It’s always a pleasure, it truly is, to be able to speak in this House and today to talk about Bill 165, Keeping Energy Costs Down Act. This is a bill that the title doesn’t really reflect what the actual goal of the bill is.

We’ll go back a little bit. The Ontario Energy Board is an independent regulator that regulates natural gas prices. The people in my riding who have natural gas—I’m not going to sugar-coat this—like natural gas, because the price is predictable, because it’s regulated. Often in northern Ontario—and I have put bills forward that, actually, the price of gasoline should be regulated, because there’s often 20 cents’ difference between where I live and where it’s cheapest on my trip, which is usually north of Barrie. Then, when you get down here, it gets to almost northern Ontario price again, and that has nothing to do with transportation. That’s why we often say it should be regulated.

We hear this all the time: that while the government has taken 10 cents off the price of gas—they have foregone taxes, but in that legislation, they didn’t put anything that that 10 cents actually goes to consumers. So that 10 cents could have just as easily gone to the profit margin of the oil companies who control gas prices.