Mr. Speaker, what happened in Kanata last week was a distribution-level temporary issue with Ottawa hydro. The utility there, the LDC, has indicated that they’re going to repair the piece of equipment that was faulty that day so that this type of outage doesn’t happen again. But I can assure my ambulance-chasing friend over there that the provincial grid had more than enough power to meet the needs of the province on that very, very hot day. It was a record-setting day in Ottawa, to be sure, but we had a lot of excess energy that day.

I can assure all the members of the Legislature of one thing: If that member were in charge of our power grid, we wouldn’t have our nuclear supply—8,500 megawatts on that day that was there, at almost 100% of its capacity—and we wouldn’t have the natural gas fleet, which is our insurance policy, because not only is he against nuclear, he’s against natural gas as well.

While the member opposite clutches his pearls and pretends that the world is coming to an end, I can assure him that because of our consistent support for our nuclear grid, the refurbishments that are under way, on time and ahead of schedule, on budget—this member would not have those workhorses, those dependable baseload emissions-free power suppliers that we have in our province every single day.

At the same time we’re investing in new technology, a small modular reactor, that isn’t going to just power our grid; this is an SMR that’s going to be adopted by jurisdictions around the world to help them do what we’ve done in Ontario, and that is, reduce emissions and provide baseload power on a daily basis, 24/7, that the world can rely on. This is a great Ontario nuclear—

I want to start answering this question by saying I want to correct my record, because, on Monday, I talked about the Oneida project, which was the largest battery storage project in Canada, but, on Tuesday, that all changed. We’re going to have a larger battery storage project in Hagersville, and the second-largest is actually going to be in that member’s riding, in Greater Napanee.

We’re continuing to add clean generation to our system as a result of the IESO competitive procurement that came out on Tuesday. We learned that 740 megawatts of new energy storage generation is going to be available to our province. That’s enough to power a city the size of London, and it’s a 400% increase in clean energy storage—

This is great news, as our province continues to see record multi-billion dollar investments. We’ll build 1.5 million homes over the next decade; we’re going to need the power—

I want to thank the member from southwestern Ontario where there’s a lot of growth going on because of the environment we’ve created. I can assure him that, yes, we are going to have the power they need for all that growth and investment.

I’ve been working since day one, since becoming the Minister of Energy, to ensure that we had a plan so that our electricity grid could support the growing electrification and the growth in our economy that we’re seeing. Our work, again, includes building Canada’s first small modular reactor at Darlington, the first on-grid in the G7—it’s going to be online in late 2028—and the first battery storage facility, Oneida, in partnership with the Six Nations of the Grand River. We’ve also got the largest battery storage procurement out in the field right now with the Independent Electricity System Operator—the largest in the country’s history.

We’re leading the way, Mr. Speaker, on building energy. And the former Liberal government, as I mentioned earlier, that drove manufacturing jobs out of our province—we’re making sure that we’ve got the energy to bring them back.

But Ontario does have one of the cleanest electricity systems in the world, and we’re doing everything we can to ensure it stays that way by investing in our large nuclear reactors and our small nuclear reactors. As I mentioned earlier, we have four of our nuclear reactors that are down now for refurbishment. That’s 3,400 megawatts of power at the Darlington and Bruce sites that are going to be coming back on over the next number of years, ensuring clean, reliable energy for our system, energy that’s going to continue to be there for all of the new investments that come our way.

If the NDP had their way, those reactors wouldn’t have come back at all, and neither would the jobs that are flocking back to Ontario.

Thanks to the towering member from Brantford–Brant.

Our population is growing. As we heard from the Minister of Economic Development earlier, our economy is continuing to grow, with huge investments in our province. That means our demand for clean, reliable and affordable electricity is continuing to grow too. When the Oneida battery storage project goes online in 2025, it’s going to more than double the amount of energy storage that is currently on Ontario’s grid, from 225 megawatts to 475 megawatts.

The announcement is another milestone in our plan to build and strengthen our electricity grid. We’re going to continue to support innovative and bold technologies like the small modular nuclear reactor program, where construction has started over the holidays, as well. This also includes Canada’s largest procurement of clean energy storage that is in the field right now and of course Canada’s largest energy storage project, the Oneida project, which we announced a couple of weeks ago with the Premier in this member’s region. We’re making our grid more efficient. I must say, when it comes to energy, Ontario is leading the way.

What a thrill it was for me to be in the member’s riding—the clean-energy capital of Canada—in the Durham region along with the Premier on Friday morning to announce that construction is beginning on Canada’s first grid-scale small modular reactor.

You know, the member’s hair was blowing in the wind, and we were all jealous about that—or at least I was. But this was an historic moment for our province—construction under way on a 300-megawatt small modular reactor. Well, what does that mean, Mr. Speaker? A 300-megawatt small modular reactor is enough to power a city the size of London.

Our plan is not to build just one on the site at Darlington, but potentially four. That’s 1,200-plus megawatts that will add to our clean—and I emphasize clean—reliable, affordable electricity grid in the province of Ontario.

We have an incredible team at OPG that’s going to be building that BWRX-300, and, Mr. Speaker, the world is watching what’s happening in Canada’s clean-energy capital.

Already, 76,000 people work in our nuclear supply chain across the country. Almost all of them—about 65,000—right here in Ontario. This is a tremendous export opportunity for Ontario and for Canada.

The small modular reactor, as I say: The world is watching, and the world really is watching this project. Countries over in Europe and around the world are looking for energy autonomy, energy security, and this is the flexible form of electricity generation that’s clean that the world is looking for.

It confounds me, Mr. Speaker, that members opposite aren’t standing and applauding the work that is happening in Canada’s clean-energy capital with OPG in the Durham region. Stand with us and push for this project to be the success that it’s going to be.

Thanks to the member opposite for the question this morning. What our government is committed to is ensuring that the people of Ontario and the businesses in Ontario have a reliable supply of electricity, that we have an affordable supply of electricity—something that never happened under the previous government’s watch, as a matter of fact, as hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs left our province. They left our country for other jurisdictions because of the Liberal energy policy.

What we have done through the success of our Premier’s strategy and our Minister of Economic Development bringing companies back, repatriating companies to Ontario by electrifying our vehicle fleet, by electrifying our green steel-making process—we need electricity. We have a competitive procurement in place to acquire that electricity—790 megawatts, as a matter of fact, and the most recent procurement at a 30% savings from what was contracted by the previous government.

I know that’s a new member over there and he probably doesn’t remember the policies of the previous Liberal government that forced energy projects on communities without any type of consultation. They didn’t care about a willing host community over there, Mr. Speaker, which is why in 2018 the people of Ontario reduced that party to seven seats. And you know what? The people of Ontario didn’t forget in 2022, because now they’ve got eight seats, largely because of the energy policy.

The Minister of Municipal Affairs and our government have committed to working with the municipalities and the Independent Electricity System Operator to make sure there is consultation with municipalities for new energy projects so that we don’t have the mess, the divisiveness and the unaffordable crisis that we saw in Ontario created by the previous Liberal government.

Interjections.