I will be sharing my time with the member from Beaches–East York today.

I want to thank the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane. I couldn’t disagree with most of what he had to say. And it really is about making life more affordable for people here in Ontario. It is about doing what’s within our own powers to do to influence affordability here. And there is a lot that we can do. And having a government that would just prefer to write letters—to write letters—instead of actually taking the power of government to be able to make a positive difference in people’s lives—and that’s what I think politics should be about.

Politics should be about working together to make people’s lives better. Is it always going to be perfect? No, it’s not. There will be days when it’s challenging and we disagree and we want different than the path that we’re on. But we talk about it. We actually come up with solutions by actually talking to each other and saying, “There is a way forward here. We can do what’s right for the people of Ontario and we can address climate change at the same time.” And we get attacked from both angles because we try and do both.

It’s important that we address climate change, but it is important that we actually make Ontario economically healthy for the vast majority of people. This is within our power here in the province. We do not have to look to the federal government to do something. There are things that we, right here in Ontario, can do.

I agree on cap-and-trade. It was a program that the Liberal Party did implement many years ago that was cancelled by this government. And if you look at it, the other provinces that are not subject to the carbon tax here, as we are in Ontario, it’s because they have implemented similar kinds of programs. So the fact that we didn’t have a carbon-reduction program here in Ontario—it ended up being cancelled—that’s what makes us susceptible to this carbon pricing.

There are many ways of reducing our uses of carbon in this country, in this province, but there are many ways to reduce emissions. And I agree, I think we should be putting far more effort in conservation. I think we should be putting far more efforts in energy retrofits. Okay? That’s where we need to go. Conservation is the way forward. Use less. And there’s a way that we can do it and we can get the people of Ontario on board to do exactly that: by helping them pay for energy retrofits. We know it makes a difference. We’ve seen programs. We have the data, we have the evidence, and we have the statistics that actually show that energy conservation is probably the most economical way to actually reduce emissions. Right then and there, we know. But we have nothing.

Some of the energy conservation programs that had been put into place by previous governments, when this government got elected, they cancelled them. They cancelled the rebates for electric vehicles. They cancelled charging stations. They cancelled renewable energy, when now, today, renewable energy from solar and from wind is actually cheaper. And if we had carried on and we had implemented those programs—if we had kept them—we would have been far further ahead.

We know that, right now, when it comes to affordability, people in Ontario are hurting, and I think people right across the country are hurting. Inflation hurts. We were lucky, actually, as a country, to come through COVID in a relatively good position compared to some of our G7 counterparts, who have suffered far greater inflation than Canada has. Canada still has the best debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7 countries. We have done good work. And now, just like the rest of the globe is dealing with inflation, people here in Ontario are dealing with inflation.

It’s so important that we have these kinds of discussions to determine what is the right way forward. Are we always going to agree? I’d say no, we’re not. But I think that working together with the federal government, instead of trying to wedge the federal government—if you went to the federal government and said, “Let’s work together on this and let’s make it better for the people of Ontario. You cut your part of the HST and I’ll cut my part of the HST, and we’ll make this happen, give people a break,” I think the federal government would be willing to have that conversation.

Will it be an easy conversation? No, it won’t. But is it a conversation worth having? Yes, it is. And so it’s not always about—I agree, I hate the sloganeering. I hate the sloganeering. I hate what politics has become, because it should be better.

Interjection.