It is a pleasure for me to talk in support of the motion from my seatmate, the MPP from Oshawa. Her motion is quite simple: “That, in the opinion of this House, the Ontario building code should be amended to restore the requirements for electric vehicle supply equipment that applied to houses served by a garage, carport or driveway, as per subsection 9.34.4 ... as it read on January 1, 2018.”

I live in northern Ontario. I can tell you that within about 300 kilometres of where I live, there are zero charging stations for electrical vehicles. That doesn’t mean that the people of northern Ontario don’t want electrical vehicles; we do.

My neighbour Shelley bought an all-electric vehicle last summer. She had to pay a good friend of ours, Len Holmberg, close to $3,000 to install a charging station at her house. She works in the city. She’s able to go to work. They have two kids; she’s able to pick up her kids and do all of this because she charges her electric vehicle at home.

In northern Ontario, where I live—if you find that the cost of gas is high in southern Ontario, come and have a look at the watershed. Come and have a look at Gogama or Foleyet. If it’s under $2 a litre, we find that this is a deal and it’s a good time to fill up. So do we want electric vehicles? Yes, we do.

There is home construction going on in northern Ontario. To mandate it in the building code that every new home with a garage, a carport or a driveway—which most of them in northern Ontario have; we need cars because there’s no public transit—is a given. Make it part of the building code so that when you have your plans, when they come and build, you don’t have to say, “Oh, by the way, make sure you wire in for”—it will be done.

Same thing—my husband is an electrician. My daughter is an electrician. They will tell you that putting it in while you’re building the home is very easy to do—connecting it to your electrical panel and all this. They have good conversations between those two that I don’t always understand, but I do understand the cost. It is hundreds of dollars to do it while you’re building the house—it is thousands of dollars.

Pass the motion. It makes sense.