That’s what it likely did, right? Because no one is going to tell me that gas prices that have any semblance of the cost of getting the gas to northern Ontario or getting the gas—because it goes up and down so quickly. The last one—the government was talking, and we’ve heard this so many times. And let’s make it clear that the NDP provincially have always been opposed to the individual carbon tax. The government blames every problem, every price increase, on the carbon tax. The increase in the carbon tax in April was two cents, I believe. Gas went up, like, 12 cents, so it wasn’t just carbon tax. It’s so frustrating.

That’s why people like natural gas: because they believe, and rightfully so, that because it’s regulated, they’re paying a fair price. And it has gone up recently—we have lots of complaints—but they feel that it’s fair.

It’s the job of the Ontario Energy Board, an independent regulator, to look out for the stability of the system and the price for consumers, because they can’t realistically—when a company that supplies the gas, like Enbridge, makes an application to the energy board that they need more money for their product, the way I understand the system, Speaker, is they make their case—I’ve been in business my whole life; if they can’t make a profit selling their product, the market will no longer be stable. And so, the energy board takes that into account and makes their decisions on where the price should be based on that, based on the facts given by the energy company and also by other independent advice. That’s where they make their decisions.

What makes this bill different is that the Ontario Energy Board ruled that it wasn’t fiscally prudent to amortize costs for infrastructure for 40 years when that infrastructure may very well not be used for the next 40 years. That’s important. We’ve heard a couple of people here, members on the government side, talk about, “It makes sense. It’s like a mortgage.” And I don’t advise anyone to take a 40-year mortgage, but with the price of housing now, if you take a mortgage for 40 years, you do have an expectation that when you are finished paying the mortgage, you will still have a house or something that is usable, that has equity in it.

What the Ontario Energy Board was worried about is that those pipes that the consumers are paying for might not have a value in 40 years. In fact, they may not have a value in 10 or 15 because as we are facing—we are not facing climate change in the future; we are facing climate change now. And as a result, there are developments. Every day, we see advances in how to deal with climate change, how to transition to practices that impact the climate less. I would think that the government would believe that, since they are subsidizing the production of electric vehicles by billions of dollars, right? So the government recognizes that there is a need, that the world is going away from fossil fuels, from carbon fuels for vehicles. I think we all recognize that. But in this case, the Ontario Energy Board is basically saying the same thing, that those pipes that you are paying for now, that we are using now, might not be—and you’re forcing people to put payments on for 40 years; they might only have a 10-year usable span.

So all of a sudden, people are making—someone has to pay these bills for those pipes. That’s why the Ontario Energy Board said, “Hold it, hold it.” So I welcome questions from the government. I might be totally wrong on this. But the Ontario Energy Board said, “Hold it, people should pay for those costs upfront when they build the home, and that way they can make a decision.” So if you pay, I believe it’s $4,000 or whatever upfront, that adds to the cost of the new home. When you’re doing that, then you have to make a decision: Okay, so $4,000 for the hookup. Let’s say another—what does a natural gas furnace cost?

Interjection.

The government has decided to overrule the energy board so that everyone has to pay for those pipes in new builds, even though they all know that those pipes might not be viable for 40 years. Basically, since everybody is paying for the pipes, not just the person buying a new house—and I get that. The incentive is, “Oh, well, since the pipes are there, we might as well put a natural gas furnace in.”

Interjection.

So, basically, it’s kind of an incentive to become an Enbridge customer.

One of the comments when we were listening to one of the speeches was that sometimes some of the government members accuse us of being socialists—