It’s hard to figure out where to begin with the comments from my colleague from Essex, so let’s do a history lesson here, because they are saying the carbon tax is not their tax.

My colleague talked eloquently about the backtracking this government does. When the current Conservatives were elected to form government, we had cap-and-trade, which meant the big polluters—industry—paid for carbon emissions. This government came in and scrapped that and brought in the carbon tax. And so it is really—“comical” is the word I’m going to use, because the other word is unparliamentary—that the member opposite is talking about how great they are, because they went to the Supreme Court fighting the carbon tax, when it was your carbon tax.

In essence, what we have seen is another example of something like the greenbelt, where the government does something, gets caught, the public doesn’t like it, and they pretend they’re taking a hard stance and going in the opposite direction. I will remind the member opposite: Two days ago—

I want to thank the member from Essex for his comments. I often find the member’s eloquence very entertaining, for sure. It was like a National Geographic commercial—a lot of anthropology trips down memory lane there.

The member made a case that the Premier we currently have is one of most environmental Premiers ever. I actually wonder, from one perspective, if he isn’t good at recycling our time, because we spent 72 hours in this place undoing legislation that the members opposite have proposed. Let’s go through it, shall we? Bill 124, Bill 28, the greenbelt fiasco, the urban boundary dispute. The Premier is famous for recycling—but recycling hot air in this place. I’m wondering if it’s embarrassing, frankly, to be part of a government that brings legislation into the House only to redo it later. I think it’s a waste of our time. I think it’s a waste of time to be using the lawyers hired to serve the province of Ontario to go fight court cases that are unwinnable.

So I’m wondering, because the member has talked about making life more habitable, if he thinks it wouldn’t be more habitable for this House to be working on legislation that doesn’t just have to get ripped up a few months later.

It’s great to have the member from Essex here. We can see how the people of southwestern Ontario support our government in electing you as our first member for Essex in many, many years, replacing the current opposition’s member from the NDP.

We know where they stand on affordability. We know where the opposition stands. The NDP and the Liberals never saw a tax or a fee they didn’t want to hike, whether it’s tolls, taxes, energy costs.

We’ve taken many initiatives within this government. Could I ask the member, how and what in this particular bill—how is it going to help regular families? How is it going to help them save costs in driving their kids to soccer etc.? How is it going to save money and put money back in their pocketbooks?