Thanks very much to the great member from Mississauga Centre for the question today. She’s absolutely right; the federal carbon tax is driving up the price of everything in our province, and the Bank of Canada has confirmed it’s even having an impact on inflation in our province.

The queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, the former mayor of Mississauga, supports the federal carbon tax, the NDP want to have the largest carbon tax in the land and the Greens are in full support of a carbon tax as well. We’re not. Premier Ford and our team are making life less expensive by cutting gas taxes, bringing in One Fare for our transit riders in Mississauga and other communities across the GTHA, cutting tolls and cutting taxes. We’re about making life more affordable and making this a friendly business environment.

The carbon tax: The member talked about the impact that it’s having on businesses. There is $1.3 billion owed to small businesses as a result of the carbon tax in our province. That money has yet to flow to them.

We already have one of the cleanest grids in the entire world, but we can continue to clean that grid, grow that grid, so we can grow businesses in our province by investing in nuclear, which we’re doing at Bruce and at Darlington and at Pickering, but also refurbishing our hydroelectric fleets that we have across the province, energy-efficiency programs—a billion dollars in that program—procuring new energy storage. The largest procurement of energy storage happened here in Ontario last week—another 1,800 megawatts there.

We can get the power that we need, and we don’t need a costly carbon—

It’s a pleasure to stand in the Legislature and pick up where the members from the NDP finished off and also thank my colleague the member from Mississauga–Lakeshore, the parliamentary assistant, who spoke for almost an hour this afternoon about the Supply Act motion and all of the investments that our government is making—$82 billion in health care.

And I thank the two members from the Sudbury area, as well, from the NDP, who talked for an hour and talked about what they saw or didn’t see in the Supply Act. They weren’t very well coordinated in their remarks today though, I’ve got to say. The member from Sudbury talked about the fact that no nurses want to work in the province, and the member from Nickel Belt talked about the fact that nurses want to work but they can’t get jobs. So they were not coordinated in their messaging, which is pretty typical for the NDP these days. They kind of spin around all over the place. But anyway, I digress.

And I do want to welcome the folks who are here for the Orthodox Christian private member’s bill that Mr. Rakocevic is going to be debating along with some of my colleagues. Stay tuned; the main event is about five minutes away. That’s it. We’ll get to that.

I do want to just take issue with a couple of things that were mentioned. I know the labour critic for the NDP was talking about Bill 124, and that horse has left the barn. We’re not debating that anymore. But what I can tell you: In some of the remarks that he made, he forgets the fact—and I moved to Ontario in the 1990s; in 1992, as a matter of fact. That was about 30-some years ago now. I was a new resident to Ontario, and Premier Bob Rae introduced the social contract. It was the only time the NDP have ever been the government of Ontario, and those in the labour movement call that legacy that Bob Rae and the NDP left a legacy of betrayal. That is what that was, and it was one of the largest wage rollbacks in Ontario’s history. But I digress.

I’m going to move to what we’re doing to make sure we have the funding that we need to invest in important participants in our province’s economy and our health care system. We have more nurses working in Ontario now than at any time in our history, and we have more nurses being trained in our province than at any time in our history—30,000 nurses are being trained, hundreds of new doctors are being trained in our province. When the Liberals and the NDP were teaming up, for a long period of time, they had a cap on the number of doctor spaces available. That’s why we’re in the position that we’re in today.

I just want to go back to one more thing: When the NDP were the government of Ontario, the budget for the province was $53 billion or so, in that area. Since we have formed government, since Doug Ford and the PCs have formed government in Ontario, we have increased revenues in the province by $52 billion. And how did we do that, Madam Speaker? Well, we didn’t do it by raising taxes. As a matter of fact, we have lowered taxes in the province: lowered income taxes, cut carbon taxes, cut the gasoline tax. The gasoline tax cut is one of the largest tax cuts in our province’s history. We have cut red tape, saving businesses $8 billion to $9 billion a year in the cost of doing business. As a result of cutting taxes and cutting fees, we have seen revenues jump from about $152 billion a year to $204 billion, which has allowed us to ensure that we have the services that we need in our province going forward.

Now, what did the Liberals and NDP do? Well, they took a different route. They raised taxes every opportunity that they had.

Madam Speaker, we have brought stability to our energy sector after 15 dark years under the previous Liberal government, supported by the NDP. As a result, we now have—now, keep in mind, when these guys were in charge, 300,000 jobs left our province—800,000 manufacturing jobs in our province today that weren’t here when we formed government six years ago.

Interjection.