What about a 60-year-old car?

I’m sure if you tried really hard and blasted a whole lot, you might be able to do it. But the reality is, heat pumps are not a viable option outside of the urban centres, who already have inexpensive ways of heating their home.

There has been a false narrative put forward that this is going to actually add costs to it. But since the late 1980s, we’ve had this system where the gas companies could amortize the price with a cost of that installation over 40 years, and what the OEB did was step outside of their bounds and enter into policy to make that decision. They said, “We don’t think that what’s been working for 40 years is what we should continue doing, and instead we’re going to change it so that you had to pay everything up front.”

The argument that they gave—and this is one of the interesting arguments that they gave—is they said that it would add about $4,400 to the cost of a new-build construction. But what they took was the example in the urban centres like Parkdale–High Park, Toronto–Danforth and Beaches–East York, where you have thousands of people per square kilometre.

We did the calculation on my house. I live in the rural part of the riding, just outside of the city of Peterborough. We do not have natural gas running down my street. If we had natural gas running down my street and I wanted to hook up to it, my driveway is almost a kilometre long. It would be $65,000 to run the pipe to my house. That does not become a viable option.

But I’m not alone in my riding in having that much of a distance to the road. There are a lot of places where you have a significant distance to the road—pretty much every single farm.

But it’s not just us who are saying that this was a bad decision by the OEB. Now, everybody who lives in Toronto has something in common with everybody who lives in rural Ontario: We all eat food. And where is that food produced?

So, let’s take the position, then, from the Ontario farmers’ association, the OFA. What was their position on this? “Rural Ontario needs access to natural gas infrastructure to provide reliable and affordable energy options for farms and rural businesses. The expansion of natural gas throughout rural Ontario is the single most important investment the Ontario government can make to support thriving” farms.

I would like to think that everyone who lives in Toronto would like to continue eating. And if they would like to continue eating, they need to recognize that farms in Ontario need to have access to inexpensive energy, so that we can actually dry the grains that they need to eat and all of the other products that come from it, because if you don’t—we are already seeing the cost of living increasing significantly. We’re already seeing the cost of groceries skyrocketing because of carbon tax. Now you want to add an additional expense to it.

What makes any of these individuals believe that by doing that, they’re actually supporting their constituents? Because they’re not. They’re making it more difficult for them to live. They’re making it more difficult and more expensive for them to go out and buy food. And I think every one of them would agree, all of their constituents need the food that’s produced in ridings like mine.

We do not have natural gas running throughout the entire riding. There is no possible way for us to have it, but we are doing that expansion. We’re expanding into Selwyn. We’re expanding into Douro-Dummer. We’re expanding into Havelock. These are all small communities. And we need to, because despite what the opposition is saying, that is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, because they’re getting off oil.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ve had the great pleasure of listening to some of the conversation. I’m actually going to follow up a little bit on what my colleague from Ottawa-Carleton—

Interjection.

I represent a riding that is larger than Prince Edward Island. We are slightly more than 3,400 square kilometres. We have approximately 170,000 people when you count some of the seasonal residents as well. Prince Edward Island is about 171,000 in about 3,200 square kilometres. So what I found really interesting about it was that during committee, the NDP kept bringing up Prince Edward Island as a prime example of it, not recognizing that sitting in committee there were three members on the Progressive Conservative side whose ridings were larger than Prince Edward Island.

I want to show some statistics because I do find it very rich that urban centres stand up and say, “This is what should happen in rural Ontario.” The member from Toronto–Danforth, who spent an hour talking about this—his riding is 29 square kilometres, 3,685 people per square kilometre. That is more people in one kilometre of Danforth than in the entire township of Trent Lakes, which I represent.

The member from Parkdale–High Park has a whopping 16 square kilometres, with 6,671 people per kilometre. The only municipality in my riding that is larger than that is the city of Peterborough. I have six municipalities and a First Nation, so the largest portion of my riding isn’t even as big as a square kilometre for people.

Beaches–East York: a whopping 19 square kilometres, with 5,061 people per square kilometre.

Kingston and the Islands: a little bit smaller, 665 square kilometres. Trent Lakes is 890 square kilometres. They have 3,000 people.

Peterborough itself: As I said, my riding is about 3,470 square kilometres. The centre of our riding is the city of Peterborough, with 85,000 people in it, and yet my riding only has 33 people per square kilometre. When I look at Trent Lakes, they have a whopping 3.2 people per square kilometre.

Now, why do I bring this up? I bring this up because everybody from the opposition who has been talking about this has natural gas available to them. They have inexpensive heating. What do we have in Trent Lakes? Oil furnaces, propane furnaces, wood pellet and a little bit of electric. Now, why is it only a little bit of electric? Because in 2003, Ontario had the lowest electric rates in North America; in 2018, after 15 years of Liberals, we had the highest electrical rates in North America, and people could not afford to heat their homes with electricity.

We’ve heard from the opposition many times saying we should go to heat pumps. Well, if the temperature consistently drops below minus 15 degrees Celsius, which would be my entire riding in most of the winter, an air-source heat pump doesn’t work for you. You just cannot get your home warm enough. A ground-source heat pump could, but here’s the problem that we experience in my part of the province, as well as 72% of the entire province, and that is that the Canadian Shield begins in my riding. It is extremely difficult to put a ground-source heat pump in granite. That is a challenge.

Point of order.