Thank you to the great member from Niagara. It’s just wonderful to hear his concern for the people in that area, and everybody across this province, with regard to the carbon tax.

The carbon tax increases the cost of everything, from the farmer’s field to the fork, everything between and everything that goes into it. And this summer, whether it’s the cost of a hotel or a campsite or the propane to cook on that barbecue, it’s going to cost more, and the fuel to get there is going to cost more.

We’re reducing the cost of living for people in Ontario by reducing the gas tax by over 10 cents a litre, removing the cost of licence plate stickers, removing the tolls on Highways 412 and 418, and, of course, the One Fare, which is going to save people $1,600 per year.

While the carbon tax caucus over there and their leader, the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, wants to raise the cost of living, we’re lowering it, making it better for families. We’re doing it without that punishing carbon tax.

We’ve got shovels in the ground on projects across the province: nuclear refurbishment going on at Darlington, at the Bruce, and soon to be at Pickering, to make sure on that energy; new build nuclear is going to be happening at Bruce; refurbishments at the Niagara Falls and in Cornwall for our great hydroelectric power—the basis, where it started; and, just recently, the largest procurement of battery storage in history, almost 1,800 megawatts. That’s enough to power 1.8 million homes.

Speaker, we’re making sure that the Ontario of the future has the power it needs to generate, to support those families, and we can do that without a job-killing carbon tax. The Crombie caucus over there has to stand with us, stand against the federal Liberals. This is the last day we’re going to be here. Call them. Tell them to—

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Niagara West for continuing to stand up against this punitive, regressive carbon tax. And he’s absolutely right: It has raised the cost not just at the pumps; it’s on the grocery shelves—it’s everywhere. Everything is going up as a result of the carbon tax. And we’ve been standing here and fighting for the people of Ontario and trying to reduce their costs, reducing the gas tax $320 to the average family in the course of a year—that’s going to save them money. We’re removing the cost of licence plate stickers on the cars—that’s going to save them money as well. All of these things, while the Liberal government continues to raise the carbon tax 23% on April 1.

Justin Trudeau had a choice. He could have sided with the people or sided with the ideologues. He chose the latter. It’s time to side with the people and scrap the tax.

We’ve reduced the cost of doing business in this province by $8 billion. That gets passed on to the consumers because businesses have had more freedom to operate here in the province of Ontario, creating more jobs. All this while Bonnie Crombie stands with her leader from Ottawa in supporting the carbon tax.

Speaker, we are doing everything we can to put money back into the pockets of people in Ontario. We know they’re suffering under the carbon tax. It’s time for the Liberals and the NDP to support what we’re doing: Help us scrap the carbon tax.

Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 63 this afternoon here in the Legislature.

I want to begin by thanking my colleague from Elgin–Middlesex–London for his leadership on this issue as well. As you know, the boundaries that we’re talking about—his riding encompasses all of this, and he has shown tremendous leadership in making sure that his region is working together to bring prosperity not only to the people from St. Thomas and area, but, indeed, prosperity to our great province.

I listen sometimes—not all the time, but I do hear the members of the opposition, and we have a competing vision for Ontario. But it’s not really a fair competition, because their vision is not backed up with any real action. Their vision for Ontario is to leave things the way they are and not make the necessary changes.

I just heard the member from Niagara Centre talking about—we all want to see jobs created, we all want to see prosperity, but wanting and getting it done require two different steps. The NDP, on the other side, may want jobs and prosperity for the people of Ontario, but they are absolutely not willing to take the necessary steps that will actually make that happen. They would rather sit back and say, “Oh, no, we can’t do that, because that might cause this, and some of our supporters might get upset”—or the lobbyists who love to talk to the NDP and write cheques to the NDP won’t like that.

We were elected in 2018 on this premise: Ontario is open for business. And since that day, we have maintained that as a founding principle of this government. Ontario is open for business.

Think about where we are today with respect to where we were when the Liberals, those folks over there who just about destroyed the manufacturing sector in Ontario—where we were in 2018. Because of the commitment of this Premier, this government, the world has changed in Ontario. We are seeing a renaissance in the auto industry here in Ontario.

In his address the other day, Minister Fedeli talked about the investments—$15 billion to $18 billion, if I recall—coming into Ontario, into our auto sector; Ontario being the only jurisdiction in the world that has manufacturing facilities for General Motors, Ford, Stellantis, Honda and Toyota all in this jurisdiction—the only jurisdiction anywhere that has manufacturing facilities for all of those companies. Why? Why are they showing a willingness to continue to invest—or should I say, to actually re-prime the pump of investment—here in Ontario? It’s because of the leadership and the vision of this government—this government that has said to manufacturers and companies around the world, “Come back to Ontario. We’re waiting for you. We’re ready for you. Do you know what we’re going to do in addition to welcoming you? We’re going to make the environment work for you.”

So what are we going to do?

When I was a kid—some people say I still am, and that’s a matter of opinion. When I was younger, let’s just say, in the 1970s—do you remember, in the 1970s, when all of these towns were opening up what they called their industrial parks, because they were all recognizing that they wanted to take part in the industrial growth and the growth of manufacturing? It was small manufacturing in smaller places, big manufacturing in bigger places, but they all were opening up these lands that we would call our local industrial parks. It was designed to send the message to people of “We’re here and we’re ready to work with you.”

Well, things started to change after the 1970s. We had the recession in the 1980s. We had the big meltdown in the 2000s, with the tech meltdown and stuff like that—and we lost. Then we had the unfortunate culmination of those two forces meeting at the same time—we had the Liberal government, supported by the NDP every step of the way, who wanted to stifle our manufacturing sector here in Ontario, who wanted to shut it down—

Interjection.