I know it’s bad. It’s bad, and it’s in history now.

I see my colleague from Kitchener–Conestoga is get-ting ready for the total eclipse of the sun—and hopefully he doesn’t break out into song.

There are a couple of areas that I really want to highlight, just to pull us all back.

There is a tendency of this government to side on behalf of the private sector, which is ironic, because as parlia-mentarians we take an oath to serve the public with integrity and we put the public first.

One of the issues that has really resonated—and this kind of reminds me of back when the former Liberal Premier was saying, “We’re never going to sell off parts of hydro,” but then they did. Then, the hydro costs continue to go up because of the cost escalation.

My friend and colleague from Toronto–Danforth, who is our energy critic, has been following what has been happening with Enbridge and the decisions that this government is making on the energy file.

It would surprise most people in the province of Ontario to learn that the government is subsidizing energy costs to the tune of $7.8 billion. It’s steadily going up. It’s across the board. Everybody gets the subsidy. If you are a super rich person or if you’re a super poor person, you are getting the same energy subsidy. I’m pretty sure Galen Weston can pay his own energy bills. The government has never considered even a sliding scale to address true affordability measures.

What they are doing—and I’m just going to read directly from one of the op-eds that my colleague wrote—is that they’re busy breaking their own promise on energy and housing affordability. In the latest twist, this government “plans to pass legislation in February”—which is now before the House, before the committee, even today—“that will raise energy bills across the province and make life more expensive for new homebuyers.” Does this sound like a common sense thing to be doing in a cost-of-living crisis? Of course, it does not. Two of the highest drivers, really, for people in Ontario are the cost of housing, and then, of course, the day-to-day costs, like groceries, and I’m going to talk about that.

So this government is reversing an excellent decision by Ontario’s independent energy regulator, and I talked about this on the budget motion, because it defies all sense. Why would you not listen to the independent energy regulator when they’re saying this is in the best interests of the province of Ontario, which you should be interested in as well? It all goes back to a subsidy that most gas customers do not even know that they’re funding.

Right now, your gas bill is funding a huge subsidy worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year to cover the cost of expanding gas pipelines into new developments. Most people in Ontario don’t know this. On December 21, the Ontario independent energy regulator decided to put a stop to the subsidy because it raises energy bills for existing customers and new homebuyers, while also increasing financial risk for the whole gas system. In fact, the independent regulator highlighted stranded assets—because we’re building an energy sector in a way that they used to in the 1950s, not in 2024.

Ending the subsidy would save gas customers over $1 billion over four years in avoided pipeline subsidy costs, which comes to almost $300 per customer, plus interest profit payments paid by customers to Enbridge Gas on those amounts. Is this what the government is doing? No, they’re not doing that. They’re not going to try to save you $300 a year.

“Ending the subsidy will also encourage developers to install heat pumps”—which we heard at pre-budget committee would actually speed up housing starts. Is this government having great difficulty meeting your own housing start targets? Yes, you are. Do you need some help? You definitely need some help—“in new homes, which provide much cheaper heating and cooling, instead of gas,” for new homebuyers. So not only would these heat pump installations actually fast-track housing starts, which is a good thing; it would also provide cheaper heating and cooling for new homebuyers. Is this an affordability issue? Of course, it’s an affordability issue.

“Ending the subsidy would be a win-win-win-win,” said my friend and colleague from Toronto–Danforth. It would lower energy bills for existing customers. It would lower energy bills for new homebuyers. It would lower carbon emissions, and avoid even more cost down the road to convert away from fossil fuel heating in the houses built with heat pumps from the start.

This is a good plan that the independent regulator came forward with for Ontario.

There is, however, one loser in this whole issue, and that is Enbridge Gas. It would lose millions of dollars in profits, and shareholders might not make as much money as they wanted to. But Ontarians would save money. Who are we elected to serve? Ontarians, right?

So here we are. Enbridge Gas is right here. They were here this morning. They’re lobbying hard against the decision and have launched two challenges, so this government is going to be back in court, I guess. Its court challenge boldly complains that the decision will mean that, “Enbridge Gas has no right or ability to invest and earn a return on capital for new customer connections.” In other words, it will reduce their profits. So they are a company that is fighting for their profits.

I ask you, who is fighting to keep costs down for Ontarians? Not this government, because they have clearly sided with Enbridge Gas. In fact, the minister, MPP Smith, has announced that they will pass legislation to overturn this decision. The Ontario government seems to have been convinced that the change will reduce housing supply and affordability, but developers can just forgo gas and install heat pumps instead for little or no additional cost and sometimes even a savings. This could actually be good for developers as well, if developers are dedicated to actually building housing. But the question remains: Why should every other gas customer in Ontario be forced to pay to subsidize them to install this fossil fuel infrastructure and then be forced to pay Enbridge profits on top of that? Is this a fair situation for Ontario voters, for Ontario citizens? Absolutely not. Is the government truly showing their hand by siding with Enbridge? Absolutely.

This is what we also know—you can’t really get a clear answer from the government on this, but this is where we are right now: Gas is no longer the cheapest heating source. Investing in gas pipelines for heating is financially foolish because they will become obsolete as we decarbonize buildings. It is 2024; we should be talking about this. The government’s own expert electrification panel noted “growing indications that it is unlikely that the natural gas grid can be decarbonized and continue to deliver cost-effective building heat.”

Our neighbours—we hear a lot from the Premier about Texas, which always makes me want to break out into a Beyoncé song—like New York state and Montreal are prohibiting gas in new construction. I want to re-emphasize that: New York state is prohibiting gas in new construction.

Passing legislation to reinstate a subsidy is completely out of step and risks financial disaster down the road.

The Minister of Energy has clearly shown that he is on the side of Enbridge and not on the side of Ontarians who will face higher gas bills, instead of providing an opportunity of $300 in savings. Unfortunately, there are obviously major misconceptions about the broader issues, in part due to a great deal of misinformation. Right now, this is happening in committee, where this debate is happening.

Enbridge is fighting for their profits. We need the government to fight for the people, to keep those costs down.

We definitely think that the Ontario Energy Board made the right decision, based on evidence, to lower your energy bills. And we’re going to continue to raise these issues in this House.

What a perfect example, though, to clearly demonstrate who this government is working for.

We’ve seen some other escalations, if you will, in other ministries—particularly on health care. My God, we cannot afford to privatize health care any further. We’ve got to hold the line and we’ve got to walk it back; there’s no doubt about it. When this government spent $1 billion last year on agency nurses instead of hiring nurses in our acute-care and community care centres—this is not only fiscally irresponsible, but it is actually failing to meet the needs of communities.

I’ve talked about my future daughter-in-law. She’s a nurse—excellent, top of her class—working in the NICU, working with those little babies. Grand River Hospital is not hiring nurses. How can it be?

Clearly, choices are being made here around where the money is going to be spent or where the money is not going to be spent, but it certainly isn’t being invested in our health care human resources crisis.

The minister can talk about all the numbers she wants. Three emergency rooms were closed this weekend in southwestern Ontario. If you’re in a community and you need to go to the emergency room, you need that emergency room to be open. Surely we can agree on this. But in order for that emergency room to be open, you need to have nurses and medical professionals there.

What we have seen in Ontario is a mass migration of these very talented people, some of whom studied here, some of whom received support to study here, some of whom are very invested in medical research and the life sciences file. They’re leaving Ontario because Ontario is such a hostile place right now, in the health care sector.

When you talk to people who are in the health care system and they have an agency nurse working right alongside them and they can’t get a full-time job, but this nurse beside them is making twice or three times as much money—can you imagine what that does to morale? It is counterproductive. It’s counterintuitive. It’s fiscally irresponsible. I said this to the Minister of Finance—that we cannot afford $1 billion in agency nurses.

Let’s invest in human health resources in this province. Let’s demonstrate that we’re committed to retaining these people in the system, but also recruiting into the system. In order for that to be successful, the system can’t be broken; the system has to be a healthy place. That’s how you recruit back into the health care system.

These are very conscious, very committed decisions that the government is making. They refuse to close the loopholes on these private health care agencies that see the market here in Ontario because 2.3 million Ontarians don’t have a doctor. They see the loophole. The government sees the loophole. And now they’re charging anywhere between $450 a year to have access to a doctor, all the way up to $4,900.

In the public session in the public accounts earlier today, our health critic brought forward a motion and she said, “Let’s have the auditor look into this. Let’s follow the money.”

These agencies, let’s also remember, are being subsidized by OHIP, as well. So the taxpayers are funding the profit margins in these health care agencies. This is happening in Ontario. In fact, these health care agencies are popping up just as much as cannabis store clusters—Waterloo has about nine in a three-block radius; I don’t know what’s going on, exactly, with that. These businesses see a market share here in Ontario that has been intentionally created by this government.

When you purposefully create a crisis by not funding health care, you are, in turn, creating a whole new market share for for-profit health care. So that is happening.

In fact, we even have for-profit plasma centres opening up in one of the poorest areas in Hamilton. A European company has said, “Do you know what? They’ve done such a terrible job of promoting and supporting blood services in Ontario and in Canada that we’re going to go there and we’re going to offer to pay for plasma and pay for blood in the poorest neighbourhood, where people are the most desperate.” They’re the most desperate. They’re looking for some revenue because they’re poor. They’re easily—the argument can be made to them that they’re doing something good, but this is the new culture of Ontario, where we’ll buy anything. Anything is for sale in Ontario,, and it’s quite a development, I have to say.

The other thing is, here you have a government defending Enbridge and trying to hold their profit margins at a certain level through legislation, which even undermines the government’s own initiatives. And then Enbridge goes and cuts off rebates, leaving some homeowners on the hook for thousands in green renovation costs. This is bold. This is so bold, I would have to say, that Enbridge has said, “Do you know what? We’re not going to honour those rebates.”

This was just in the paper last week—that “most Ontarians’ carbon footprint is dominated by natural gas heating.” One lady decided to swap out her furnace for a heat pump. She applied for the government rebates. “Knowing there were $10,000 in government rebates available from the federal government and Enbridge Gas”—this was a partnership; it was a collaboration—they “went further with their renovation” to reduce their carbon footprint. They changed out their furnace for a heat pump; they upgraded some windows. And then what did Enbridge do? “We applied and we got confirmation to go ahead”—great, but then, when things were done and they had made commitments to contractors and thus, Enbridge said, “No, we’re not going to honour that commitment.”

So is this the new normal, where the government is not even protecting consumers on policies and programs that the government has negotiated?

One homeowner said, “This is a significant upfront cost to the homeowner. We’re not talking hundreds of dollars here”—we’re talking thousands. “Times are tough. Inflation is insane. Everyone’s mortgage is up for renewal and they’ve just put thousands of Ontarians in a really tough position to be able to manage these costs that they were not anticipating.”

So the energy minister is defending Enbridge, and then Enbridge is saying to people that they have agreed to have a contract around reducing their gas costs, that they’re not going to honour that commitment anymore. But who is the Minister of Energy going to bat for? He’s going to bat for Enbridge. You can’t even make it up.

This is an ongoing issue for Ontarians, who really feel abandoned by the government. The government is making very poor choices on the energy file, which is a huge cost to the province of Ontario. This speaks to priorities—and I feel like it’s getting darker. I think that it’s actually happening, and it does feel very symbolic to me, I have to tell you.

I’m going to talk a little bit about—and this is along the same theme of how the government is making decisions. We have all agreed in this House now, for years, that at 319 acres a day—the fact that we are losing these acres every single day in Ontario is not sustainable, nor is it a practice that any government should be endorsing or condoning.

In Wilmot township, farmers in that township just outside of Waterloo—not in my riding—in January, were approached by some developers who heard that 770 acres of prime agricultural land would be rezoned. It wasn’t in the official plan. If this sounds familiar—I’m already calling it greenbelt 2.0. The fact of the matter is that these farmers knew that they weren’t part of the official plan for development. The region has traditionally had a very balanced and positive relationship with farmers. We are an agricultural community. We believe that farmers feed cities. The citizens love the fact that we had a countryside line around the region which would focus our attention on building up, building smart, investing in the needed infrastructure, but not being wasteful with sprawl—more and more and more sprawl. So when this government rolled back their Bill 23 and the urban boundaries, and said, “Do you know what? We’re really, really sorry”—I just want to tell you, Madam Speaker, they weren’t that sorry, because they’re still carving out parcels of land and they’re making it available, bypassing the provincial environmental strategy, bypassing municipal plans, quite honestly. So this government has been very complicit and a willing participant, even though they were very sorry. They were sorry about the $8.3 billion in land acquisitions that some developers were going to benefit from. And we also know that this was never really about housing; right?

In Waterloo region now, we have farmers who are being forced off their land. They received lowball offers, somewhere around $35,000 per acre. But as soon as that one acre turns into an industrial proposition, it goes to $1 million? This is exactly what happened in the greenbelt—someone told someone who happens to be a developer that this land was now going to be industrial land, so it’s for economic development.

We also strongly believe that rural communities can be a strong partner in economic development, but, boy, it shouldn’t come at the cost of 770 acres of some of the best farmland in Ontario. These six farmers on this 770 acres—one of those families has been there since 1861. Out of nowhere, not part of any official plan, not part of any public consultation—no transparency whatsoever—farmers got a fellow, a third party from the States to come to them and say, “I’ll give you $35,000 for each acre, or you’re going to be expropriated by the region.”

Imagine being a contributor to the very fabric of our country and of our province and of our community, the very people we all espouse to say we respect and honour—this time-honoured tradition and profession of being stewards of the land and feeders of the city, and it’s $35,000 or you’re off, you’re expropriated. Forget that these are also six really productive family businesses.

Farming is a hard life; we can agree on this. There are not too many farmers in here, although I have worked with a couple over the years. They have to be tough, because it’s a tough profession.

The region has looked at the Get It Done piece of legislation, and schedule 1, which eases the onerous red tape—I guess, if you will, or blue tape—of expropriating land without an environmental assessment that meets the needs of the conservation authorities. They usually are consulted. Of course, the conservation authorities in Ontario have really been cut off at the knees, if you will. They’re not even consulted on key environmental decisions that are happening. Nobody even asked them, “What about the flood plain? What about the aquifer?”

I just want to say at the very top of this that economic development does not have to come at the cost of prime agricultural farmland. This is a false choice, and it’s a choice that this government doesn’t want to even talk about. Most of regional council have signed nondisclosure agreements, so these farmers don’t even have anybody to ask a question like, “What’s going to be developed on there? How thorough was the environmental assessment?”

While this 770 acres is not directly over the aquifer, it’s 200 metres away from it. And I don’t know if you know this, Madam Speaker, but water doesn’t just go down; water moves. We know this.

We have the knowledge, we have the power to make the right decisions, and yet this government brings forward legislation that is so open to the overriding of basic rights.

I’ve said this: Something is fundamentally unjust about what’s happening to farmers in Wilmot right now. I don’t know how you would feel if someone came to your farm and said, “Do you know what? An undisclosed industrial project is needed, and therefore you must leave your land.” It would be cartoonish if it wasn’t so very serious—because 80% of the drinking water that Waterloo region accesses is from the moraine; it is from the ground. So we are very protective of our source water protection; we have to be. We cannot afford to have a pipeline to Lake Erie or Lake Huron. Nobody wants that. The smart investment is to ensure that we become true stewards of the land.

In 2024, the fact that this government is so complicit in the paving of 770 acres of prime farmland, knowing the history of what has happened around water in the PC Party is astounding to me. It is so—it’s not even the 1950s; it’s like the 1850s here. Do you know what I mean?

I’ve written to the Premier. I know the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has asked the province to intervene, to pause and take a sober second thought, because once this land is gone, it is gone forever.

No consultation; no transparency; strong-arming farmers; no environmental assessment that we can see, that we can build some confidence in; and also a lack of process. Like, where else could this rumoured electric vehicle battery plant go? Do you know what I know for sure? You can’t eat an electric vehicle battery.

We definitely need to be focused on food security. If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic and having to be dependent on other jurisdictions, we need to be self-sufficient as a province. We need people to understand that the province is supportive of farming and of farms. We need new generations to look at that profession and that trade with some confidence that this is going to be something that the province of Ontario actually supports. We’re moving in the opposite direction—and it is getting darker, just on cue, for sure.