Thanks to the member from Oakville for the great question. The carbon tax is a terrible tax, and it’s hurting us right now, but the worst part of this tale is that the tax is going to go up and up and up every April 1.

Our good friend from Quebec is here as well: La taxe de carbone va augmenter de plus en plus en plus, and that’s bad news. That’s bad news for the people of Ontario. It’s bad news for the people in Quebec. It’s bad news for the people right across our country.

Our government is doing things differently.

The queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, is in full support of the Prime Minister and the federal carbon tax. The NDP are in full support of the carbon tax. Mr. Green over here is in full support of the carbon tax, as well.

The Premier and our government are not in support of a carbon tax. As a matter of fact, we’re continuing to lead the country in driving down emissions without a carbon tax.

We are investing in our hydro facilities. Over the last two weeks, I’ve been in Cornwall, with the great member from Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry, and down in Niagara at the Sir Adam Beck facility, announcing refurbishments of our hydroelectric fleet.

We just had the largest procurement of battery storage in Canada’s history last week, to make sure that our non-emitting resources are working more efficiently and that we have the power we’re going to need to continue to attract the multi-billion dollar investments, like the ones that are being made today down in Niagara,

Thanks to the member from Hamilton for her comments earlier, in her 20-minute speech.

We are very fortunate; we have one of the cleanest grids in the entire world here in Ontario.

I know that the NDP critic for energy is opposed to natural gas. He would like to rip out all the natural gas today. He’s also opposed to nuclear, which provides almost 60% of our electricity, and that’s emissions-free, baseload power that we keep investing in in the province.

Our goal at the Ministry of Energy is to ensure that we have affordable, reliable and clean energy production—and reliable is a big, big, big part of it, because if the lights go out, then there’s going to be chaos in our province.

Don’t you think—and this is to the member opposite—that it would have made sense for the Ontario Energy Board to have heard from the IESO at the hearings that would decide whether or not the next one and a half million homes we’re going to build in our province would all move to electric?

We acted quickly. Why? Because reliability of our electricity system in our province is paramount, and ensuring that we’re keeping new homes as affordable as possible is paramount. When you look at the fact that the IESO, the Independent Electricity System Operator, wasn’t asked for their opinion on whether or not we had the electricity in the province to continue to power the one and a half million new homes that are going to be built, that’s a big, big problem. The IESO was not called to testify at the hearings. And the OEB ruled, themselves, that it was going to cost about $5,000 more per home.

What I’d really like to know from the member opposite is, if she’s against natural gas and she’s against nuclear, how is she going to power our province?

I’d like to thank the leader of the Green Party for his always thoughtful commentary that he brings to the House. He does a great job. It was very enjoyable listening to his 10 minutes of comments. He cherry-picked a lot of interesting statistics that he threw out, and it’s a lot to unpack in a one-minute question.

He did touch on the fact that we do have very, very affordable and reliable natural gas home heating in our province. and it is rate-regulated. I think that’s really important.

The member talked about how people are moving en masse to heat pumps in Europe. Well, there’s a reason for that. It’s because the cost of natural gas across Europe has soared over the last number of years, far beyond the price of natural gas in our regulated province.

The question I have for the member opposite is, does he believe that the system operator, the IESO, is prepared to power all of those natural gas heaters—sorry, that would be coming off with heat pumps?

Does the leader of the Green Party believe in an orderly transition, or does he just believe in going all green and torpedoes be damned?

Such a pleasure to listen to a member of the NDP who actually understands that there is a need for natural gas, because not everyone over there—and I didn’t hear all your remarks; I apologize. But I did hear some of them. Sometimes I wonder how this member continues to exist in the NDP caucus, because he thinks a lot like us at times.

But seriously, we are going back and putting a natural gas policy statement in the window for the Ontario Energy Board, which should clearly understand our mandate, and that is to continue the type of growth and prosperity that our province is seeing. I think this member actually does understand that in order for us to continue to see the massive investments in our province, we have to have a reliable, stable, affordable grid, and that includes natural gas and nuclear. But I’ll let him expand on that, if he would.