And, Speaker, if you’re wondering what the background noise is as I’m trying to speak to what the residents of Barrie–Innisfil care so much about, it’s the opposition. They’re very opposed to lowering the price of gas. If it was up to them, these poor residents of Barrie–Innisfil wouldn’t have a way to get to work, and it would certainly drive up the cost of them getting to work. You can be assured that the folks that I speak to in my riding that I will fight day in and day out for their affordability, for them to be able to gas up to get to where they need.

Our government’s been very clear that we are standing up against the carbon tax, which is no joke, Speaker. The fact that it still increased on April 1, raising the cost of home heating, natural gas, gassing up the gas tank is certainly out of touch with reality. It’s so out of touch with reality that your own Bank of Canada and the Parliamentary Budget Officer said Canadians are actually paying more into the carbon tax than they’re getting out, Speaker, which is a terrible deal. You can’t take your money out of one pocket, transfer it to the other one and say it’s the same amount: You’re still taking money out of the same pocket.

It’s not just the folks at work in the skilled trades economy who have to gas up their trucks to get to work and the fact that we’re going to be lowering that price for them, but it’s also our farmers.

Innisfil is home to many farmers. We’re next home to the vegetable basket known as the Holland Marsh, and you have a lot of farmers who are also speaking out and saying that they can’t afford the carbon tax either. These are people who bring food to table. They’re the ones that feed our cities. They’re the people that feed many of the folks that we’re trying to help every day, and if their costs go up, that means everyone else’s costs go up. So certainly, we will continue to stand up for them.

But in addition to the farmers in my community and, of course, those folks who work in the skilled trades original innovation centre, I would be remiss also, Speaker, if I didn’t address health care.

In our community of Barrie–Innisfil, we are fortunate to have the regional innovation centre. We’re really grateful to have the skilled health care force that we have, and thanks to Georgian College, we now are able to train nurses all four years at Georgian College, which will help us locally with retention.

One thing we’ve heard a lot of is the need for more primary care in Barrie–Innisfil, and I was thrilled that I was able to stand with my colleague from Barrie–Springwater–Oro-Medonte to introduce two new initiatives in our region. One would be a nurse practitioners clinic in Innisfil, something that is very much needed in addition to the family doctors that we do have. This will complement our long-term vision of building a hospital in Innisfil. Currently, we were successful, working as a community to get a $1.2-million planning grant and this will build on that entire ecosystem, again delivering that level of care that is so needed.

This also builds on another need within Innisfil specifically, which is home care. I was really thrilled to see—and I know I shadowed some home care nurses in my community and was able to go with them to see a dialysis patient, for instance. For them, they wanted to see an extension of home care and this budget does that. We invested in home care in our last budget and this one, and certainly we’ll continue to address all elements of health care, including the fact that we’re getting the nurse practitioners clinic in Innisfil.

Just north of us, in the member for Barrie–Springwater–Oro-Medonte’s riding, but it affects all residents, they’re investing in a mobile service vehicle which actually goes directly to Indigenous communities to help service those numbers. But this speaks to the Ontario investment we’ve already made, which is $90 million, which triples the original $30 million earmarked to expand interprofessional primary care teams, Speaker, and I’m grateful that we in Innisfil are able to benefit from those changes, thanks to the leadership of the Premier and the Minister of Health, to make sure that the residents and municipalities continue—we have a growing community—to have the health care needs that are close to home.

But, Speaker, in addition to a growing community in my local community of Barrie–Innisfil, there are a lot of great things I did want to highlight. One thing I did want to turn to briefly is a passion of mine that’s been a passion since even before I was elected, and that is the crown jewel of Barrie, Lake Simcoe. It’s something that I remember, when I ran for the Progressive Conservatives, was a key, core platform of mine on my many brochures when I went door-knocking door to door, and I was thrilled, when we first got elected as a government—I was honoured—to be chosen to be the parliamentary assistant for the environment. As a result, we’ve seen a lot more—millions in investments into Lake Simcoe. Two projects that are highlighted in this specific budget—Lake Simcoe has been mentioned in previous budgets before, but in this budget is something that has been on the books by the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority for about a decade, and that is a phosphorus treatment plan.

Interjections.

Again, I remember when I sat down with Mike Walters, the former CEO of the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority. He was shocked that no government had picked up this project.

Again, thanks to my great colleagues the member for Bradford West Gwillimbury and my fellow colleagues in Barrie–Springwater–Oro-Medonte. With a team effort and a lot of your leadership in working with partners, we’re able to make this project not just a line item in an annual report by the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, but make it a reality—not just with funding, but now there’s a feasibility study that’s going to be started to make this project come to fruition, and the amount of phosphorus that it will reduce from the lake, changing that ecosystem that is Lake Simcoe for the better, is grand.

Lake Simcoe depends on—we’re the ice fishing capital in our region, so we certainly depend on it on an economic basis. I remember, when we were doing consultations around the betterment of what we can do in terms of projects for Lake Simcoe health improvement, that a lot of what we heard is the fact of how much the lake is tied into the local economy. So you’ve got a lot of folks who are very vested in making sure that that remains our crown jewel. But it wouldn’t be possible, again, without some of the funding that we were able to give out through the Ministry of the Environment, thanks to this government—millions of dollars we’re putting towards the lake, in things like ensuring that we have lower chloride levels, which is, of course, the salt runoff off our roads.

Again, something I was able to work on is best management practices with some general contractors, who are the ones who lay down the salt, about best usage—of how we could reduce the amount of salt usage on the road so that we reduce the chloride levels in Lake Simcoe. We had some great feedback. We got some best management practices—things out of New Hampshire that we can build on, as well, things that really work.

That, again, shows you, working together in a community—again, I’m focusing on Barrie–Innisfil, but it shows you what really can happen in that community when we all work together towards a common goal to achieve great things, and that allows us to keep Barrie–Innisfil a crown jewel in our area for generations to come.

We’re just getting started—there are certainly more announcements that come with my colleagues, that I get to work on for this project. We’ve had some really great successes, and again, it wouldn’t be possible without many of our partners.

Speaker, this builds to a greater theme within our government, within Progressive Conservatives, and that is, whether it’s the last park that was created—the last provincial park that was created was over 40 years ago, and that was under a Progressive Conservative government. Now, in this budget, we’re building two new Ontario provincial parks, under a Progressive Conversative government. This builds on our former legacies, whether it’s at the federal level, with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and what he did with acid rain, or whether it was what Mike Harris did when he announced the Ontario’s Living Legacy program, which added about 370 new parks and protected areas, bringing the total in Ontario to 650, increasing Ontario’s protected areas to more than 95,000 square kilometres. Thanks to this budget and previous budgets, we’re building on that legacy by protecting more green land through the green lands fund.

So far, to date, since this government was elected in 2018, we have been able to protect 420,000 acres of land, which is more than the Liberals did in their 15 years of government—we did in the first few years of government. But I digress.

This also builds on another Progressive Conservative legacy—the legacy of Bill Davis, who actually created the first Ministry of the Environment and appointed the first Minister of the Environment, George Kerr.

So I think the overlying themes that you see, Speaker, is that it’s not just the Minister of the Environment here who is doing things for the economy and the environment—but it’s building complete communities, whether it’s transportation that’s building subways so we can get more cars off the road and save people a little bit on commute times and their quality of life, whether it’s our EV strategy, which we’re doing to create more jobs. Certainly, in my region of Barrie–Innisfil, there are a lot of people who work in the manufacturing sector, and they benefit from that EV ecosystem.

Speaker, this is a budget to be proud of.