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.”