You know, the member from Perth–Wellington—I’m not sure if he understands how insulting it is, when people ask serious questions that are impacting the people of this province, around child care, around autism or around special education, and then the government comes back with “carbon tax.” It levels a new level of disrespect, I think, to the bigger problems.

What I will say to the member from Perth–Wellington is the reason we have a federal carbon tax is because your government dismissed the cap-and-trade program, and this is the backstop. The Supreme Court of Canada, as you all know, has said that the federal government has the right to address climate change in this manner. But we would not have that carbon tax if your Premier—because he’s not my Premier—hadn’t cut the cap-and-trade. That’s right.

This is the frustration, Madam Speaker. We have a carbon tax in Ontario because of this government, because they failed around the cap-and-trade piece. But they have their own made-in-Ontario industrial compliance fee, which is a carbon tax, which you don’t talk about in this House. But we are going to talk about it, because it needs transparency. That’s what we want from that.

I wanted to know if the member from Perth–Wellington can acknowledge that when people at committee, for instance, are asking about child care or asking about health care or asking about their parents being separated in long-term care or access to take-home cancer drugs or access to autism services, and he comes back and says, “Well, the carbon tax”—I don’t know if you understand how insulting that is for people who have genuine concerns about the well-being of their family, and you come back and talk about the carbon tax.

I mean, you did talk about health care somewhat. You didn’t reference how the Minister of Health says that she’s not concerned about the diminished supply of doctors. This has to be worrisome for you, because rural communities are suffering.

And you certainly didn’t reference the doubling of the costs of the Premier’s office and staff.

Meanwhile, they continue to make very poor policy decisions that impact your—

It’s an interesting debate that we have before the House today. First of all, we, as a party, have no problem supporting a motion because there is no federal carbon tax on groceries. This is a fact. We all know this.

The member is demanding that the federal government maintain the status quo, which is no tax on groceries. It’s a bizarre motion, poorly written. But okay, fine—no carbon tax on groceries, just like what exists already. We are all agreed.

However, cost-of-living pressures in the province of Ontario are very real, food insecurity is very real, housing insecurity is very real—and we are bringing those voices to this debate today.

It is possible that the member and the government are referring to a carbon tax on the inputs that go into groceries, like the fuels used by industrial agricultural producers. That’s not what the motion actually says, however, but maybe that’s what the member means. It would make more sense. But there is no federal carbon tax on industrial agricultural producers; there is, however, a provincial carbon tax—

Interjections.

I will also give a bit of a history lesson on how we got here. You’ll remember, in 2018, when this government first took their seats, one of the first things they did was promise to remove the carbon tax. The implementation of the carbon tax in Ontario faced significant challenges and changes. Prior to the carbon tax, we had a cap-and-trade agreement between Quebec and California. In 2018, this government announced its intention to repeal the carbon tax. This was a big deal. There have been a lot of big deals—you could be forgiven to be lost in the transgressions and the scandals and the walk-backs. I remember it very distinctly. This was a very heated debate in this House, and the decision sparked many views on carbon pricing—and those who saw it as a burden on businesses.

In response to the province’s repeal of the carbon tax and going to court—the government’s opposition to the carbon tax—the federal government imposed its own carbon-pricing system on Ontario. This system, known as the federal backstop, came into effect in April 2019. Under the federal backstop, a price on carbon emissions was applied to fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel, natural gas and coal.

In June 2019, the Ontario government launched a legal challenge against the federal carbon pricing. You’ll all remember this. There was a big hullabaloo. There were stickers on gas stations that didn’t stick. This challenge made its way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which heard arguments in September 2020, but in 2021, they ruled it was constitutional to have a carbon-pricing mechanism across this country, including in Ontario. That is why we have the Ford carbon tax in Ontario.

To go back to the motion—I just think it’s important context, because we had cap-and-trade. There are a lot of benefits to businesses, to consumers, and reduction in greenhouse gases, when you talk about cap-and-trade. It’s a very clear mechanism to address pollution, to price pollution, to reduce greenhouse gases, to strengthen the economy—the reinvestment in innovation, back to businesses. It’s a very clear pathway. Ontario does not have that right now, thanks to this government.

It is worthy to note that the province is expected to collect billions in revenues from the provincial carbon tax between now and 2030. This is an important piece of the conversation; I truly don’t want it to get lost. Millions of that revenue will come from food-related industries.

Maybe, just maybe, the province should exempt food-related industries from its carbon tax and shift some of the burden to other industries, high-polluting industries. It’s quite possible. You have a majority government. You can do this. It has the power to effect positive change for those sectors, but the member isn’t proposing this. He apparently wants his own government’s carbon tax on food-related industries, while asking the federal government to remove its non-existent carbon tax on groceries. It truly doesn’t make any sense.

This place, over the years—I’ve only been here for 11 years; there are moments when theatre and drama are called to our attention, but this is the theatre of the absurd. All the revenues from the provincial carbon tax on food-related industries are flowing into general revenues. That’s where the money is going. So if you follow the money here at Queen’s Park, you will see that the government is generating a fair amount of revenue from the provincial carbon tax.

Here’s an idea: Why doesn’t the government use some of this revenue to help food-related industries update their systems and become carbon-free, like the greenhouse sector? We meet with the greenhouse sector as well. They want to be part of the solution. They need a partner in government to get there. You have the revenue directly from them; feed it back to that sector, reduce greenhouse gases, make it more streamlined and really support the sector. If the government did that, we would be fully in support of that. But this would also reduce their carbon footprint, save them money and potentially reduce the price of their products. So if you’re going to get to the heart of the matter of the high cost of food, let’s do the full circle. Let’s have a holistic approach to this.

The province can totally do this, and I do suspect that there are some members on that side of the House who truly want to get this done, but that is not what we have before us in this motion. The government wants to keep the provincial carbon tax revenues to help pay for publicly funded parking garages for private luxury spas, and fight in court to avoid disclosing records related to the greenbelt grab, including the records on the Premier’s personal phone, where he’s clearly doing government business. This is truly about priorities, and about restoring some integrity and ethics back into this place.

It’s important to note that nothing that the government is doing currently will reduce the cost of groceries, even though all of us agree—and you only have to go to a grocery store these days to find out how expensive everything is. I’m not sure how much the provincial carbon tax is affecting everybody—certainly some of the clients of this government are not really impacted by that—but a bigger problem seems to be price-gouging by the giant grocery monopolies. These are the guys who were caught a few years ago—you’ll remember this well. They were found criminally conspiring to fix the price of bread. This is a serious issue in this province.

If you’re wondering who might be responsible for high grocery prices, I think the bread-price-fixing conspirators would be a prime suspect. In fact, they have just all been recalled back to the federal Parliament, because they made a commitment back in spring when they appeared before the finance committee. They said they were going to bring back a plan to reduce their prices. Nothing has come from them. There are no deliverables. There are no actions. Just like some delinquent students, they’ve been called back to the principal’s office to report on their lack of progress. This is a serious issue. It’s a federal issue, but it certainly is something that we should all be supporting the federal government on, to hold those grocery chains to account.

I remember how during the pandemic, when people were struggling, their profit margins skyrocketed, as people were seriously being hurt in this province. They jacked up the price of food and other essentials. Shareholder profits went up. Executive pay went up. The government passed an emergency anti-gouging law, but then never enforced it. This is well within your purview to address price gouging. This is something we could work on together across party lines, 100%. Bring it here tomorrow—