pay for Enbridge to carry their freight. What this independent board has said is that is not fair; that is not in the best interests of the consumers.

I was telling my colleagues earlier: This is no different, their argument about how if we amortize this and pass the consumers on to everybody—when I bought a house, it came with shingles, and the shingles were passed on to the cost to me. We didn’t amortize it by everybody who had shingles in the neighbourhood. It’s the cost of doing business.

And so what they’re telling Enbridge—Enbridge, which is incredibly wealthy. Enbridge’s profits last year—this isn’t just in general—was $16.507 billion. It’s not a mom-and-pop shop—$16.507 billion for Enbridge. We’re talking literally about billionaires here. What the Conservative government is saying: “Well, we can’t have Enbridge pay for this. Do you know who should pay for this?” The Conservative government is saying seniors should pay for this, renters should pay for this; everyone should pay for it except for the billionaires.

As New Democrats, we’re not into helping billionaires. They’ve got two parties already bending over backwards to help billionaires. We’re going to stay with working-class people. We think they need to have fewer hands in their pockets and keep a little money to themselves.

Going on: “Ending the subsidy would save gas customers more than $1 billion over four years in avoided pipeline subsidy costs, which comes to more than $300 per customer.” I talked to our critic about this. It ranges between $300 and $600. Honestly, I don’t want to get into that debate because I can’t do the math on it—but $300 is a strong number that you can count on. So, imagine you’re paying your bill, you’re heating your house, you’re paying for a service, you’re understanding it, and then somebody like Peter Tabuns comes along and explains to you, “What’s happening with the Conservative government is, they’re adding $300 to your bill.” You would be outraged. And when you say, “Why? What’s the rationale for this?”—the rationale is that the Conservative government wants to keep developers and wants to keep Enbridge happy, and so they want you to pay for their expenses. That’s what they think is fair. You pay $300 out of your pocket so that billionaire companies can increase profits to their shareholders.

“Ending the subsidy will also encourage developers to install heat pumps in new homes, which provide much cheaper heating and cooling, instead of gas.”

Basically, what they’re saying is, you have your thumb on the scale. Natural gas is starting to phase out. When I first got my first house, it was mainly heated by electricity, and electricity prices were going up. We had a little natural gas fireplace. There was a time when natural gas was cheaper, but the world is moving on. There are new technologies that are less expensive, and more and more people are going to be looking at heat pumps as they move along. As the end of life for your natural gas furnace starts to decline, you have to look at other alternatives.

The same way that people moved from oil furnaces to natural gas or to baseboards, people will start looking at things like heat pumps and other energy sources to heat their house. That’s just the reality.

What the OEB is saying to the people of Ontario and to Enbridge is, this trend is ending. We cannot sign up people and have people pay for this for decades as they transition away from it. It’s not fair to the ratepayers to carry the freight for something—that you need to invest in your own infrastructure.

The article continues: “Ending the subsidy would be a win-win-win-win. It would lower energy bills for existing customers,” because we wouldn’t be paying the $300 each. It would “lower energy bills for new homebuyers, lower carbon emissions,” which more and more people in Ontario are very concerned about. It is the end of February, for anyone watching at an earlier time or reading Hansard. It is the end of February, and we’re in the middle of a rainstorm in Toronto. In Sudbury, which is northern Ontario—not as far north as my colleague here, but Sudbury is northern Ontario—it was raining on Christmas day. I walked my dogs in the mud.

Climate is affecting what’s going on here, and people are moving along, and more and more people, especially youth but, as well, people who are older, are opening their eyes to the fact that we have to do something about carbon emissions. It is not a tomorrow problem. It’s a today problem. We had youth here yesterday talking to me, basically saying that they’re not sure if they should have kids because they don’t know what world they’ll be bringing their kids into, when it comes to how carbon is affecting our environment.

This plan basically is about avoiding even more costs down the road when homes heated with natural gas convert to heat pumps. The loser, though—and the article basically says—is Enbridge Gas. We get this. Enbridge Gas is a billion-dollar company—and just to repeat, it’s a $16.507-billion company, one-year profit. It’s the loser in this decision. And first out of the gate, Doug Ford and the Conservative government—“We’ve got to stand up for these billionaires, man.” They are front and centre. And we saw this during the greenbelt grab. We saw this in the last Working for Workers bill, when their members voted down an amendment to have misclassified independent contractors as workers so they can make at least minimum wage, right? Billionaires are always first in line when it comes to the Conservative government. They cannot wait to do enough for billionaires. They don’t care about regular people. They’re helped; they’re hurt—it doesn’t matter. It’s billionaires, it’s donors, front and centre.

So, Enbridge Gas, absolutely, is the loser. It would lose millions of dollars in profits, and it’s lobbying hard against the energy board decision.

“It’s no surprise that the Premier’s Minister of Energy”—whose name is here, but I won’t say it, because we can’t for parliamentary reasons—“has announced that they will pass legislation to overturn the decision.” This is what we’re debating right now.

The reality, though, is gas is no longer the cheapest heating source. “Investing in gas pipelines for heating is financially foolish because they will become obsolete and a massive cost to all current and future customers as we move away from gas heating.” That’s not to say that you can’t invest in gas. There’s this false choice that’s being presented by the Conservative government—where, because we’re not supporting these fees being downloaded on ratepayers, we’re against natural gas. If somebody wants natural gas—if that’s the alternative for them, absolutely they can. We’re saying that everyone else doesn’t have to pay for it.

Interjection.

Speaker, I’m very pleased to stand today. I want to thank the Attorney General for being here because I feel honoured that he’s here and that a minister’s here, so I really do appreciate it.

On auto: I do want to remind members on the other side that their party voted against the bailout in 2009, so I wouldn’t chirp too loud about anybody’s record on auto.

So, why are we here? Why am I here? Why are we here at the late, late, late show? Because the Premier, when asked about some appointments to the board that help us choose judges or help the minister choose judges, said that he wanted “like-minded people,” that he didn’t want Liberal or NDP judges. Well, just saying that is the wrong thing to do. Our courts are supposed to be independent. They need to be independent.

Look, I’m 100% opposed to the politicization of the courts. I think most people in here would be. I don’t want a Conservative judge, a New Democratic judge or a Liberal judge. I want independent, non-partisan judges who bring nothing more than and nothing less than good legal judgment to bear on the issues before them without fear or favour or loyalty to any political party or any political philosophy.

Let’s all be really honest here. For all of us, as politicians, it’s hard to inspire confidence in people. They don’t have confidence in us, and there’s no doubt that we all bear some responsibility in this. What the Premier is suggesting is infecting the courts with the same virus that now makes public trust in our elected representatives, in us, so weak. So bringing politics into our courts will inevitably mean the public will start to lose trust in the incredibly important work being done there. People will second-guess their judges for the same reason they second-guess all of us: because they can’t stand the politics.

It’s an incredibly bad and dumb idea to turn independent judges into judges who toe a political line or “think like us.” As a society, we can tolerate low levels in all of us here. We understand that. We kind of created that, right? But we can’t accept anything less than the highest levels of trust in our courts. I know that the Attorney General knows that, too. It’s one thing to lose confidence in politicians, but when people start to lose confidence in the courts, you start to slide towards anarchy. You don’t have to look very far south to see where that’s happening, and that was my point.

The right answer to the question would have been, “I appointed two people. They’re good people. They have good judgment. They are going to help us make good choices, so we’ll have good, independent, strong people on the bench.” That’s the right answer to the question. The Premier gave a political answer to the question, and that’s not good. It’s not good, because just uttering those sentences starts to undermine people’s confidence in the judicial system.

The other reason that the judicial system is important is that it underpins our democracy. It makes sure that when we make decisions here, we are doing them in accordance with the laws of Canada. And we also have a system where we actually look—and the Attorney General will know—at the judgments that judges make. We have systems of appeal. We have checks and balances. An independent judiciary is an incredibly important check and balance in democracy, and that’s the point I’m trying to make.

So the Premier has to do something to restore confidence in whatever he eroded by saying what he said. And look, with all the things that have gone on—with the secret sole-source deals; with the criminal investigation of the $8.3-billion backroom deal—for the leader whose government is subject to that criminal investigation to suggest that he wants like-minded judges, I don’t think that’s a really good look. I’m just saying.