Thank you so much for that question. Removing tolls on roads that don’t have tolls is not going to result in people having more money to pay the bills, to buy food at the supermarket and to pay their rent at the start of the month. It’s just not going to.

We’ve got a provincial budget coming up shortly. My hope is that in this provincial budget we see some real investments in public services, we see some real measures to address the affordability crisis, because what I’m seeing in the Get It Done bill is not going to cut it, is not going to make things more affordable.

There are better things that we can do. There are better things we can invest in to help people get from A to B at an affordable price and spend time with their families or doing what they want to do in their spare time, in their free time—investing in transit, doing smart urban planning so people live near where they work and play so that they don’t have to spend an hour and a half in a car in the first place, really thinking about where we’re going to put our employment hubs so that we’re thinking it through and people don’t just have to come to downtown Toronto for that job. There’s a lot we can do. I don’t think Highway 413 is the answer.

Thank you to the member from University–Rosedale for her eloquence. I want to compare and contrast something. I think of traffic gridlock in my communities of Leamington and Chatham-Kent. It happens twice a year. They’re both celebratory: Hogs for Hospice in Leamington and probably our holiday parades.

The traffic gridlock in Toronto and in your community, your home community, is the real deal and it’s infuriating. It diminishes family time—time with family and friends and being at home and being productive. So does the member from University–Rosedale not believe that genuine investments in Highway 413, in the Ontario Line, in the Scarborough subway extension—will they not reduce gridlock, contribute to better family time, better productivity and be more welcoming to people from all over that are coming to make Toronto and Ontario their home?

I appreciate the remarks from my colleague the member for University–Rosedale. She talked a bit about the cost-of-living pressures that people in her community and across the province are experiencing. She talked about the tolls, for example, on Highway 417. Now, this bill prohibits tolls on provincial highways that don’t have tolls. So I wondered what her opinion is on whether that provision to remove tolls from highways that don’t have tolls is going to really help Ontarians deal with the affordability crisis that we are seeing in this province.

I appreciated the comments from my colleague the member for Niagara.

He talked about the fact that one of the schedules in this bill, schedule 3, reverses changes to official plans, urban boundaries, that had been forced on municipalities by this government and were later reversed. So it un-reverses a reversal that had been put in place by this government.

That was not the only reversal that we have seen in this Legislature. A number of bills have been reversed.

I wondered if the member would like to comment on this government’s track record of introducing—

Thank you so much to the member from Niagara Falls. It’s always entertaining when you get up and tell it like it is. I really appreciate that.

Let’s just go back to this government wanting to save people money. They want to put money in people’s pockets. But they will not come clean on the fact that they have a carbon tax. It’s called the emissions performance standard, that you’ve imposed on large industries, and I did hear the member from Mississauga–Streetsville say that they’re just going to pass it down to the consumers. Yes, that’s exactly what you have. That’s your plan that exists now. Look it up. It’s a line in your consolidated finances, in the finances of the province of Ontario. And you are going to collect billions and billions of dollars on that emissions performance standard, also known as a carbon tax.

What could this province be doing with the billions of dollars that they are currently collecting on a carbon tax for the people of Ontario?

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and I thank the member opposite for his remarks. I always appreciate listening to him. In fact, his area makes me draw back to earlier in my life when I was a rebar bender at the Stoney Creek plant of Harris Steel back when—so a connection on labour and one very small part for me.

Anyway, I noted his remarks on the tolls and I noted his reaction that—observing there was very strong, positive press from that announcement, and we were pleased with that. And that shows that the folks out there who—pleased to hear confirmation there are no tolls on—whether it’s the QEW down to Niagara, Don Valley Parkway or other highways.

So won’t the member support us in this confirmation of no new tolls on these—

It is now time for questions and answers.

I recognize the member for Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

Report continues in volume B.