I won’t repeat introductions to the Ontario Waterpower Association—but a special acknowledgement for a constituent of mine. When you don’t find him in a suit, he looks great in jeans on the farm, up in Indian River.

Welcome to Queen’s Park, Paul Norris.

I appreciate the question from the member opposite.

It’s important that Ontarians know that we’re very blessed to live in this province that has such robust standards for water—the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Health Protection and Promotion Act.

It’s unfortunate that the member opposite is choosing to politicize water rather than work with this government to make investments that protect water.

That’s why, as a government, as I mentioned in the previous answer, we’ve worked at no charge to train water operators—dealing with systemic challenges in training for water operators—in Indigenous communities. That’s why we’re working with rural municipalities, the Ontario Clean Water Agency, and dealing with staff and retention challenges there. That’s why we’re investing in the modern and critical infrastructure.

That member said “urgent action”—that’s why we’ve required updated monitoring and reporting in her own community, to ensure that we’re protecting water for generations to come and investing in the modern infrastructure to support those growing communities.

I thank the member opposite for his question and was pleased to join him with members of Ottawa city council to discuss climate change and the commitments that this government is taking to address and improve adaptation and resiliency through the province’s first-ever climate change impact assessment. I know my colleague will address some specifics in the supplemental, but I’d like to lead by saying that this is the first-ever climate change impact assessment this province has ever undertaken. It was welcome news by the city of Ottawa and will help build our resiliency.

To add to that, Speaker, we’ve made critical investments in stormwater and waste water infrastructure upgrades after years of neglect by the previous government, where we saw sewage spills leeching into Lake Ontario, where infrastructure was crumbling and not able to meet extreme weather events. Under this government, we’ve increased OCIF, a critical funding instrument for rural municipalities. We’ve increased funding for sewage and water to address overflow issues. We’ve launched the first-ever climate change impact assessment and we’ll continue to work with municipal partners to address this.

I’d like to thank the incredible staff at Hydro One for the work that they’ve done to address these outages—

Interjections.