The minister from Glengarry–Prescott–Russell is right again this morning, and as a matter of fact, it was a cruel joke on April 1—but it was no joke. The federal carbon tax, supported by the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, and her Ontario Liberals, went up by 23%—which, incidentally, is where they’re at in the polls, 23%. The worst part of this story is that on April 1 next year, the carbon tax is going up again.

We don’t need a carbon tax. We have a plan, as a matter of fact. We’re refurbishing the Pickering nuclear station. We are refurbishing Darlington. We’re refurbishing Bruce Power. We’re building small modular reactors at Darlington.

As a result of all that, last week I was at a great announcement at BWXT in Cambridge with a couple of my colleagues, and the Premier was there later in the day—an $80-million investment creating over 200 million jobs.

We have 76,000 people working in our nuclear sector in Ontario, and it provides almost 60% of our baseload power every day that is emissions-free.

We don’t need a carbon tax. It’s time to scrap Justin and Bonnie’s tax.

Thanks very much again to the member.

We’re doing a lot. We have reduced the cost at the pumps by 10.7 cents a litre until the end of this year. We’ve brought in One Fare—the minister here is outstanding, saving those who ride transit $1,600 a year. We’ve scrapped the tolls. We’ve scrapped the licence plate fees.

We are doing everything we can to ensure that life is more affordable for the people of Ontario, but the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, and Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh—the NDP and the Liberals teaming up again to make energy more expensive.

We have a plan. It’s called Powering Ontario’s Growth. I talked about the nuclear investments we’re making.

Last week, I was in Niagara Falls at the Sir Adam Beck facility, announcing a big refurbishment there: 1.7 gigawatts of clean, reliable, affordable water power that’s going to power our province for the next 40 to 50 years; new transmission lines that are better connecting the north to the south, to those in Indigenous communities, so those in northern Ontario can participate in our energy sector.

We have a plan. It doesn’t include a punitive carbon tax.

Mr. Speaker, I can. We have a plan. It’s called Powering Ontario’s Growth, and it does not include a carbon tax. As a matter of fact, we are completely opposed to a carbon tax, especially the one that went up 23% on April 1, led by Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh and supported by the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie.

We are bringing in clean, reliable, affordable and safe nuclear energy by refurbishing the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, Darlington, Bruce. All of those major component replacements are ahead of schedule and on budget, and they’re providing 50% to 60% of our electricity going forward—and not just that: Because of the work that’s being done on those refurbishment projects, we are very comfortable in moving Ontario forward as a world leader on small modular reactor development. As a matter of fact, we have the first SMR under construction at the Darlington site right now—something all of us in this Legislature should be very proud of.

As a matter of fact, every single Premier in Canada is against Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax, including the Liberals and the NDPers.

We won’t be bringing in a carbon tax. We’re giving people tax breaks, and that has resulted in the explosion that we’ve seen in new investments in our province—billions and billions of dollars in new investments.

We were talking about housing earlier, and the member from northern Ontario, from Kenora, was talking about the fact that we’re allowing northern communities to connect to our electricity grid.

One of the great projects that we have funded and that is almost completed is the Wataynikaneyap power project—1,800 kilometres of transmission line, connecting 16 different fly-in communities to our clean, green, reliable electricity grid that’s going to enable new houses to be built throughout Kiiwetinoong, North Caribou Lake First Nation, Kingfisher Lake First Nation, Pikangikum and all those great communities. And we’re moving forward on another project with the folks at Matawa. It doesn’t include a carbon tax. We can do it, and we’re getting it done.