Trudy Sachowski, the executive member of the board of health for the Northwestern Health Unit, joins us today in the gallery. I appreciate her advocacy. She’s a real champ for northwestern Ontario.

Yesterday and today, the Minister of Energy and I got a real perspective on the cost of this carbon tax. There’s a couple of isolated First Nations communities who operate their own independent power authorities, and between the shortened winter road season and the impact of the carbon tax, what would otherwise be years that they would break even—several years, in fact—they’re now running significant deficits that they don’t know how to pay for.

These are serious issues, and so far, the NDP position has been nothing short of gallimaufry. And I can’t help but wonder, when Bonnie Crombie was in the House of Commons, standing shoulder to shoulder with Justin Trudeau, whether she imagined she’d take the throne of the Ontario Liberal Party and become the queen of the carbon tax and live up to the provincial Liberal standards of their understanding of northern Ontario: that it’s a wasteland.

It’s not. We’re proud of our vast region. We want affordable living in northern Ontario, and it’s this—

This tax is expensive. The opposition needs to stand with the government, who’s working to reduce the cost to these communities and make life affordable in northern Ontario, and just scrap the tax.