Thank you to the great member from Burlington for her unwavering support of her amazing job creators. I know that so many of our small business owners are trying their best to keep their businesses alive. They’re working long hours, paying their bills and doing their part to create opportunities in their communities.

Businesses simply can’t pass the cost from the additional taxes and red tape onto their customers. Many in their communities are already feeling the pinch on gas, on groceries, on heating and much more. The reality that the Liberals and the NDP refuse to acknowledge are the tough choices businesses are making due to higher costs, like having to scale back staff or reduce inventory.

Higher taxes increase costs and negatively impact every single aspect of our economy, from the main streets to the farmhouses. We’re calling on Ottawa to give our entrepreneurs a fair shot at success.

Speaker, it gets even worse: The 2022 report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer showed that the carbon tax will reduce real GDP across Canada by 1.3% by 2030 and could cost us a whopping 200,000 jobs nationally by 2030. That is what this opposition needs to start thinking about: the people of this province. Start making life more affordable and join us in calling Ottawa to scrap the tax now.

Thank you to the member for her question and her unwavering support for Burlington’s job creators. It is indeed disheartening to hear some members suggest that the carbon tax is improving the lives of Ontarians when the reality on the ground tells a very different story. Speaker, think of Ontario’s 28,000 barley, corn, oat, soybean and wheat farmers, most of which are small family-owned businesses. It’s estimated that up to $2.7 billion of carbon tax will be paid by Ontario’s grains and oil seed farmers on a tax that cannot be passed on to their customers. That’s billions of dollars that could be reinvested into small towns to help grow the rural economy of Ontario.

The opposition likes to claim they’re for rural Ontario businesses, but so far, all they’ve done is sat on their hands while their federal cousins steamroll over Ontario’s businesses. This government will not rest until every—