Speaker, let’s just be really clear about what the member from Niagara is talking about this morning. The Parliamentary Budget Officer—this is the officer that oversees the finances on Parliament Hill in Ottawa—has said that the increased carbon tax coming up a week from today is going to cost an Ontario family almost $1,700 next year—$1,674. That means increasing grocery bills. It means increasing cost of home heating. It means increases, certainly, at the gas pumps as well, as you’re filling your vehicles.

As the member rightly points out, the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, isn’t fooling anyone. Crombie is one of only a few leaders across the country—and there’s hardly any anymore—that aren’t speaking out against the federal government’s carbon tax. That includes NDP, Liberals and Conservatives right across Canada. She continues to support the Trudeau government’s mammoth 23% increase.

We have to scrap this tax. There’s still time to do that, Mr. Speaker.

Our government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, has been focused on driving costs down for the people of Ontario, whether it’s cutting gas taxes by 10.7 cents a litre, bringing in One Fare to all transit systems across the GTHA, scrapping the licence plate sticker fees and other fees, eliminating the tolls on the 400-series of highways—we’ve taken many, many steps to ensure that the cost of living is more affordable for the people of Ontario. But a week from today, the feds are going to drive up the carbon tax—

I have a question for the Minister of Energy this morning. Hard-working families and workers in my riding of Niagara West are concerned about the 23% Liberal carbon tax increase coming on April 1. With far too many people struggling to make ends meet, I know that the people in my riding are looking to governments of all stripes for more support and relief, not more taxes.

I know that that’s why Premier Ford and this government have fought the regressive Liberal carbon tax all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. But it’s not just the people of Ontario who oppose the Liberal carbon tax increases. We’re seeing Premiers from Newfoundland and Labrador, PEI, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick—they’ve all come out to speak against the Liberal tax hikes. But the federal Liberals and the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, aren’t fooling anyone here in Ontario.

So my question, Speaker, is: Could the minister please tell this House why the people of Ontario cannot afford another federal Liberal carbon tax hike?

Our government has and will continue to fight against the Liberal carbon tax because we know it’s not what the people of this province expect or deserve. Could the minister please tell this House a little bit more about why the Liberal carbon tax is creating financial hardship for so many hard-working families and workers here in Ontario?

It’s my pleasure to rise to speak to our opposition day motion. The member from Niagara West kept repeating, “If you see it, you do it.” That’s their motto. They saw the Liberals doing partisan ads, pretended like they didn’t support it and have now gone on to do it themselves, so I guess he’s accurate: If you see it, do it.

Speaker, I would like to rewrite some of the ads that the government has put out. It starts with, “What if we told you there’s a place where it’s all happening? And what if we told you, you already live here?” Between those lines there’s a lot of fluff about the government.

Well, Speaker, what if I told you there is a place where over 800,000 adults and children accessed food banks last year, an increase of over 38%; a place where food banks were visited nearly six million times; where 2.3 million people don’t have access to primary care physicians; where emergency departments are being closed, all around the province; where for decades we have First Nations communities that are still on boil-water advisories?

What if I told you that there are 588-day wait-lists in my community for children to access mental health supports and parents are being forced to surrender their children to the children’s aid society, hoping for their children to get help?

What if I told you that 200,000 Ontarians are waiting years for access to social housing, more than 7,000 people in Windsor-Essex on our wait-lists for affordable housing?

This is the reality of the province of Ontario. And what have we, the people of Ontario, told the government? That you already live here, and the people of the province need you to stop spending tens of millions of dollars on advertisements to say that you’re doing great when the reality is the people of the province need you to spend that money on the supports and services that they need.