Would the member agree that the Ontario Energy Board is an independent regulator? When you decide to get natural gas, you cannot go to the competition and see if you get the best prices. We get the best price because we have an agency that oversees Enbridge and that says, “Yes, this is reasonable,” or “No, this is not reasonable.”

Now, with this bill, we will have politicians who welcome all sorts of lobbyists into their office—

Do you think that the method where we have an oversight agency, the Ontario Energy Board, that is there to protect the public is a safer method than leaving it to the government?

I listened intently to the government member’s speech, and I have to admit I was a little surprised to hear that quote—“The OEB is a regulator, not a consumer protection agency.”

My question is this: Do you believe that the job of a regulator is to simply look at the interests and to benefit the interests of the people they’re regulating and not the actual people of Ontario, who in many cases are the consumers? What the OEB said in their ruling was that this was not in the best interests of consumers. Why does this member think that the decisions of the OEB should be so much in favour of the energy providers and not at all for the consumers themselves? Please explain this.