H-S-T. H-S-T.

You just passed a bill about housing.

I am seeking the unanimous consent of the House to introduce a motion that, in the opinion of this House, the government of Canada, in conjunction with the government of Ontario, remove the harmonized sales tax on fuels and inputs for home heating.

As we know, we are facing an affordability crisis in our province that has been ongoing for some time. Families are having difficulty paying their bills. We’ve seen rents go up dramatically. We’ve seen mortgage rates and mortgage payments go up dramatically. We’ve seen the cost of buying groceries to feed your family go up dramatically. We’ve seen utility bills, like electricity, which is regulated by the province of Ontario, go up. As a result, families across the province are having trouble paying their bills. Families are being forced to make decisions about whether they serve their kids breakfast in the morning before they go to school or whether they pay the rent. They’re having to make decisions about whether they can put their kids in extracurricular activities—all because of the affordability crisis.

While the government of Ontario is committed to writing letters to the federal government, they have failed repeatedly to take actions that are within their purview to support Ontarians. The government of Ontario could introduce legislation to remove the provincial portion of the HST from home heating. They could go one further: In addition to that legislation, they could work co-operatively with the federal government to remove the entirety of HST from home heating. This would provide direct and transparent relief to families each and every month.

It’s fine to talk about a tax that is very difficult to see. For sure, the carbon tax has had an impact on families, affordability and on prices, but you can’t see it. You can’t see it every day, even though it’s there. HST on your natural gas bill, HST on propane delivery, HST on your electricity bill, if that’s how you choose to heat your home, is something that you see every month when the bill comes in. And if we can provide relief to families—$15, $20, $25 a month, in a way they can see—over the course of a year, that could be the difference between paying for soccer next spring or not. It could be the difference between feeding your kids before they go to school or not. It will make a real and observable and transparent difference in the lives of all Ontarians.

And this is action that the government of Ontario can take directly. They can introduce a law; they can pass a law. They’ve just done it. They did it with HST on new rental construction. They can do it for home heating as well, Mr. Speaker.

And so, in an affordability crisis, when families are having difficulty paying the bills, when they’re having to make hard choices between food or their rent or paying for a utility bill or putting their kids into hockey or soccer or other extracurricular activities, this is something that this government can do immediately to provide direct relief to families.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge everyone in this House to take off their ideological blinders, see the entire picture. Take the action that you were elected to take, to do the job you were elected to do. Get it done. We can provide relief to families right away, before Christmas.

On a point of order, Madam Speaker.

Point of order, Madam Speaker.

A point of order, Madam Speaker.

Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

We know that HST is a tax that we see in real life, in real time, all the time. If you heat your home with electricity, when you get your hydro bill you see the HST right there. You know exactly how much HST you’re going to pay when you pay your bill. When your natural gas bill comes, you see exactly how much HST you’re going to pay on natural gas. If you heat your home with propane, you see exactly how much HST you’re going to pay on propane. I suppose there are some who use outdoor wood furnaces still or a wood stove in the home; I’m hoping that if you’re buying cords of wood from someone in town that you’re seeing how much HST you’re paying on the wood you’re buying.

By the government of Ontario removing HST from the sources of home heating fuel and working with the government of Canada to have that portion of HST removed from home heating fuel as well, this will lead to a direct and visible and countable savings for families. Every month when they pay their gas bill or their electricity bill or for propane delivery, they’re going to know exactly how much money they and their family are saving on HST to heat their homes as a direct result of actions of this Legislature and this government—not simply writing a letter, hoping that another government takes action, but taking action themselves to provide real relief for families.

It’s time, given the environmental and climate crisis that we’re in, given the affordability crisis that we’re in, that everyone but especially this government take off its ideological blinders and open itself to the entire view of the situation. Every dollar will count, Madam Speaker. If we can save families $15, $20, $25, $30 a month on HST for their home heating, that could be the difference between putting Johnny or Jane in soccer next spring. That could be the difference between ensuring Johnny or Jane has breakfast before going to school in the morning. That might be the difference so that that boy I was talking about before doesn’t have to go without a lunch to ensure that his younger brother and sisters go to school with one, that that family will have money to buy him a sandwich or a Lunchable to take to school for lunch.

This is the kind of small, incremental savings that the government has direct responsibility for. They can provide this direct impact to families, and they can do it relatively quickly. We can debate this motion today, which we’re doing. We can pass it. There’s a fall economic statement. There’s a bill there. That bill is going to go to committee. This could be a quick amendment at committee—I’m sure it would have unanimous support from all parties—to take the HST off of home heating. I don’t think that any political party in Ontario could possibly oppose taking the HST off of home heating during an economic crisis, during an affordability crisis. As the snow is falling, as temperatures are dropping, there’s no one in their right mind who could possibly refuse the idea of taking sales tax off of the costs of heating your home in the winter.

These are actions that the government can take. They can take them today. They can take them tomorrow. We could have this thing wrapped up by the middle of next week, providing real relief for families before the holidays, before Christmas, more money in their pocket for them to support their families. We’ll see if the government and if the New Democrats decide to support this common-sense approach to providing real relief for families.

Now, as it relates to the carbon tax more specifically, what’s clear is that recent actions from the government of Canada have created a division within our country—a division that provides the appearance that one area of the country is receiving a benefit that is not being received by all other parts of the country, and this is creating a wedge and a division. Of course, I support the elimination of that wedge and division and would happily support the removal of the carbon tax from all sources of home heating, and I’ve relayed that concern and that position to my member of Parliament.

But the point of my amendment, and the point of all of us getting elected here is not so that we can simply ask other elected officials to do work. We didn’t ask to get elected so that we can ask other people to take action to help our constituents. We asked our constituents to vote for us so that we could take action, so that we could propose ideas, so that we could get things done within our purview to deliver benefit to them and to their families. The HST is a way in which the government of Ontario can take real and direct and concrete action on the sources of heat and the energy bills that Ontarians are facing. Especially as we approach winter and the holidays, it is my sincere hope that all parties in this House will take off their ideological blinders and do the right thing and help families save money on their utility bills as we head into winter and the holiday season.

It’s a pleasure to be here with you all this morning to debate this motion to once again ask the government of Ontario to write a letter to the Prime Minister. At this point, the Premier is becoming quite proficient at writing letters, and I’m not sure if it’s because it’s his preferred form of communication or if, like the former President of the United States, he just likes signing his name in giant Sharpie pen. I think that’s yet to be determined.

What we do know for sure is that climate change is real. Climate change is an existential threat to our society. It’s an existential threat to our communities. Whether it is Ottawa, whether it is Brampton, whether it’s Barry’s Bay and Renfrew and Arnprior, climate change is and will continue to have a real impact on how all of us, all of our kids and all of our grandkids will live their lives.

In Ottawa, in the last five or six years, we have seen two once-in-a-century floods, in 2017 and again in 2019. I remember, because I was down there over the Easter weekend both years and for the next six or eight weeks, filling sandbags to help residents save their homes. I was there when the Premier of the day came to east Ottawa, came to Cumberland to see the damage and the impact of the flooding for herself. I was there the next summer, when the Premier returned to meet the baby who was born during the flooding, outside of the view of cameras and the media, just because she wanted to see how the community had recovered. And I was there two years later when the Canadian Forces came, when reservists from across Ontario came to give up their jobs as lawyers, architects and students to fill sandbags, to support the residents of east Ottawa, to protect the water filtration facility in the city of Ottawa and otherwise help residents deal with the flooding situation that was ongoing.

Two once-in-a-century floods over the span of three years, Madam Speaker: It’s undeniable that climate change is having a true and real impact on our communities, and it’s beyond time that all governments do something about it.

In addition to these flooding events in Ottawa and eastern Ontario more broadly, we have seen devastating windstorms; windstorms that have ripped through communities; windstorms that have ripped through many rural and agricultural communities—in east Ottawa, in Navan and in Sarsfield and Carlsbad Springs, where the derecho ripped through these small, vibrant farming communities, causing enormous damage to barns and to silos. These farmers were left in the lurch by this government. There were no supports offered to these farmers to help repair this damage.

The disaster relief assistance program wasn’t activated in Ottawa. It was, for some reason, activated in Uxbridge for the same storm, but it wasn’t activated anywhere in the city of Ottawa. Moreover, despite the fact that the Premier came to Orléans and went to a fire station to thank the firefighters for their work during the recovery of this storm and committed to being there for the city of Ottawa, my understanding is not a single dollar has flowed from the government of Ontario to Hydro Ottawa, which incurred tens of millions of dollars of expenses in cleaning up downed lines and supporting residents who were without power for weeks on end, and it’s my understanding that not a single provincial dollar has flowed to the city of Ottawa to support their tens of millions of dollars in expenses.

As a result, both hydro and the city are facing difficult financial decisions, and this, of course, is going to end up meaning that the residents of Ottawa are going to pay higher property taxes because of the failure of this provincial government to support the city. So in an affordability crisis, as a result of inaction from this government, every resident in the city of Ottawa is going to end up paying higher property taxes as a result.

So it’s clear that climate change is real. I even think I heard the member from Brampton over there agree that it was real. It’s clear that the government needs to do something about it. It’s also clear that, to date, at least in the city of Ottawa, they haven’t really been there to support residents or the city or the hydro company in their efforts to deal with the costs of these disasters and help reduce the burden on families.

But at the same time as we’re dealing with this existential threat as a result of climate change, we are, as a society, as a community, going through what is, I think, widely understood to be a comprehensive affordability crisis. Families are having trouble paying the bills. They’re having trouble paying rent. They’re having trouble making their mortgage payments. They’re having trouble putting food on the table for their families. More and more families are using the food bank. Not just in our biggest cities, but in most communities across the province, food bank usage is up. That means parents are having to make the difficult decision every morning on whether their kids get breakfast before they go to school.

I heard of one family where there were three or four or five kids in the household, and it was clear—the teacher relayed this to me. It was clear that the family was needing to make a decision as to which children got to bring lunch to school. The oldest boy in the family was going to school without a lunch so that his younger brothers and sisters could go to school with a lunch. Those are the kinds of decisions that families are being forced to make as a result of the affordability crisis that we’re in.

And the government has had an opportunity to respond. They introduced an economic update to the province’s finances a week and a half ago, and there was virtually nothing in there to support middle-class families—in an economic crisis, when the costs of living are up, almost virtually zero support for middle-class families.

Families are sitting back and asking themselves, “After five years, are we better off?”

When you look at it, after five years the cost of groceries in Ontario is up. After five years the cost of hydro is up. After five years the cost of basically all living expenses is up.

At the same time as the costs of living your life in Ontario are up, this government’s actions have led to supports for the middle class going down, supports for our cities going down, supports for public transit going down.

In fact, Madam Speaker, this week the city of Ottawa, our hometown, because of the lack of support from this province, is making drastic cuts to public transit service in Ottawa. The city budgeted for an enhancement of public transit supports from this government. It was baked into their budget last year, largely based on the rhetoric of the Premier and others in the government that they would be there for cities. Don’t worry; they would be there for cities, and public transit is their most important priority.

The cheque was never written to the city of Ottawa. The money never came. As a result, city council is debating reducing public transit service in the city of Ottawa by the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Of course, if public transit usage goes down and support for public transit goes down, it’s very likely that greenhouse gas emissions will go up and it will have an even worse impact on the challenge we’re all trying to combat, which is the impact of climate change.

The government talks a good game about their desire to combat climate change and their investments to do so. In real terms, in terms of support for families, they really haven’t delivered the goods. They’ve asked other governments to deliver the goods, but they themselves have not delivered the goods.

That’s why at this time I’d like to introduce an amendment to the motion.

I move that this motion be amended by removing everything after the word “should” and inserting “in conjunction with the government of Ontario, remove the harmonized sales tax on fuels and inputs for home heating.”