SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
June 3, 2024 09:00AM

Thank you to my colleague from Markham–Thornhill for this very important question. One of those ways—as we mentioned, I believe, in all of our remarks today—was student housing. We’re exempting that from the Planning Act for our universities.

I think of the University of Guelph, who have lots of students. It’s a great university in Guelph there, but they need student housing. But as the minister mentioned, those students now are in the community, taking rentals out of that stock from the local community. If we build student housing, they can then move into student housing and there is more rental stock for many workers—and because of the investments we’re attracting through our auto manufacturing, I know there are many in Guelph.

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  • Jun/3/24 11:20:00 a.m.

Thanks to the member from Markham–Unionville for the question this morning.

There’s no question about it; the carbon tax is impacting the cost of anything that gets delivered. Anything that comes from our farmers is going up in price. Groceries; household goods; the price at the pumps, obviously; home heating—it’s all going up. It’s all making life more expensive. So it’s unreal to hear this phony outrage that comes from the opposition parties, or phony concern, when it comes to the cost-of-living crisis, when they support this punitive carbon tax that’s coming from Justin Trudeau and the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie.

Madam Speaker, we have a plan called Powering Ontario’s Growth. It’s a plan that’s ensuring we continue to grow the economy, like the Premier was just talking about. Multi-billion-dollar investments from Windsor all the way to Ottawa and north into Sault Ste. Marie and far beyond, as we develop the Ring of Fire—there’s so much happening in Ontario.

We don’t need this punitive carbon tax.

That’s why we’ve taken a different route, bringing in One Fare so transit riders can save up to $1,600 a year, cutting the price at the pumps by 10.7 cents a litre on the Ontario gas tax, making sure we’re eliminating the licence plate sticker fees, and so much more.

We also have this plan called Powering Ontario’s Growth, which is ensuring that we’re getting competitive investment in new generation in our province, unlike what the Liberals did previously with the very costly, punitive Green Energy Act. It drove up the price of energy in our province, making 300,000 manufacturing jobs leave for other jurisdictions. We’re not doing that. We’re lowering taxes. As a result, we’ve seen jobs roar back into Ontario—700,000 new jobs.

Let’s scrap this tax today.

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