I thank the member from Mississauga–Erin Mills for his excellent question.

He spoke about essentials—driving up the cost of essentials. How much crueller can you get than when you’re driving up the cost of essentials? All across the supply chain—our farmers don’t just feed cities; they feed all of us, but the cities should understand it better than anyone. Everything that a farmer puts into those products, when they finally make it to the shelves or make it to your kitchens—those costs have been driven up by the carbon tax.

The Liberals and Bonnie Comrie—Combrie—

Interjection: Crombie.

Interjection.

They’re happy to let people suffer under the burden of that carbon tax, but we in the PC government, under Premier Ford, are not.

Farmers feed cities. Farmers feed us all.

Everything in the supply chain is driven up by the carbon tax. It is time to axe the tax.

Yes, this is all about farmers and the food supply, and what the carbon tax is doing.

On the farm—and I want to thank our Minister of Agriculture and how she continuously supports our farming communities out there—there are not many things that aren’t driven by energy costs, as well.

Last week, we had the TOGA folks here—the Ontario Greenhouse Alliance—and their costs are driven up because of the carbon tax—

For those people out there—they really have to focus on understanding what that tax is doing to the cost of food on their tables. It’s an absolutely wrong-headed way to try to raise revenue—the federal government under Justin Trudeau.

Bonnie Crombie has to stand up—and the NDP. If you want to be recognized properly, stand with us and Premier Ford and be just like we are. Ask them to scrap the tax.

In the members’ gallery today I have a constituent from my riding, a distinguished veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces, Michael McCloskey, who is here visiting us in Queen’s Park. But also, very importantly, Mr. McCloskey is the father of page Erin McCloskey, who was our page captain yesterday. Unfortunately I wasn’t here to introduce Erin yesterday, but I was glad to be able to introduce her father here today, and I look forward to having lunch and sharing some stories with them today.

Today is Ontario’s fourth annual Day of Action on Litter. The sad reality is that we should never have had to have a Day of Action on Litter, because littering is entirely preventable. Litter doesn’t happen by accident; it only happens because someone chooses to drop a coffee cup along the sidewalk or toss a pop can out the window as they’re travelling along a rural road. It doesn’t happen without the conscious decision by someone to do so.

Speaker, we can start by taking personal responsibility. Littering is one of those things that you might have already guessed I despise deeply. It’s something that as little children we were taught not to do, and something my wife, Vicky, and I have passed on to our children. I recall many times when our children would come home from school with candy wrappers in their pockets, because the last thing they were going to do was drop that wrapper on the ground.

Litter is not only a visible blight on this beautiful land we’ve been blessed with; it is very harmful to our environment and dangerous for pets that may consume it.

However, it is gratifying to see concerted community efforts and litter pickup days all across Ontario at this time of year to remove what has been deposited through the winter months. Having said that, it would be much better if it had never found its way onto our landscape at all.

We should all make a pledge to take our individual and collective responsibility seriously, because Ontario is not only ours to discover; it is ours to keep beautiful.

I want to thank the member for her address this morning.

I’ve been here for nearly 19 years, and this is probably the most egregious example of NDP fearmongering since I’ve been here.

Since I’ve been here, ALC patients have been a huge problem in this province. We’ve got our vulnerable seniors in a place where they shouldn’t be, but no capacity was built in long-term-care homes to accommodate those seniors who would be best cared for in a long-term-care home.

This government has acted expeditiously and quickly, since the election, to bring in the proper legislation so we can actually move those patients to a home—

Interjections.

And now we have the NDP inventing all kinds of voodoo scenarios that do not exist.

So I do ask the member, could you please stick to what the bill actually says? No one will be going to a home that they’re not consenting to. Stop with the fearmongering—