It’s always an honour to be able to stand in this Legislature and speak on bills that are very important to this province and important to the people of Timiskaming–Cochrane.

Before I start on the bill, I just ask for the House’s indulgence for a moment.

Currently, the Cochrane-Timiskaming branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association has locked out their workers. As a result, right now, their clients are not getting any service. We are in the middle of a mental health crisis. As with any labour dispute, there are two sides; we recognize that. But I urge the management and I urge the government to discuss with the management what the roadblocks are from their end. They’re not that far apart, and we are facing a mental health crisis. Right now, the people who serve their clients are being locked out and not being able to serve the people who have some of the most dire needs in this province. I urge the government to reach out to management to see what roadblocks exist so that those residents in my riding and in other ridings can get the mental health services they need.

Thank you for that indulgence, Speaker.

The bill we’re talking about—the working title is Keeping Energy Costs Down Act. This bill is more complicated than it seems. A lot of people, I think, would never think of how the energy system, particularly the natural gas system, is operated in Ontario. It’s regulated. That means that there is a regulatory board, the Ontario Energy Board, that oversees the system so it’s stable, so that people who are connected to gas or who want to connect to gas—if they do want to, and there are reasons why they may not want to—know that they’re getting as fair a deal as possible.

The Ontario Energy Board made a ruling that new gas hookups in new subdivisions, in new builds, shouldn’t be amortized over 40 years because it’s a very likely that that gas hookup won’t be useful for 40 years, because, as we know, the world is in transition.

Last summer, I was in this House speaking, and I think you will remember that we could smell the smoke from the forest fires, in this House. I don’t think that has happened in modern times.

Today, in Timiskaming–Cochrane, it was 8 degrees this morning, thunderstorms—in February. In Timiskaming–Cochrane, in February, it’s usually minus 20, minus 25, snowmobilers are happy, ice fishermen—ice fisher-people, I guess—are happy. But that’s not the case. People can say, “Oh, that’s a one-off,” and, “No, no, that could happen”—I was standing here, and so were the rest of us, sitting here, when we smelled that smoke. That’s not a one-off. Is that the only reason to look at this—what the government is trying to do here? It’s a big reason, but not the only one. But we have to keep that in the back of our minds.

We have to look at transitioning away from fossil fuels. We’re not the first people to do this. Most of my family comes from Europe. Right now in Holland, they’re self-sufficient in natural gas. They do import, but they could be self-sufficient. Right now in Holland, if you build a new house—

This bill is about how the regulator said, “To keep the system stable, we can’t take out 40-year amortization mortgages on new parts of the system that likely might not make sense today and likely won’t make sense in five years.”

It was really interesting when the Minister of the Energy, who I respect, talked about how he had a heat pump with an electric backup and he was never cold. That tells me that, in large parts of this province, new houses could also have heat pumps with electric backup and cause much less impact to the environment than natural gas.

The financial part of what the government is doing—the Ontario Energy Board said, “No, no, it doesn’t make sense to take a 40-year mortgage out to pay for something that actually might not make sense for people now; it certainly won’t make sense in five years, because the rest of the world is transitioning already.” The government steps in and says, “No, no. The regulator? They don’t know what they’re talking about. We’re going to make an informed decision. What we’re going to do is, we’re going to make all the other people who pay, who are already on the system—we’re going to make them pay for the hookups that might not make sense. We’re going to destabilize the system on their behalf.”

If this government had a really good record of making forward-looking financial decisions, you could maybe give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s very, very concerning that they are overruling a regulator. If they had a reasonable track record on their legislation—but this is the government that, with Bill 124, decided to change how negotiations were done with public sector workers, creating a huge issue in the health care sector. And guess what? They rescinded it. They rescinded another bill to go over the “notwithstanding” clause. The greenbelt? They rescinded it. Now they’re saying, “We know more than the Ontario Energy Board.”

The government doesn’t have a problem tacking the bill on infrastructure for 40 years that’s likely not going to be worth it in five—“We’ll make the people who are already on that infrastructure pay the difference.” They’re willing to destabilize the system. They say it’s because they want to make houses more affordable. We all want to make houses more affordable. But are you sure you’re making the house more affordable when you’re kind of forcing someone to put in natural gas because they’re hooked up when, over years, they’d be much better off with something that was more efficient for heating and cooling and that would save them money in the long run? I question whether the government has thought that through.

I certainly don’t think that this government has the track record to say that we, the province, should be very comfortable that we’re overruling a regulator.

This is a big debate. We need to take this issue seriously. We are making decisions for people in the future—it’s not just for today.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.