Well, Speaker, it’s just the opposite; we’re not ruling anything out. There is no law against that right now in the province of Ontario. So we encourage municipalities to make the decisions that are in the best interests of their taxpayers.

At the same time, well over seven million people in the province of Ontario already live in communities where as-of-right four is the law. What we are running into, though, is that this is not something that is solving the crisis in any way, shape or form. My understanding is that although it’s legal in the city of Toronto, less than 70 of these units have been built; I know in other communities, like Vaughan and Richmond Hill, zero have been built.

We also know that as-of-right three has not been as successful as we had hoped it to be; less than 20,000 units have been built in that program. That is why, in this bill, we are removing the obstacles so that we can get the as-of-right three right across the province of Ontario—and we will allow our municipal partners to continue to make decisions on their behalf.

What we’re focusing on is ensuring that there is infrastructure in the ground so that, as opposed to building, let’s say, 70 fourplexes in the city of Toronto, we can build 1.5 million homes across the province. What the Leader of the Opposition fails to understand is that in order to build homes across the province of Ontario, our municipal partners need sewer and water capacity. That is why the Minister of Infrastructure is bringing forward the largest infrastructure program for sewer and water and roads in the province’s history. We’re doing this in the absence of the federal government. We’re going to continue to do all that we can to put the infrastructure in the ground so that we can build not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of homes in every part of this province.

Interjections.

We’re listening to our municipal partners, because the Minister of Infrastructure is bringing forward the largest unilateral infrastructure, sewer and water program in history, and the Minister of Education is building schools in all these new communities—roads, everything. We’re getting it done.

What the opposition would rather do is they’d rather keep people unemployed and then subsidize them to buy vehicles. What we want is to give people the ability to work in the province of Ontario—$28 billion worth of investments.

But as I said last Thursday, it is not up to the government of Ontario to fund a decision that you make. She talks about British Columbia—the highest price for gas in British Columbia; the highest expenses; the place that is most expensive to live in the country, British Columbia.

We are bringing jobs back, opportunity back. That is the record of this government: 700,000 jobs, cutting taxes, cutting red tape, bringing back employment to the province of Ontario in the same way that the 22nd Premier of the province of Ontario did each and every day, focused on the people of the province of Ontario.

Ontario has the workers, we have the expertise and we have the energy to power a strong EV sector here. It used to be a signature policy of this government, but now they’re throwing it in reverse, with a weak commitment to electric vehicles and sustainable infrastructure. In the process, this Premier is jeopardizing sales and production by not making our new homes EV-ready. It is so short-sighted.

The people of Ontario want to know—and I’ll go back to the Premier again—is the government backing away from plans for a sustainable auto sector in Ontario?

Interjections.

Good morning, Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Energy.

On April 1, the federal Liberals—supported by the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie—increased the carbon tax by 23%. This costly tax is raising the price of everything, for both energy costs and food prices. It’s forcing Ontario drivers to pay over 17 cents per litre more at the gas pumps.

Speaker, it’s so disappointing to see the Liberal and NDP members of this Legislature turning a blind eye to the hardships people everywhere are experiencing. They should be joining us and calling on the federal government to scrap the carbon tax now.

Can the minister please explain why the carbon tax is causing damage to all aspects of life for the people of Ontario?

Speaker, people in my riding of Chatham-Kent–Leamington are concerned about the impact a whopping 23% carbon tax hike will have on their home energy bills. They feel it’s unfair to them and communities across Ontario that the federal Liberals have burdened us with this unnecessary cost.

Our government will not give up, Speaker. We’ll continue to fight this tax, deliver affordability for Ontario and put more money back in people’s pockets.

Speaker, can the minister please explain how the carbon tax is punishing people in Chatham-Kent–Leamington and throughout Ontario who rely on natural gas and propane to heat their homes?

It’s quite clear that our plan is working: 300,000 manufacturing jobs left our province for other jurisdictions at a time when those who are running the auto plants were saying that Ontario was the most uncompetitive jurisdiction in North America to build cars, to now, six years later, investing $28 billion into EV platforms, EV battery manufacturing facilities. The world is moving to EVs in Ontario because we have the energy and we’re committed to building the energy infrastructure to support the implementation of electric vehicles.

Now, the NDP energy critic is against all of the investments that we’re making in our nuclear sector, including building small modular reactors at Darlington, leading the world on that front; putting an extra 4.8 gigawatts at Bruce Power; refurbishing the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. That’s how we’re going to power Ontario well into the future.

As we continue to reduce taxes and reduce fees and reduce the cost of living, the federal government continues to jack it up. On April 1—just a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Speaker—the federal government did it again: a whopping increase of 23% to the federal carbon tax, which is impacting the price at the pumps. It’s impacting the price of home heating for natural gas furnaces, the price at the grocery store. It’s impacting the cost of living in Ontario.

Last week we saw something interesting at the federal Parliament. We actually saw the federal NDP, with Jagmeet, and we saw the Parti Québécois—or, actually, the separatist party—supporting a Conservative motion to encourage Prime Minister Trudeau, who increased the carbon tax, to meet with Premiers right across the country. All of them are opposed to the carbon tax. It’s time to sit down, have that discussion and also scrap the tax.

The people of Ontario are feeling the pinch, but it’s not just the people of Ontario; it’s people right across the country that are getting hammered by this federal carbon tax. Just look at Newfoundland, where the Liberal premier, Andrew Furey, actually pleaded with Prime Minister Trudeau to put the pause on, back on April 1. But since he hasn’t done that, he’s now joined the chorus of Premiers of all stripes, from right across the country, to sit down and have an adult discussion—something the Prime Minister hasn’t done since 2016—with the Premiers, Speaker.

We believe that the Prime Minister should be sitting down with those Premiers. I just wish that the queen of the carbon tax here in Ontario, the Liberal leader, would support us in sitting down and having that mature discussion about axing the tax in Ontario.

Speaker, let’s wrap it up. Let’s see what we’ve done. The Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade has encouraged $28-billion worth of EV manufacturing to the province of Ontario. The Ministers of Mines and Northern Development are unlocking the resources of the north so that we can power the investments in the south. The Minister of Energy is investing in small modular reactors—so the opposition knows, these are the reactors that will power the EV revolution of tomorrow—while refurbishing our nuclear fleet. And later today, we will be voting on an NDP bill that will kill what the Minister of Energy is doing, put in jeopardy what the Minister of Natural Resources is doing and put in jeopardy the $28 billion worth of investments.

So this is what I tell you: We will vote against that, and we will continue our program of investing in the people of the province of Ontario so that they have the resources to invest in themselves and they have the resources to invest in their communities. It’s about giving people the tools they need to succeed.

As I said on Thursday, I come from an Italian family. Many of my relatives—even ourselves, we had a stove in the garage. It was a 220-volt stove, because a lot of us like to cook in the garage. I didn’t ask the people of the province of Ontario to cover the cost of that stove in the garage. Do you know what my dad did? He called an electrician, who put the stove plug in the garage, and he paid for it, Mr. Speaker.

So I think the people of the province of Ontario can make that decision on their own. They don’t need big daddy government coming in on their behalf. My goal is to keep the price of home building low so that more Ontarians can afford to build it, not higher.

Interjections.

My question is to the Premier. This government has boasted about their electric vehicle investment, but like so much they do, they aren’t plugged into what is really needed. Folks are excited about electric vehicles, but they won’t buy them if they know they can’t charge them. When this Premier was elected in 2018, one of his first moves was to rip out EV charging stations, cancel EV rebates and end the building code requirement to make sure homes were wired and ready. Without the infrastructure, automakers are signalling a slowdown on EV production. This Premier is putting good auto jobs at risk.

When will this Premier switch gears and support the future of electric vehicles by committing to the charging infrastructure that they will require?

This Premier has said he’s picking the side of developers, but we hope he will switch to be on the side of auto manufacturers, autoworkers, drivers and homeowners. Building houses already roughed in for charging is an easy and practical fix that we could do today to save people a lot of money.

So my question is, will the Premier put charging rough-ins back in the building code so we can have EV-ready homes?

Members will please take their seats.

To reply, the Minister of Energy.

The next question.

I’m very proud of the number of purpose-built rentals that we have increased. As the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing mentioned just moments ago, we have historic records of purpose-built buildings, and that is something that is important to the people of the province of Ontario who need a place to live.

We are working non-stop at achieving our goal of 1.5 million housing units, and we will get there with or without the help of the opposition, who would vote against every single initiative that we do when we achieve these records.

Mr. Speaker, I’ll have more to say in the supplementary.

When this government came to power, we recognized the crisis for what it is, and we made a public commitment. The Premier made a commitment. The municipal affairs and housing minister made a commitment. We will build 1.5 million spaces, and we’ll do it, notwithstanding that we’re starting from behind. We’re starting from behind because no investments were made; no money was put forward; the red tape was building up. But we will persevere. We will get the job done.

We are getting the job done, and we will not apologize for that.

Back to the Premier: Today, my constituent Lindsay is receiving an N13, a demoviction notice. She tells me, “As a tenant who is now dealing with finding a home on top of dealing with the immediate aftermath of experiencing domestic violence, I’m at a complete loss. All of the homes being built are not made for people like me and my two young children. I’ve started looking for housing options so I can continue to live and work in Toronto once demovicted, but there is nowhere safe that I can afford to raise my family.”

Speaker, there is no affordable rental housing in Ontario because of the rent control loopholes that have been introduced by the Conservative government.

Will this government admit that they have the power to help Lindsay and her two young children by introducing real rent control today?

Interjections.

The Attorney General.

The Attorney General.

It really highlights just how irrelevant the NDP have become in pretty much every single policy issue facing the province of Ontario.

The reality is this: We have increased funding to the Homelessness Prevention Program to record levels. The member will know this because she voted against that, as did the entire NDP caucus. We’ve actually increased homelessness prevention funding in every part of the province, including in the member’s own riding, by 34%. She will recall that she voted against that as well.

What we are doing across the province of Ontario is restoring, rehabilitating and renovating our affordable housing stock. Do you know why? Because we were left with an infrastructure deficit by the previous Liberal government, supported by the NDP. What have we done? We are renovating, rehabilitating and restoring 123,000 affordable housing units in the province of Ontario. That is an unmatched record in the history of this province.

We will continue to support those who want help. As the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services said, we will leave no one behind. That is our goal each and every day.

My question is to the Premier. The owner of property in Innisfil has been charging people facing housing insecurity $500 to set up a tent on their property. The ad for the property notes that they will have access to a communal washroom and kitchen. Shockingly, instead of working to resolve this province’s homelessness crisis, the member for Innisfil has started referring people to this for-profit encampment.

My question to the Premier is this: Is he going to start counting tents as part of their affordable housing numbers?

Unfortunately—and this is shocking but not surprising—this for-profit encampment is targeted toward people who are on OW or ODSP because the programs don’t even cover the cost of rent.

This Conservative government has fuelled a housing and affordability crisis, and now they seem to be endorsing its exploitation.

Speaker, will the Premier tell Ontarians whether for-profit encampments are part of his affordable housing strategy?

The federal Liberals are doing to our country what the previous provincial Liberals did to the province of Ontario. Raising taxes at every opportunity, they chased businesses and jobs out of the province. Our manufacturing sector was on the brink of collapse, with 300,000 manufacturing jobs lost.

We came in and lowered costs right across the board. We’ve restored Ontario’s ability to compete on the global stage. And 700,000 more men and women are working today than before we took office.

Speaker, our message to the federal government is clear: Do not jeopardize the progress that we have made. Scrap the tax today.

We can’t allow the Liberals to crush our momentum.

Scrap the tax today.

My question is for the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.

Speaker, the federal Liberals think that they know better than the hard-working people of this province. When people are hurting because of the rising cost of living, it seems logical that governments of all political stripes would do their part to reduce costs. Instead, the Liberals are doing the opposite: They are hiking taxes at a time when families are already struggling to get by. Families are having trouble heating their homes, filling their gas tanks and putting food on the table, and the Liberal solution is to make things more expensive. The worst part is that Bonnie Crombie and her Liberal colleagues don’t even have the guts to stand up and tell the Prime Minister to get rid of this terrible tax.

Can the minister please explain what risks the federal carbon tax poses to our economy?

We’ve heard loud and clear from the people of Ontario that the last thing they want is a carbon tax. But the federal Liberals are actively ignoring the concerns of hard-working Ontario families, just as the previous Liberal provincial government did.

We don’t believe the way to fight climate change is by crushing businesses and workers with tax hikes, and neither do the people of Ontario. We have an abundance of clean energy right here in our province, and we’re making sure Ontario is a leader in building clean tech for the future, like electric vehicles. That’s how to help lower emissions; not by implementing a carbon tax that drives the cost of everything up and up and up.

Can the minister explain how the carbon tax will hurt the progress that we’ve made in reducing costs so that businesses and workers can succeed?

For the Premier: I never thought I’d see the day when having a family doctor in Ontario made you lucky; when people paid hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars just to access primary care; when riding the subway meant being bombarded with advertisements for health care services that should be insured but aren’t.

Looking back at the last six years, a lot has changed. Now we have nurse practitioner-led clinics charging subscription fees to desperate patients while executive health clinics make a fortune in a primary care marketplace of this government’s making.

By 2026, 4.4 million people won’t have access to a family doctor, and we can’t even say that our emergency departments are always open anymore.

Mr. Speaker, with so little to show under his watch, why is it that the Premier only increased health care sector funding by 0.59%, but has more than doubled the amount that he pays the staff in his own office?

But perhaps “forgetting” is too generous because every time this government’s neglect brings another feature of public health care to its knees, there is always a private, for-profit model there to save the day. Whether it is exorbitant subscription fees to nurse practitioners or executive health clinics, whether it’s pricey Pap smears or costly cataract lenses, whether it’s staffing agencies gouging our hospitals and long-term-care homes, this government rolls out the red carpet for anyone praying to the almighty dollar.

Mr. Speaker, what should patients who can’t afford this Premier’s private health care agenda do once his gravy train has left our public health care system behind in the dust?

Thanks to the member for Thornhill. We’re doing everything we can to make life more affordable for the people of Ontario here under the leadership of Premier Ford, while Prime Minister Trudeau and the federal Liberals seem content to make life more expensive for the people of Ontario and the people of Canada. That goes for the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, as well, who seems happy to have the federal carbon tax in place so that she doesn’t have to take a position on it.

We have taken a position on it. We’re making life more affordable. That’s why we’re seeing new investments in our province, particularly in the EV and EV auto space, where companies are flocking back to Ontario and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in our province, where, again, under the leadership of the previous Liberal government for 15 years, we saw 300,000 jobs leaving for other jurisdictions. Over 700,000 jobs are coming back. That’s all because of our sound energy policy that ensures we’re competitive with other—

The NDP: While some of them have supported us in the House, Jagmeet on the weekend was trying to walk back his demands to have a carbon tax or not. He is supportive of the carbon tax again, but that’s typical of NDP policy. They don’t know which way to go.

We’re with the people of Ontario. The opposition parties are against them, particularly on energy costs.

My question is for the Minister of Energy. The Liberal carbon tax is punishing Ontario families. Last year, the federal government decided to exempt one form of home heating fuel, mainly used in Atlantic Canada, from the carbon tax. But they’re hiking the carbon tax on lower-emission natural gas here in Ontario, where the majority of residents now have to pay more to heat their homes. That’s just not right. Residents in my riding of Thornhill tell me they already feel the impact of the carbon tax on their energy bills.

The people of Ontario deserve to be treated fairly. The federal Liberals need to get rid of this carbon tax right now.

Can the minister please explain how they are making home heating and more things expensive and impacting Ontarians?

This is exactly what our government spoke up about—the carbon tax—what we fought tooth and nail. It’s ludicrous that the Liberals think it’s a good idea to raise the carbon tax by a staggering 23% when Ontario families are already struggling with the increased cost of living.

But this is most concerning. This gets so much worse. The federal government and opposition parties want to nearly triple the tax by 2030. That’s simply not acceptable. Can the minister please explain why Ontarians cannot afford the continued tax increase on groceries, transportation and everything else in between?

Again, Speaker, truly a question from the NDP that really highlights just how irrelevant they are in the discourse in the province of Ontario. It is no wonder nobody pays attention to them. It is no wonder that members leave their caucus in droves, Mr. Speaker.

Here’s what we’re doing: We’re putting infrastructure in the ground. Do you know why we’re putting infrastructure in the ground, colleagues? So that we can build millions of homes across the province of Ontario. You know why we have to do this work, Speaker? Because for 15 long—long—arduous years, the former Liberal government did absolutely nothing. And do you know who supported them in that? The NDP: the most irrelevant party that this province has ever seen.

Now, to go a step further, they are as irrelevant in Ottawa as they are at Queen’s Park—ignoring what the people of the province need, ignoring what the people of Canada need. You have an opportunity later today. Vote for our budget because it has historic levels of—

The next question.

The next question.

Supplementary question.