It’s always a pleasure, it truly is, to be able to speak in this House and today to talk about Bill 165, Keeping Energy Costs Down Act. This is a bill that the title doesn’t really reflect what the actual goal of the bill is.

We’ll go back a little bit. The Ontario Energy Board is an independent regulator that regulates natural gas prices. The people in my riding who have natural gas—I’m not going to sugar-coat this—like natural gas, because the price is predictable, because it’s regulated. Often in northern Ontario—and I have put bills forward that, actually, the price of gasoline should be regulated, because there’s often 20 cents’ difference between where I live and where it’s cheapest on my trip, which is usually north of Barrie. Then, when you get down here, it gets to almost northern Ontario price again, and that has nothing to do with transportation. That’s why we often say it should be regulated.

We hear this all the time: that while the government has taken 10 cents off the price of gas—they have foregone taxes, but in that legislation, they didn’t put anything that that 10 cents actually goes to consumers. So that 10 cents could have just as easily gone to the profit margin of the oil companies who control gas prices.

I actually enjoy talking to the Minister of Energy. Actually, it’s not that hard for me to be in the NDP caucus. It’s much easier than it sometimes would be being in a caucus where you introduce legislation and then rescind it, and then introduce legislation again and then rescind it, and then introduce it again and then rescind it.

Yes, we need reliable energy sources. We need a reliable grid. But I question, again, having a 40-year amortization on parts of the grid that might only be feasible for 10 years, and whether that’s good business for the people buying those homes.

It was brought up that in Europe, they’ve already transitioned. My family is from Holland. Even before gas went up, it was already illegal to hook up to natural gas, because they recognized it long before we did.

The question is, this bill doesn’t really address that. This bill just overrules the decision. That is the issue. That is the issue. I think we can all agree, and it’s not very often we all agree in this House—very rarely. I don’t think anyone would disagree that a 40-year horizon for natural gas installations for home heating makes sense. I don’t think anybody disagrees with that.

But I will let you know that we’re getting a lot less calls for natural gas right now than we were two, three years ago—a lot less calls because the price of natural gas has gone up and a lot of people are switching to heat pumps, and heat pumps aren’t the total answer in northern Ontario.

Let’s be clear. I’m not going to sugar-coat it, but we’re getting a lot less calls for natural gas now than we were two or three years ago, but a lot of those are for industrial or farm applications, and that’s a totally—