I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Mississauga Centre.

This is one of those bills that, when I first looked at getting involved in politics, was something that I thought had a great deal of value and something that we should be doing. I really do commend the minister for this.

We’ve taken a look at some of the challenges that we have in child protective services, in the CAS, in foster care, and we’ve looked at how we can ensure that every child, no matter the situation they come from early on in their life, has an opportunity to succeed. I have to commend the minister on this because he’s done some excellent things.

One thing that I really think hasn’t gotten an awful lot of conversation about that we have to really point out is increasing the age from 21 to 23. The reason I say that: There are so many things that we do in government, there are so many things that we do in society, and we look at it and we’ve taken that arbitrary age—typically, it’s 18—and we’ve said, “Once you hit 18, something changes. A switch is flipped.”

But the reality is, every one of us matures at a different rate at different stages of our lives. By increasing it from 21 to 23, what we’re recognizing is that sometimes your chronological age of 21 doesn’t actually match your emotional age, and by increasing it to 23—yes, it is still a chronological age. But what it’s doing is, it’s giving the ability, then, to recognize that some of those individuals who have had traumatic experiences, who have been through different situations that maybe none of us actually truly understand—their emotional state may not put them in that same position as if they were coming from a more well-off family that has provided all kinds of supports for their kids. We’re recognizing that every child in this province deserves to have that opportunity to succeed, and the difference between age 21 and age 23 isn’t that great when we’re talking about the number of days, but it could make a massive difference in someone’s life.

I have three kids, and my kids all matured at different rates, as well. One daughter was ready to be on her own at 18. Another daughter of mine probably wasn’t ready to be on her own until she was 20. My son is 26 and still lives in my basement, but he is a kindergarten teacher and he is trying to move on. And he’s not in the basement because of his emotional state; it’s because his mother doesn’t want him to move out.

There are so many things that we take for granted as parents, and one of them, in particular, that I want to touch on is, I don’t have a scorecard or a spreadsheet or a filing cabinet in my house where I have kept track and documented everything that my kids did. I can’t go to the filing cabinet and pull something out and say, “On January 21, 2017, here’s what you did, and here’s what our reaction was to it”—but our child protective services, our CASs, actually do have that. And the ability, then, as an adult, once you’ve left the system, to know that everything you did that was documented, that was put down on paper is not going to be held against you, I think, is one of the most valuable things.

We take a look at social media now—and I’ve seen this talked about a number of times. I was born in the 1970s, but I really was an 1980s kid, in terms of what I did. All the things I did as a child, all the things I did as a teenager are not documented and put on the Internet. We’ve got kids today who, through no fault of their own, were placed in protective services; the CAS was involved. They were taken to a foster home—trying to give them something of a better life. And yet, we documented all of that stuff, and that was made available. What this bill does—one of the key things for me is, it takes that away. The things that you did once—you have the right for it to be forgotten. That’s something that’s enshrined in this bill, and I think it’s very, very important that it is.

We’ve made some changes to child protective services workers and police, so that someone who has been human-trafficked at the age of 16 or 17 can be taken from that situation and can then be given an opportunity to improve their lives.

There has been a lot of conversation about sex crimes over the last six years, and even before. The member from Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock introduced a private member’s bill—Saving the Girl Next Door—bringing some of that to light, and one of the scariest statistics on it is that the average age of a girl who has been human-trafficked is 12 years old. In Ontario, that is going on. Making it so that the police and social workers have more tools to help rescue some of those young women, to give them that opportunity to actually have a meaningful and fulfilling life, and to escape some of those challenges—that’s something that is enshrined in this bill, and I think it is something that is very, very powerful.

One of the things that I was surprised on, but the chief of staff for MCCSS talked to me about it a few times: She was not allowed to talk about her experiences, her own lived experiences, because she was someone who was in a foster home, and this changes that, so that those individuals who have gone through the system, who have had other issues while they were in the system, have the ability—without breaking the law—of standing up and saying, “This is what my lived experience was.”

When you think about that, every other aspect of our lives, you’re allowed to stand up and say, “This is what happened to me.” But for the longest time, that was not something that was afforded to an individual who was in foster care. These kinds of changes are transformational for a lot of these individuals. There’s nothing wrong with someone standing up and saying, “I was in foster care. Here’s what I went through. Here’s how I have succeeded in life, and I can be a role model for someone else”—but the law prevented them from doing that, previously.

We’ve talked so much—our society has talked so much about lived experiences and being able to be that role model, being able to stand up and say, “It is possible for you to break that cycle. It is possible for you to aspire to something better. It is possible for you to live a fulfilling life.” When it came to kids in foster care, we didn’t let them say that.

Think about that powerful message. Think about that child who perhaps was sex-trafficked, who got pulled out of that system, who got put into a supportive foster care position, who grew up, who got to take advantage of Ready, Set, Go, who got a great education, who then continued to give back to the community, who was that positive example and they weren’t allowed to talk about it—they will be able to now.

How many more kids, then, in protective services, through foster care, are going to be able to look to those individuals and say, “I want to be like you. I want to be like Jane. I want to be in the position to succeed just like she is”? That’s what this legislation does, and that is why it is so powerful, because it is transformational for so many of these kids.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I am going to turn my time over to the member from Mississauga Centre.

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.

Before I ask my question, I just want to wish a happy birthday to my good friend from Mississauga Centre.

My question is for the Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. Our government must remain committed to the protection of green spaces. By expanding the amount of conserved natural spaces across the province, we’re not only helping to preserve the environment but to promote physical activity and improve mental health. We need to continue our work with Ontario’s conservation partners because these are our shared goals.

Last week I was honoured to join the minister and my colleague from Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock for an important announcement in Trent Lakes. Speaker, can the minister share with the House how our government is protecting ecologically important natural areas in my community and all across Ontario?

Last night, my Petes took a commanding 3-1 lead in the OHL finals, and since we won’t be here next week—we will be back in the constituency—I need to know if the member from London North Centre would like to wear maroon and white or white and maroon when we return on the Monday.