It’s a pleasure to rise on the 162 “not getting it done” bill. I’m going to start on something I’ve been talking about all afternoon because I think it’s important. I think it’s an important one to talk about because when this bill was introduced, they had a big press conference, Madam Speaker. I think you remember it. Remember, they had a big press conference about this bill? And what was the headline on CP24 and CFTO? All the headlines were very clear. It was, “They’re not going to take any more tolls on our highways.” And everybody went, “Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” And then it came out that we don’t have any tolls right now except one, which they never discussed at the press conference. We know the 407, and we can have the discussion about the—I could talk for hours on the 407 and what happened there when Harris was in. He wanted to balance the budget, so he said, “Well, I’ve got to find a way to balance the budget. I’ve got to get elected,” so he sold off the 407 for next to nothing. I’m not saying it was nothing. I don’t know the exact amount. It might have been a couple of million dollars. It’s now worth a billion dollars or more, so somebody’s made some good profit on that. But they took that money to say they balanced the budget.

But they now have the 407 east, which isn’t owned by an international company on the other side of the world. It’s actually owned by the province of Ontario, who still wants to charge the tolls on the 407 east. I had this conversation with my colleague from Oshawa, a very, very good—I think she’s a great NDP MPP. We had this conversation, and then she told me something interesting. She told me that in her community, the Durham council—which, by the way, and I find this interesting: I believe there’s five MPPs on that side of the House. Not one of you has raised this issue today, quite frankly. Not one of you has said, “No, you know what? Maybe we made a mistake. We should take the tolls off.”

But she raised it with me. But the council wants it. So it isn’t the member from Oshawa. It’s not Wayne Gates, the member from Niagara Falls, representing Niagara-on-the-Lake and Fort Erie, of course. It is actually the council of that area. And the reason why they’re so upset is they say you’re punishing the people that live in the Oshawa-Durham area because they’re the ones that travel the 407 east more than anybody.

I thought, you know what? To the member from Oshawa: It was brilliant—because she raised it. I’ve said this before. Madam Speaker, you know when I was watching this? It was about 1:30 in the morning—showing you how I can’t sleep at night—so I thought I’ll watch the Parliament station. Well, in this particular case, it was a good idea because I heard it and then I went directly to the member and I said, “This doesn’t sound right.” So I started reading the bill. I was amazed. It’s in the bill. Nobody can stand up and say I’m not talking to the bill right now, because it’s in the bill.

So I’m saying to my colleagues, I hope when you stand up, you say, “You know what? This sounds fair and reasonable. We shouldn’t be attacking the people from Oshawa, where, by the way, we have a number of our members, our MPPs. We’re going to listen to that council and we’re going to agree with an NDP amendment to take the tolls off the 407 east part.” I think that would work out really well.

Then, the other thing that has been suggested by the NDP which I think, “You know what? I didn’t think of it. I wish I did”—I would have probably done a video on it, because I have a lot of trucks. I live in a border town. I know you’ve been to my town quite a few times. I’ve seen you down there. You guys enjoyed it. Actually, I think you guys were there just a little while ago. I waited by the phone for days thinking you’d call me to go out for dinner. Nobody called me. Go for a glass of wine, go for things, take you on a tour—nothing. None of that happened, unfortunately. I was ready, though. I just want my colleagues to know, if you come to Niagara, I’m more than willing to take you out and show you a good time. I’ll leave it at that. I’m not going any further than that, Madam Speaker.

But I want to say, another thing that I think we could do collectively is take the tolls on trucks going down the 407. Let the trucks use the 407 to clear up the congestion. Because I heard how everybody cares about the environment, although you never talk about the greenbelt and some of the stuff you did there, so I thought that would be a very good idea. I’m hoping that you guys decide to reduce the congestion and take care of it.

On schedule 1, Environmental Assessment Act—and we had a lot of conversation about the 413. Madam Speaker, did you hear that mentioned a few times today from some of my colleagues? Well, the problem with the 413 is you’re going to save 30 seconds. That’s what you’re going to save. We can argue whether it’s 30 seconds or 30 minutes, but it’s 30 seconds. It might be a minute if you drive slower.

But here’s the problem with the 413. And it’s a problem that we faced during COVID. How many remember COVID when we had the COVID outbreak, and because we didn’t have any PPE, we didn’t have any resources and gloves and aprons because we were relying on places like China? Even our biggest trading partner, the United States, wouldn’t give us PPE. Do you remember that, Madam Speaker? Remember those times?

Well, here’s what’s happening with the 413. Never mind about the assessment that they don’t want to do—and they’re arguing with the federal government. It would take me another 20 minutes to have that debate. But what I do know is, we’re losing 319 acres of prime farmland every single day in the province of Ontario and a lot of it, quite frankly, is around the 413, up in that area.

I come from an area with a lot of agriculture. There was a big article in the paper that climate change is going to have a big effect on the fruits and vegetables in the Niagara region. But what I want to say to my colleagues—I know some are listening; I know my buddy in the corner always listens. Some others are talking. But I want to say what’s important and why I want to raise this is that if we cannot feed ourselves, if we’ve got to rely on China, Mexico, Jamaica and some of these other countries and we can’t feed ourselves and they get into the same problem we’re getting in with climate change, they are going to take care of their own. They’re going to feed their own and, quite frankly, they should, just like we should.

So I’m saying to your government, take another look at the 413. Do not destroy any more farmland—not just for ourselves, because a lot of us, as I look around this chamber, are older, like myself, but we need it for our kids and our grandkids to make sure they’re going to be able to have food, nutritious food. I think it’s important. That’s in the schedule, and I’m trying to make sure that—because I’ve got a speech, by the way. I’ve got a speech here, but I might not get to it because I’m trying to stay on my notes. I don’t think my speech probably was completely on the issue.

I want to talk about the carbon tax just for a minute. I’m going to read this in my notes. The Ontario NDP—now, I want my colleagues to listen to this because I know the other 60 people that are elected are just glued to their TV right now at 20 minutes to 6 or whatever time it is. The Ontario NDP has never supported a provincial carbon tax on regular consumers, but we have supported a cap-and-trade system focused on making large emitters pay. The only reason—this is important for my colleagues, and you guys should go back to your ridings and when you knock on the door, this is what I’d like you to say to them, because now you know the real story around the NDP, that we actually want the emitters to pay.

The only reason Ontario has a carbon tax is because the Ford government cancelled the cap-and-trade system whose costs were much lower than the federal carbon tax that replaced it, and you guys didn’t replace it with anything, and then the federal Liberals put it onto the province. If you just would have done the cap-and-trade instead of forcing consumers to pay, you would have had the big corporations that are destroying our environment paying instead of everybody else.

I think that’s important, and this is all accurate, by the way.

Interjection.