Mr. Speaker, I just answered a question about all of the things that our government is doing to ensure that we have clean, reliable, safe, affordable energy for our province going forward. That includes multi-billion-dollar refurbishments that are happening at Bruce and OPG’s Darlington station and multi-billion-dollar investments at Pickering, something that that member is opposed to. He’s opposed to the 76,000 jobs in our nuclear sector and the baseload power that comes from those facilities, providing up to 60% of our power every day.

We rely on natural gas in our province, Mr. Speaker. Over 70% of homes—do you know what they’re heated by? Natural gas, something that member would pull out of people’s homes tomorrow if he had the chance. We’re going to ensure, through Bill 165, that we keep energy costs affordable, and we’re going to keep all of the new homes that we’re building in Ontario affordable as well, something that the NDP is opposed to.

They supported the Green Energy Act that the previous provincial Liberals brought forward, and we know how the current Liberal leader, the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, feels about the federal carbon tax. It’s driving people into energy poverty as well.

Our Powering Ontario’s Growth plan will ensure that we have non-emitting baseload power going forward that our province can count on, to see the type of investments that we have been seeing under the leadership of Premier Ford and our Minister of Economic Development, Minister Fedeli, out there beating the bushes and bringing back billions of dollars of investments into our EV, EV battery and manufacturing jobs, back to this province.

Thanks to the member opposite for the question this morning.

Since day one, on receiving the OEB ruling that they would be—which, I should point out, by the way, was a split decision, which is rare at the Ontario Energy Board—that this decision was going to make the price of home ownership soar, we have been ready and ensuring that we were going to protect future homeowners so that they could afford to buy homes in our province.

The other thing that we’re very focused on here since I’ve become the Minister of Energy, and prior to that—basically, since we became the government in 2018—was ensuring that we kept the price of energy low in our province, and as a result, we have seen the results. We have seen massive investment in our province. We are building over a million homes in our province.

What we’re doing on the energy file is working, ensuring that our growing province is going to have the electricity and the energy that it needs, that we will have a reliable, affordable and safe electricity system. That’s what we’ve been focused on at the Ministry of Energy since day one, and the proof is there: billions of dollars of investment in our province.

I can assure the NDP that our government and the Ministry of Energy are focused on ensuring that we have the energy we need for our growing province, and that includes natural gas, something that the members of the NDP are opposed to. They say that natural gas is not healthy. They say that nuclear isn’t healthy. They would get rid of nuclear energy. They would get rid of gas, which is the insurance policy that keeps our lights on and keeps over 70% of our homes heated during the winter months.

We’re ensuring that we have a reliable, affordable energy sector in Ontario that is going to support our growing economy, support our growing population in this province.

The last time the Liberals and the NDP were in charge of our energy sector, we saw electricity bills triple. We won’t stand for that.

We’re going to make sure that home ownership is also affordable for new home buyers. That’s why we stepped in.

First of all, it’s unbelievable for the people of Ontario to think that the NDP are for lower gas bills. The NDP are for a carbon tax. The NDP have members in their caucus who were calling for the highest carbon tax not just in North America, but in the world. The Liberals are fully on board with that as well.

There’s one party in this Legislature that actually gives a darn about the affordability for people in this province, and that is Premier Ford and our team here on the PC side. We have been fighting since day one for more affordable electricity bills, not the tripling of electricity bills that we saw under the Liberal-NDP coalition or what we’re currently seeing with the Liberal-NDP coalition up on Parliament Hill that has us driving to the pumps today, where it’s a buck eighty a litre—that’s because of the punitive carbon tax that the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, Jagmeet and Justin have slapped onto the people of Ontario.

Thanks to the great member from Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock for the question this morning.

We are continuing to increase the province’s supply of clean, affordable, reliable and safe nuclear power in the member’s own region with four small modular reactors—world-leading small modular reactors that are going in at the Darlington OPG site. We’re refurbishing the Candu reactors that are there. OPG and our building trades and skilled trade workers and engineers are ensuring that those refurbishments aren’t just on time and on budget, they’re actually ahead of schedule and on budget, which is a tremendous success story, and that’s given us the confidence to move forward on the refurbishment of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station.

Just yesterday, I was down announcing a $1-billion refurbishment of the Sir Adam Beck hydroelectric facility in Niagara Falls—clean, reliable water power for our province’s future. We’re building out a clean grid, but it’s the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, and her friend Justin Trudeau, that are increasing the carbon tax, driving people into poverty.

Speaker, 76,000 people are working in Canada’s nuclear sector every day, and 68,000 of them are working in Ontario’s sector, in the supply chain and operating the plants. Those are hard-working people—skilled trades, engineers and plant operators—who get good paycheques every single day. They’re providing almost 60% of the province’s baseload power—clean, reliable, affordable electricity.

It’s our party, it’s our government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, that is supporting not just the current crop of skilled trade workers and nuclear operators, but those who are training to become nuclear engineers in our universities and who are going to be operating the new Candu or large nuclear plants that are being built at Bruce, and the small modular reactors, which are world-leading in the G7, that are coming online later this decade, that are going to continue to provide our province with the clean, reliable, affordable electricity we’ll be able to count on for decades to come.

Thank you to the new member of the Green Party for the question. I believe it’s her first question in the Legislature—

Interjection: Second.

You know what? It’s really, really important that the people of Ontario understand that the Green Party has been fairly consistent in their views on where we’re going, while the NDP and the Liberals continue to try and figure out what it is that they want to do.

What I can tell you is what we’re doing here in Ontario, as the government of Ontario and the Progressive Conservative government, is ensuring that we have a diverse energy system, one that is reliable for the people of Ontario so that we will continue to see the growing economy that we’ve been experiencing that the minister of economic development just explained to the Liberal members in their small caucus here. We are seeing thousands, hundreds of thousands, of jobs coming back to our province, because we have a reliable, affordable and clean energy sector here in Ontario, one that’s seeing Ontario become the engine of Canada’s economy—

Interjection.

The Green Party members and the NDP can look up at the members of the Canadian Propane Association who are here today and tell them, “Get out of our province. We don’t want you anymore”—because, basically, that’s what they’re saying—when there are people across this province who live in rural and northern parts of our province who need propane; they need natural gas to heat their home. They need a reliable, affordable, clean energy system.

We’re very, very lucky that we live in one of the cleanest jurisdictions in the entire world when it comes to energy. Some 3% of the province’s emissions are coming from our electricity sector, but they want us to shut down natural gas plants. The NDP energy critic wants to shut down natural gas and nuclear. Where would that—

Thanks to the member for Peterborough–Kawartha for the question this morning. It’s an important one, and he’s right: This is what people are talking about on the streets in our communities with the affordability crisis that is going on right now, where people are having to choose between heating and eating in some cases.

While we have put lots of different affordability measures in the window, it’s unfortunate that the opposition Liberals here in Ontario continue to support their federal cousins in imposing a carbon tax, which, according to the Bank of Canada and according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, is driving up the cost of everything.

I’m not going to say exactly which member it was earlier who, when I was answering a question about the carbon tax, indicated that we care more about bicycles in Ontario and riding bicycles than we do about driving. There are a lot of people outside of this city who drive vehicles and it is costing them more and more to drive vehicles. If this Ontario Liberal Party isn’t careful, they’re not going to be the minibus party or the minivan party; they’re going to be the bicycle built for two.

We are putting all of these measures on the table, Mr. Speaker.

The NDP’s plan to give heat pumps to everybody is uncosted; they said it would cost less than $1 billion. It’s that kind of half-baked policy that is going to result in massive, massive over-expenditures. If we were to give everybody who’s on natural gas or home heating or propane in the province a free heat pump, our back-of-the-napkin math would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $16 billion.

You can’t afford the NDP. And the Liberals won’t stand up for the people of Ontario.

Thanks to the member from Scarborough Centre for the question this morning. I appreciate it, and I can’t believe that the opposition Liberals want to strip the options away from people to heat their homes across rural Ontario. On the face of it, it seems that is what the bill that was introduced yesterday does.

Do you know that over 67% of homes, families, in Ontario heat their homes with natural gas, and more communities, not less, want to have natural gas as an option? My parliamentary assistants and I met with many of them at the Ontario municipalities association and the ROMA conferences earlier this year. That’s why phase 3 of our natural gas expansion program is so important.

At a time when energy security and affordability are top of mind, not just here in Ontario but around the world, Mr. Speaker, I can’t believe that the Liberal Party wants to reduce the options for people to heat their homes across Ontario.

Our government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, is focused on more customer choice and making life more affordable for the people of Ontario. That’s why we’ve introduced new electricity pricing plans, like the ultra-low overnight rate, Mr. Speaker, and also the “green button” standard, which is actually going to give residents across Ontario more control over their energy bills, potentially saving 18%.

That’s why it’s sad to see the Liberal Party, which was actually decimated in the 2018 election—and then a repeated decimation in 2022, largely because of their energy policy.

You know, the title of Bill 29—and I can’t believe the members of the Liberal Party that have been through this before—is Think Twice Before You Choose Natural Gas. That’s the name of the bill, Mr. Speaker.

Interjection.