SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Hon. Todd Smith

  • MPP
  • Member of Provincial Parliament
  • Bay of Quinte
  • Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario
  • Ontario
  • Unit 8 5503 Hwy. 62 S Belleville, ON K8N 0L5 Todd.Smithco@pc.ola.org
  • tel: 613-962-1144
  • fax: 613-969-6381
  • Todd.Smithco@pc.ola.org

  • Government Page
  • May/27/24 11:40:00 a.m.

We’ve seen this type of act before in this Legislature. What the member of the Green Party is supporting is the Green Energy Act, which drove hundreds of thousands of jobs out of our province. And do you know what? It hasn’t just been Ontario’s experience. We’ve seen what’s happening in places like Germany. We’ve seen what’s happening in California, where they’ve gone down these roads. They don’t have power for the growth that we are experiencing in our province. We are guaranteeing that we will have the growth.

Now, the member talks about the fact that our emissions are going up. Do you know what? We are refurbishing our nuclear facilities right now. We have four reactors that are down. When they come back, we’re going to have more than enough power, as we continue to see investment in our province. We are also building out non-emitting resources, right across our province, because we’re putting the storage in place—something that the Liberals didn’t know enough to do. And we’re continuing to build out our hydroelectric fleets in places like Niagara Falls, in Cornwall, in Kakabeka Falls—

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I’d like to thank the leader of the Green Party for his always thoughtful commentary that he brings to the House. He does a great job. It was very enjoyable listening to his 10 minutes of comments. He cherry-picked a lot of interesting statistics that he threw out, and it’s a lot to unpack in a one-minute question.

He did touch on the fact that we do have very, very affordable and reliable natural gas home heating in our province. and it is rate-regulated. I think that’s really important.

The member talked about how people are moving en masse to heat pumps in Europe. Well, there’s a reason for that. It’s because the cost of natural gas across Europe has soared over the last number of years, far beyond the price of natural gas in our regulated province.

The question I have for the member opposite is, does he believe that the system operator, the IESO, is prepared to power all of those natural gas heaters—sorry, that would be coming off with heat pumps?

Does the leader of the Green Party believe in an orderly transition, or does he just believe in going all green and torpedoes be damned?

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  • Feb/27/24 11:20:00 a.m.

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—

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