Thank you to the member from Ottawa Centre for your remarks. A couple of things that stood out to me: $19 million for the CEO of Enbridge and profits at 1,000%. That represents a lot of money, and we are continuing to subsidize that. Now, I should say that in my region, there’s a lot of desire to have natural gas. The chamber of commerce has said they want natural gas. They want to have that access. They want that subsidy to remain. I appreciate that, but it’s also installing an older technology that we know is going to become more and more expensive. The problem in our region is there’s no investment in the electrical lines to carry the volume of electricity needed in order to have heat pumps and EVs in our communities. That, to me, would be a very valuable investment of some of this money that’s going into a much older technology.

During the hearings, the issue was raised on behalf of Unifor workers that when there are methane leakages, Enbridge often uses private contractors in order to bypass the regulatory process.

So I’m wondering why the government really would have voted against an amendment put forward by one of my colleagues providing for the monitoring and prevention of methane leakages and for the publication of reports on such leakages. I’m wondering why on earth the government would vote against letting the public know and making sure that Enbridge always reports on any leakages that are taking place.

Thank you for the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane’s statement.

We know that they’re overruling the Ontario Energy Board. I believe this has never happened before. Certainly, it sets a very dangerous precedent—an independent regulatory board.

We know that part of what’s going on is that Enbridge is afraid of having stranded assets, so they want to invest even more, but the public will have the stranded assets in the end. And we know that the public is going to be paying; current ratepayers are going to see their costs go way up.

My question is, do you see this as another example of fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the government?

Thank you for the presentation. I would just like to say, she started by saying they were having to fix the mess that was left behind, but we’ve had seven bills that this government has had to rescind, so I think that they’re quite capable of making their own mess, and a considerable mess.

I’d like to know how increasing the cost to people who are already Enbridge customers by $600 is keeping costs down for the people of Ontario.