I want to thank the member for an excellent speech. You touched on this, but I would appreciate it if you would expand on what you see as the climate impact if this bill is passed as proposed by the government.

Well, that would be the non-Orwellian title for it, but unfortunately, some cousin of George Orwell works for the minister and was delegated the task of writing this bill and decided to go the opposite way. I agree with you that this bill is the “more expensive energy act” and “Christmas for Enbridge shareholders act, 2024,” and should be recognized as such.

This bill is not meant to protect customers. This bill is not meant to keep energy costs down. This is meant to keep people’s disposable income down. It’s meant to keep investor profits up. But it’s not going to be helping people, not a bit.

But I can’t say I think that the minister believes in climate change, because if he did, he’d be acting in a very different way. He wouldn’t be expanding the gas-fired generation fleet in Ontario, because frankly, he’s undermining our climate goals, but he’s also undermining the clean interests of this province in having an electricity system that doesn’t belch out a lot more greenhouse gases.

I suspect, my colleague from Beaches–East York, that we’d have a lot of fun. The minister was pretty clear; he said he loved his heat pump, that he didn’t have any troubles when it got really cold. The resistance heater came on board. He didn’t have propane backup. He didn’t have gas backup. I think that other people in Ontario should have the same opportunity as the minister has.

I actually appreciate the question.

The decision to charge customers is based on the idea that the lines will be in the ground for 40 years, but they won’t be. We’re talking about a system that will not be functioning in 40 years. It cannot; not only because, technologically, gas furnaces are expensive compared to heat pumps—so, again, like rotary dial phones or Blockbuster Video, they are on their way out. That ain’t going to be here. The assumption that the vast bulk of customers will be repaid over 40 years is no longer true.

And in fact, Enbridge’s own consultants, in their presentation to the OEB, said that Enbridge was in the situation where they were headed towards going down, because people were going to abandon the system. There won’t be customers to pay in the future. Forty years ago, it was true; they were going to pay. It isn’t going to be true in the future.

Yes, we are seeing history repeat itself. The Liberals had a different technique. They would define where the OEB could make a ruling and then they would make their decision in another space, and it was always quite something amazing to watch, that major decisions were shifted out of the OEB, into ministerial area of discretion. But what’s happened here is they’re not even doing that, they’re just saying, “The minister can overrule. The minister can make these decisions. That’s the simple reality.” It’s even less of a regulator than it was in the past.

And you’re quite correct: If energy companies get the chance to write their own cheques on your bank account, man, they’re going to write a lot of cheques. That’s where we’re headed. That’s what this is all about.

But I’ll say the other thing: I don’t think that, in the future, this is going to be very different between rural and urban Ontario because both jurisdictions will be moving away from gas. There is no good financial reason to go to gas at this point. There is no good financial reason.

In fact, when you look at the studies done by the federal government, it is more expensive to go to gas than it is to go to a heat pump. That’s the simple reality. It was cheaper in Montreal to operate home heating and cooling on a heat pump than it was with gas. Montreal is not a hot place.

I follow climate issues, and you should know that there are three jurisdictions in North America right now facing really severe problems around insurance costs: Florida, Louisiana and California.

Now, Florida and Louisiana, because of the impact of hurricanes, the increasing power of those hurricanes, the frequency of those hurricanes, insurance companies are saying, “It’s not worth it to us to insure because we’re going to have to replace these houses pretty regularly,” so they’re actually pulling out of those jurisdictions.

In California, it’s forest fires that are causing insurance companies to say, “We’re not taking any more business.” In those three jurisdictions, three state governments are setting up a low—

Interjections.

The reality is that people are having a harder and harder time getting insurance, that they’re seeing their insurance bills double, triple and quadruple because, simply, the cost of replacing buildings on a regular basis because of fire or hurricanes is an awfully expensive process.

Those are the most vulnerable spots, but we’re going to see that here in Ontario. I was talking to one of my colleagues from the north today, talking about the increase in insurance costs because of wildfires. This is a reality. We are going to see increasing impacts on our standard of living from rising temperatures. It’s not just going to be insurance. It’s also going to be food production because more drought and more floods reduce food production. You get more diseases in a hotter world, more exotic diseases.

And already in Canada, the Insurance Bureau of Canada has said that something like a million homes are facing potential for losing home insurance because of flood risk. Speaker, we actually have to deal with the climate issue seriously, and we have an opportunity because of technological advances to actually help people contain or reduce their heating and cooling bills, while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This bill will undermine that because the simple reality is that when a developer is putting in a new subdivision, if they’re getting all these new pipes paid for by customers in the rest of Ontario, they’re going to do that and put in a gas furnace.

If they weren’t getting this subsidy, they would probably put in a heat pump because it’s the cheapest option—pretty straightforward. But in doing this, in passing this bill, the government is undermining its own climate plan as well as reducing people’s standard of living and putting all of us at much greater risk in the years to come.

So, Speaker, I think I’ve made most of the arguments that I want to make, but I need to touch on a few other things. I think that the undermining of the independence of the regulator is something that is not at the top of most people’s minds.

I was talking to a reporter the other day who was trying to cover this story and they said, “I don’t know how to report this story. No one has heard of the Ontario Energy Board.” Yes, I’m seeing an opposition member nod his head, because he’s right. Who has heard of the Ontario Energy Board? I mean, you’ve got to be a pretty exotic bunch of people—sorry, 124 of us in this room and maybe a thousand in the rest of the province who have heard of it.

And there’s all kinds of stuff talked about with this 40-year amortization of the cost of hookups. Very few people spend a lot of time thinking about amortization of utility infrastructure—very few sane people who talk to neighbours and are considered fun.

But this is going to be a big issue for people when they get their higher gas bill. Because they don’t deserve to get a higher gas bill; they deserve to have their interests protected by the regulator. I think it’s entirely reasonable that you give a regulator instructions to protect customers from unreasonable costs. And when they see that the costs are changing, that the parameters that they relied on over decades are no longer there and they act to protect those customers, that decision should be upheld. It is entirely reasonable to uphold it.

If we proceed with this bill as we have, then we will undermine the financial well-being of gas customers today. We will undermine the financial well-being of those who buy new homes that have gas furnaces installed in them, because they will get stuck with higher costs in the years to come. And we will undermine our chances of actually stabilizing the climate and having a future that is more benign than is likely to be the one we’re getting right now. So there are some very good reasons for not doing this.

I was astounded, going through the bill, at seeing the removal of independent regulation. I thought there would be some messing around—there’s no getting around it. I thought there would be an instruction saying, “This one time, you’re going to be able to charge them and soak them.” But that isn’t where we ended up. What we ended up with was a system of energy regulation by lobbyists.

That is not defensible. It’s not defensible in the rest of Canada. It’s not defensible in the rest of North America. If you actually want to regulate and protects customers and have a rules-based system where evidence is presented and adjudicated, then you don’t have the kind of bill we have before us, and you also don’t have the removal of procedures that require governments to operate in a fair and transparent way.

Very few people have heard of the Statutory Powers Procedure Act—in fact, probably less than the people in this room now. But it’s an act that requires governments to actually inform people of decisions that are going to come down, give them an opportunity to make a presentation, give them information about the basis upon which a decision is made. And with regard to this legislation, that act is of no effect whatsoever. It is taken out. That is an extraordinary movement towards arbitrary decisions. The Statutory Powers Procedure Act is not the most thrilling piece of legislation in the world, but it actually requires some small level of fairness in decision-making that one would expect in a democratic society.

So what we have here is a bill that will increase people’s Enbridge costs, that will gut actual regulation in Ontario, that will reduce the use of fairness requirements in government, and make our environment far more perilous in the years to come. This bill needs to be defeated.

Yes. It just totally—that’s where we are again. Amazing.

I want to dig a little further. There’s a subsidy that gas customers do not even know they are funding. If you talk to most people, they look at their gas bill and they see “gas”—it’s there—and they see “distribution,” another piece. That distribution is the cost of getting the gas through the pipes to their houses. They don’t spend a lot of time analyzing their bills. Most normal people don’t. What is going to be happening to them is that part on distribution is going to be going up because they’re going to pay the cost of expanding the system—not the shareholders, but the customers. The customers working long hours, getting as much overtime as they can, where they can, sometimes working second jobs, people who are cutting corners all the time, are going to get higher bills because this government wants to make Enbridge richer.

This past Christmas, I was talking to my nephew over Christmas dinner, and I said—because that’s the kind of weird uncle I am, to discuss these things over Christmas dinner—“You know that your gas bill is going to go up so that Enbridge can expand its gas system?” He put down his turkey and he said, “You’ve got to be kidding me—pass the cranberry. You’ve got to be kidding me about that. Why am I paying for that?” And I said, “Well, it’s the way it’s working.”

The independent regulator, the Ontario Energy Board, decided to put a stop to the subsidy because it raises energy bills for existing gas customers—and for new home buyers. This is not a wonderful gift for them. It sets them up for higher costs in the years to come, and it also increases financial risks for the whole of the gas system. Ending the subsidy to new developments alone would save gas customers over $1 billion over the next four years in avoided pipeline subsidy costs—a billion bucks.

So when this government says, “No, no, we’re going forward; it isn’t going to affect people’s gas bills,” tell me where the billion is going to come from. Because Enbridge is going to get permission to actually charge it to their customers. It isn’t some magic group of elves and leprechauns somewhere that are going to be coughing up. It’s going to be people with real bank accounts who are trying to get through their daily lives who are going to be charged this extra money. It comes to about $300 per customer. Some calculations show it at $600 over the next four years, so let’s say $300 to $600. There are about four million customers on the system. Now, I note that that $1 billion doesn’t include any interest or profit payments that go to Enbridge. I’m talking bare minimum. I’m just talking the minimum number that was cited by the Ontario Energy Board.

What ending the subsidy would do, aside from protecting customers from being gouged, is it would encourage developers to install electric heat pumps in new homes instead of gas. I note the Minister of Energy has his home heated by a heat pump. He doesn’t have any gas connection. He talked about it when we were going through second reading. He talked about how comfortable it was, how he was happy. He didn’t talk about the water in a cat dish freezing over because he couldn’t keep the heat up in the winter. He didn’t talk about the end of civilization or his teeth chattering while he watched Netflix on a Saturday night. No. The heat pump kept him warm. He wasn’t in downtown Toronto. Belleville is still on the shores of Lake Ontario, but it’s a bit cooler than down here.

Ending the subsidy would be a win for customers who otherwise get charged that amount. It would be a win for new home owners, who’d get a far more cost-effective heating and cooling system. And it would be a win for the environment—I’ll detail that later. It would lower energy bills for existing customers, something I think is wildly popular, lower energy bills for new home owners because they’d be getting a less expensive system, and it would lower carbon emissions. And it would avoid costs further down the road when people move away from natural gas.

But there is a loser in the OEB decision, and the government picked it up within seconds; probably on their phones to the loser saying, “Enbridge, you’re going to lose money here.” Well, maybe it was the other way around. Enbridge may have phoned them and said, “Hey, we’re going to lose money here. Jump to it.”

Enbridge can afford, frankly, to finance any expansion they want. They don’t need to use the customers as an ATM. Many tenants and homeowners, by the way, are going to have a tough time dealing with those bills. So our task, I believe, is to protect those tenants, those homeowners, and not protect these multi-billion-dollar multinational corporations. Well, well.

Now, the minister is trying to pass this legislation, the bill before us, to overturn that decision, the decision to protect customers. The government has decided to stand with Enbridge and its lobbyists, using the argument that change will reduce housing supply and affordability.

But developers can just forgo gas and install heat pumps instead. If they have a customer who really wants gas, they can do that, but everyone gets an electrical connection in any event. You’re not building new subdivisions without electrical connections, frankly. And if you’ve got an electrical connection, you can put in a heat pump.

So why wouldn’t one take the opportunity to install an electric heat pump and forgo the extra cost of putting in gas? And even if you didn’t want to go there, why do people around this province have to subsidize this? Why do people in Sudbury or London or Kingston or Thunder Bay have to pay more to subsidize a multi-billion-dollar corporation?

You don’t have to take my word for any of this. Ian Mondrow is a partner with the law firm Gowling WLG, practising in the area of energy regulation policy. He wrote an op-ed that was published in the Globe and Mail. He can see that leaving the regulator’s decision in place would protect current gas customers and new homeowners. Now, Gowling is not an environmental group. They’re a pretty straightforward corporate Bay Street law firm, and they understand the economics of this whole system. I’m going to quote the op-ed from the lawyer who specializes in energy regulation policy:

“While including gas connection costs to developers up front would marginally increase the cost of a new house, an offsetting rate credit recognizing the upfront payment would lower ongoing gas rates, resulting in a wash for homebuyers. The other choice would be to forgo gas servicing in favour of electric heat pumps, thus lowering the operating costs of the house—a win for homebuyers.”

The member from Perth–Wellington, back when we were talking at second reading, was talking about new home buyers. Well, we’ve got someone who specializes in energy policy saying this would be better for new home buyers.

“Either choice would reduce Enbridge capital costs, and potential stranded assets, in the range of $1 billion over the proposed five-year gas rate plan period, significantly reducing delivery rates and customer risk.”

Two associate professors, Brandon Schaufele and Adam Fremeth of the Ivey Business School, wrote a post about this as well: “The government’s decision to override the OEB should have virtually no effect on affordable housing in the province.” So the government’s whole argument that their bill is one that will keep the cost of housing down does not bear scrutiny from academics who work in this field.

If this bill passes, it’s not going make housing any cheaper. It’s not going to be to the advantage of homebuyers. In other words, the government’s actions will make you, Enbridge customers, pay more and will not help those new home buyers. But it will mean higher rates for your gas bills. The Premier is going to raise your gas bill. Don’t be confused. Be very clear and plain about this. The Premier is going to raise your gas bill.

Now, gas is no longer the cheapest heating source. Investing in new gas pipelines for heating is financially foolish because they will become obsolete and a massive cost to all current and future customers as we stop burning gas to heat our homes and other buildings.

Even the minister was talking about the electrification of home heating. He knows it’s coming; in fact, his whole plan for providing electricity to Ontario is based on the idea of a massive increase in electricity demand for home heating. He knows that the demand for gas is going to fade dramatically, or at least he’s willing to bet several billion dollars on that analysis.

So you’ve got the minister saying, “I need to spend billions of dollars on new generation for home heating,” and at the same time saying, “No, no, I’ve got to protect the gas utility.” Well, the reality is, you’re moving from one technology to another. What his plan means is that over the next few decades, fewer and fewer people will be burning gas, and the people who leave the system will not have to carry the burden of the cost of those pipes that are in the ground, but the ones who stay will be stuck with it.

There are cheaper alternatives to what has been before us. The OEB recognized that. Like rotary-dial phones, like Blockbuster Video, natural gas furnaces are coming to the end of their time—not tomorrow, not in 2025. But over the next 20 years, cheaper alternatives such as home heat pumps are undermining Enbridge’s market for home heating.

Even the parliamentary assistant, in his comments on third reading the other day, said the time for natural gas, in the near term, the middle term—yes, in the next 10 years, the next 20 years, it will probably be around; the next 30 years, it won’t. I appreciate the comment from the parliamentary assistant on that.

So the minister said exactly that—we’re going to be electrifying our homes. He’s betting a lot of money on that.

The OEB ruled that Enbridge can’t spread the cost of hooking up new homes over decades or charge it to current gas customers like you, like the people who are watching this, because those who are Enbridge customers are going to be stuck with a bill that’s going to be pretty significant. But that’s what the Premier wants to do—he wants to raise your gas bills. He will increase your gas bill. The OEB said that Enbridge or new home developers could take the risk if they want, but not new home buyers or current Enbridge customers. They recognize this would likely mean many more people installing cheaper heat pumps to provide heating.

As I’ve said before, the minister has an electric heat pump; he has got an electric resistance coil to back it up. And as I said before, the bowl of water for the cat has not frozen in the kitchen. He’s still alive. There are many debates, but he’s still there. So, apparently, an electric heat pump does work outside of downtown Toronto.

I’m going to go back to Ian Mondrow, the lawyer working for Gowling, about the question of how we can actually deal with the issues before us, because passing legislation to reinstate a subsidy that’s completely out of step and that risks financial disaster down the road doesn’t make sense.

The minister, in his statement in December and his speech at second reading, said the decision of the OEB would increase the cost of energy, increase the cost of a new home. The facts do not support that claim. When you look for those facts, when you round them up, when you put them together and you compare them to the minister’s statement, they are not related; they are not even distant cousins. There is no blood relation between the facts and the minister’s statement; it’s just not there.

I’m going to go back to the energy regulator lawyer from Gowling, Ian Mondrow, who had this to say about the claim by the minister—he writes in a more formal style than me, but I think he’s quite good:

“Early the following day after the release of the OEB decision, Ontario’s Minister of Energy released a statement expressing that he was ‘extremely disappointed’ with the OEB’s decision.... The minister asserted that the OEB’s determination on this point ... ‘could lead to tens of thousands of dollars added to the cost of building new homes, and ... would slow or halt the construction of new homes, including affordable housing.’”

Good God. That’s a scary thought. You’ve got to sober up when you hear that kind of statement.

Interestingly, the energy lawyer went on:

“If those facts were true”—and I like the way he slips in the “if”—“then the minister could well have a legitimate and immediate housing policy concern. The facts as determined in the OEB’s decision do not, however, support a ‘tens of thousands of dollars’ increase in home costs, and it does not appear that the decision will in fact ‘slow or halt the construction of new homes.’ The conclusions expressed in the minister’s statement”—and, frankly, his speech on the bill, according to the lawyer—“are inconsistent with the facts relied on, and determinations made, by the OEB’s three-member expert panel of commissioners as a result of the comprehensive hearing process undertaken.”

I want to say a few other things about the area of charges. I’m speaking to you gas customers who will get stuck with a higher bill if this legislation passes. One is that claim that gas heating is the cheapest option. Numerous studies now show that when you compare the combined costs of equipment and energy, heat pumps provide cheaper heating than gas heating. Just putting in a heat pump or putting in a furnace or an air conditioner, those capital costs and the cost over a lifetime—it’s cheaper to go with a heat pump. In fact, the minister referenced that in his speech, that Enbridge, which keeps spreading the claim about gas being cheaper, is now facing an investigation and hearing at the Competition Bureau for false advertising, for making that claim that gas is cheaper.

The National Observer reported on this case: “Enbridge has a new fight on its hands as Competition Bureau Canada officially launches an investigation against the gas giant over allegations the company is misleading customers about the role of gas in the energy transition.” I don’t think the Competition Bureau picks up frivolous cases. It will be interesting to see what their decision is. But on the face of it, there is enough credibility for the hearing to go forward. “Specifically, Enbridge has promoted new gas hook-ups as the cheapest way for Ontarians to heat homes, while branding natural gas as ‘low carbon’ and ‘clean energy.’” That’s being challenged by the environmental organization Environmental Defence.

National Observer reports: “‘Enbridge’s dishonest marketing is duping people into installing new gas hook-ups and spending thousands of dollars on new gas furnaces and other appliances, falsely claiming its cheaper than heating with electricity, which is just not true,’ said Environmental Defence programs director Keith Brooks in a statement. ‘It is good that the Competition Bureau has agreed to investigate Enbridge.’

“The ... complaint filed by Environmental Defence, Ontario Clean Air Alliance, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and a group of Ontario residents in September accuses Enbridge of falsely claiming gas is the most cost-effective way to heat homes. Enbridge has made this claim online and in communities pegged for expansion in an attempt to increase its customer base.”

Environmental Defence summarizes the situation this way: “Enbridge is misleading consumers into connecting to its gas system using false and misleading representations.... Enbridge is telling potential customers that gas is the most cost-effective way to heat their homes and suggesting”—and this I find totally entertaining—“that it is ‘clean energy’ and ‘low carbon.’ None of these representations are true.” That lack of honesty about what’s real and not real when it comes to home heating is something people should keep in mind.

But the other issue, and this is a big one because as the minister has said, we’re moving away from gas heating our homes—again, this government is committed to spending billions of dollars on new electricity generation to heat homes. If they’re doing that—if they are successful in their plans, there will not be a market for Enbridge. Those who are hooked up to the system will be stuck with the cost of a system that is increasingly expensive. We’ve had these transitions before. It’s not unique. It’s not novel.

If you look at the energy history of this province, you can see that at about 1958-59 TransCanada pipeline came from Alberta to Ontario with natural gas. This opened a whole new way to heat homes. It was cleaner. It was more convenient. It was probably cheaper than coal. From 1960 to 1970, the portion of homes that used coal for home heating went from 30% to 1%. Within a decade, 30% of Ontario homes no longer used what had been a very popular fuel.

So I want to note you can have a very rapid transition from one technology to another, frankly, with probably very little in the way of governments programs in that case. People looked at it and said, “Hey, handling coal is pretty dirty. We spend a lot of money on it. I put in gas. I just got a thermostat on the wall. I move it around when I want more heat. I don’t have to go in the basement and shovel coal into the furnace.”

I have to say, a reduction from 30% of homes being heated by coal in 1960 to 1% by 1970: These transitions happen, they happen rapidly and those who stay with the old technology get stuck with bills.

We’re facing a situation in Ontario now where, as we move away from gas home heating, something that the minister has said we’re doing because he has his own electrification plan for Ontario—people who stay out in the gas system, who get sold onto the gas system are going to be stuck with higher bills. The pipes that are put in the ground are going to be paid for by those who can’t afford to buy a new heating system, ones whose furnace is, say, eight years old. Those furnaces have a 15- or 20-year lifespan. If your furnace is eight years old, you’re not going to get rid of it and buy a new furnace. Mostly people can’t. They only buy when they have to—normally in January, when their furnace dies and they phone desperately to get a new one. They will be stuck with higher bills as the system becomes more and more expensive. It’s a risk for homeowners; it’s a risk for tenants. It’s a problem people are going to have to face in the future.

Frankly, continuing the subsidy from existing consumers—and remember, the Premier wants to raise your gas bill. He will drive up your gas bill. He will make you pay more so he can create deeper problems for you in the years to come.

Now, another reality that we need to face is the volatility of gas prices in this world. Quite a few people who are gas customers, about four million in Ontario, know that around 2022, the price of gas went up dramatically. What was happening in world events at the time? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the disruption of the supply of natural gas to Western Europe, and frankly, with that disruption and the rocketing increase in the world price for gas, you had a situation where the world market was setting the price.

We in Ontario generally have paid a much lower price than people do on the world market, but you need to know that 60% of the gas that we burn in Ontario is imported from the United States. It used to come from western Canada, now mostly from the United States, and in the United States there are large numbers of liquefied natural gas export terminals that are shipping that gas out. In fact, recently, within the last few months, there was a pause put on a few of those liquefied natural gas terminals because industrial manufacturers in the United States were saying, “These exports are killing us. They’re killing us. You need to stop exporting all the gas because it’s changing our cost picture.”

Well, that’s right. The world price is a lot higher than we pay. The more you integrate into the gas system, the more you’re tied into a very volatile pricing framework, one that can give price shocks. And we’ve had them. I don’t know when we’ll have another spike or a price shock, but wars happen, disruptions of energy supplies happen, and people suffer as a result.

I need to emphasize something that I mentioned at the beginning. The OEB, the Ontario Energy Board, the regulator, didn’t say you can’t have a gas connection to a new house. They didn’t ban it; they don’t have the power. If Enbridge wanted to install new gas connections to new homes, they could do it with the capital that’s provided by their investors, and they could try and recover it over the next few decades. But actually, I don’t think they take that as a good bet. I think they realize that there’s a huge risk to putting that money down into expansion of the system, and instead of them putting their money on the table and watching the wheel spin, they’re putting the money of customers across this province on the table. No one knows what the outcome will be other than this: Gas will fade out over the next 20 to 30 years and the people who are last in the system will be paying a lot of money.

Speaker, there’s no doubt that high prices are the number one thing that we’re dealing with here. I would say that you go out there and people who are trying to make sure their rent is paid on the 1st or who have mortgage payments, who have to get groceries, are very focused on immediate costs, and I don’t blame them. But we need to keep in mind that there’s another reality, something that is coming at us, and that’s that the world is steadily getting hotter. Every year, we are seeing more extreme weather events, which is driving up the cost of insurance, which actually puts a burden on public treasuries. Because insurance doesn’t cover all those costs, it means that we’re going to be paying more through our taxes, either higher taxes or reduced services, to cover the damage from climate change.

In Ontario, the second-largest number in terms of greenhouse gas emissions is from heating buildings. So in order to actually meet any targets to stabilize the climate to avoid the worst of extreme weather, we actually have to move away from gas. It isn’t just that heat pumps are cheaper, which they are; that they have a future, which they do, but also that we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to stabilize our climate so that we do have a future, so that our children have a future.

There are places now where the impact of climate is having a very direct impact. Sorry, impact—

Interjections.

Speaker, just so that you’re entirely clear about this, this bill is about making sure that Enbridge customers pay more and get poorer and that Enbridge makes a lot more money and gets a lot richer. That’s what this bill is about.

The Premier is planning to raise your gas bill this year. That’s what this bill makes possible. That’s what this bill is set up to do.

The Premier decided to protect Enbridge to make sure it could bring in billions of dollars from its customers and take money out of the pockets of those customers across this province. His buddies at Enbridge are being protected, and he’s sticking you, each and every Enbridge customer in this province, with the bill. That bill is calculated to be between $300 and $600 over the next four years.

Everyone in this room is well aware of how stretched people are, well aware of how they’re pushed hard by high rents, by mortgages that are difficult to cover, by rising grocery prices. They need this like they need a hole in their wallet. They need protection from Enbridge, and this government is not only not protecting them, it is making sure that Enbridge gets to collect billions of dollars from them—billions of dollars.

If you think that you should be paying more on your Enbridge bill, then you should support this legislation that’s come forward. And if you don’t think you should be stuck with those extra charges, if you think that Enbridge should be the body that actually coughs up the few billion dollars that they want to expand the gas supply system, then you should oppose this bill. Enbridge pays. That’s the situation that we would have if this bill did not go through. If the bill goes through, the customers pay, just as they have in so many other circumstances.

I don’t think I’ve made it plain enough: This bill is about raising your gas charges, making life more expensive for you and making sure that Enbridge shareholders make a lot more money.

This bill reverses the decision by the Ontario Energy Board—the agency set up in this province to regulate utilities and protect customers—the decision they made in December to protect people in Ontario from higher gas bills. Now, it’s the job of the Ontario Energy Board, that regulator, to look out for consumer interests when energy companies apply to raise their rates, as they do constantly. The job of the Ontario Energy Board, their mandate, is to protect the customers. They’re told, “Look out for the consumers. Look out for the public. Make sure they aren’t gouged, they aren’t ripped off, they aren’t pillaged, they aren’t silently stolen from. Look after those customers.” That’s their mandate, and that’s whether that utility is electrical or gas: protect the customers. And that is what the Ontario Energy Board did last December in, I would say, a Christmas surprise, a Christmas gift. They stood up and said, “We can read our mandate. We think this charge against the customers can’t be justified. We’re not going to approve it.”

Now this government is completely horrified that those customers are being protected. They’re horrified that Enbridge will not continue to make the crushingly huge profits that they’ve been making. And this government wants to reverse that. They know what has to be protected at all costs, and that’s the profits going to Enbridge. The customers? Not an issue, not a concern.

Since we had this bill before committee, the news service Narwhal published an article on the close co-operation between senior Conservative government staff and Enbridge. It was as if they were working in collusion. It was pretty clear from the article that the first concern of the government was to protect Enbridge and its profits. In what they reported, there weren’t big issues about, “How do we protect rural ratepayers? How do we look after small businesses? How do we make sure that new home buyers don’t pay more than they would have paid before?” No, their focus was on Enbridge’s profits and how expensive this decision was going to be for Enbridge, and then they looked for stories that would buttress the argument that they made.

Enbridge is a multi-billion-dollar company, and frankly, the one that we deal with in Ontario is a subsidiary of the larger Enbridge that runs gas transmission lines across North America—both of them multi-billion-dollar operations with multi-billion-dollar profits, not exactly on the edge of poverty. These companies have a few bucks available if they wanted to actually help customers, but that is not what we’re dealing with here. This is not about the government trying to protect customers and trying to keep energy bills low. This is about making sure that the company that wants to squeeze every last penny out of you is protected and given licence to do that. In fact, this government will ensure that your gas bill is going to go up.

Two weeks ago, we asked the Premier about his government’s efforts to ensure that Enbridge was protected and consumers got stuck with the bill. What do you have to say, Premier, on this?

So we asked: “In December, the Ontario Energy Board ruled that consumers should no longer have to subsidize Enbridge’s gas expansion. But instead of listening to the experts, the government decided to keep forcing consumers to pay the subsidy.

“Yesterday, the Narwhal revealed that the Premier’s top officials weren’t just communicating with Enbridge on this; they were actively coordinating their response together.”

Question for the government: Did the government give preferential treatment to Enbridge when it intervened pre-emptively to undermine the regulator and drive up costs for customers?

I’ll go on to the other two questions that were asked because I’ll summarize the response of the government.

The next question: On the morning of the Ontario Energy Board ruling, the chief of staff to the Minister of Energy reached out to the Premier’s staff and called an urgent meeting to prepare a response in case the OEB ruled against Enbridge in favour of consumers. Oh, horrors, protecting consumers; what has the world come to?

It just happens that the minister’s chief of staff is a former lobbyist for Enbridge. Was this chief of staff in a conflict of interest when he decided to put the interests of his former employer ahead of Ontario’s gas consumers?

Third part: Government lawyers warned the Premier’s staff and the former Enbridge lobbyists now working as the minister’s chief of staff that intervening in the OEB decision carried legal risks. They did it anyway. That’s why we’re debating this bill today.

They announced the plan to overrule the Ontario Energy Board, the regulator acting to protect customers—overrule them only 15 hours after the decision was published. I’ve never seen a government so determined to overrule an independent regulator and drive up gas bills for Ontario consumers.

Why is the government risking legal action in order to give preferential treatment to a gas monopoly over the interests of hard-working Ontarians?

Speaker, you had to be there to enjoy the show. No one will be surprised to hear that the Minister of Energy was bobbing and weaving like crazy to avoid answering the question. There were all kinds of diversions. Rabbits were pulled out of hats, red herrings were dumped on carpets, smoke was blown. The minister was a cat on a hot tin roof.

My experience around here is that when a minister can’t answer a question—and I’ve seen many over the years not be able to answer a question—then you have a minister with a big problem on their hands, because they like to be able to say, “You’re totally wrong; here’s the reason,” but when they dance and bob and weave and get into the red-herring stuff, you know that they understand they have a big problem on their hand.

We all remember the kind of—and I’ll just call it ambiguity in answers from ministers at the start of the greenbelt scandal. They wandered all over the landscape, sort of like a subdivision with no clear idea where it wanted to go. Why? Because what they were doing was wrong, wrong enough that they had to back off, bring in legislation to nullify those decisions, wrong enough that there’s now an RCMP investigation of the whole thing.

So far, we haven’t heard about Enbridge executives showing up at a wedding hosted by the Premier, but we’ve heard enough to know the government’s whole efforts are directed at enriching Enbridge and making life harder for families in this province.

This bill will strip Ontarians of protection from Enbridge’s attempts to gouge customers across Ontario. The minister, the Premier don’t have to do that. The Premier could take another course. The Premier could protect you, the Enbridge customers. He could protect your families and protect families across this province.

He knows that people are having a tough time. He talks about it regularly. We have debates, discussions, here in the Legislature, about the difficulties people are facing. People are pushed hard, as I said in the beginning. They’re facing rising rents. My colleague from Parkdale–High Park raised that just a few minutes ago. People are pushed to the limit.

They’re having a tough time with grocery bills. You’ve got major retailers that have engaged in squeezing people, squeezing their suppliers, squeezing the customers. The Premier knows that people are having a tough time staying afloat, and yet, today, we’re debating a bill that will protect the profits of Enbridge and raise gas bills that people will have to pay. It will take money out of people’s pockets. That’s the reality.

At the committee meeting a few weeks ago, we brought forward a number of amendments to protect people from higher bills, and I want to thank Unifor for suggesting two very useful amendments that would help reduce people’s Enbridge bills, one of which was to set up a system for monitoring and preventing leakages of natural gas from the system.

Let’s face it: Having gas leaks is bad in terms of safety, it’s bad in terms of people’s health, but it’s also bad in terms of the bills that people pay, because all of the customers are charged for the total cost of the gas coming through the system. Enbridge wants people to burn as much as they can: The more they burn, the more money is made. If the gas leaks into the atmosphere, well, hey, that’s just another form of consumption.

So did the government support that amendment which would be good for the environment, for health and for people’s bills? No, they did not.

Unifor also asked for action on the contracting out of utility functions. I raise this because a little more than two decades ago, there was a landmark hearing at the Ontario Energy Board about how Enbridge was hiving off parts of its operations to become what one would call a “virtual utility.” The ability to actually regulate the utility and control the costs they were taking out of people’s pockets was dramatically reduced when they contract out. In fact, it was alleged at the time that Enbridge was contracting out work—both direct maintenance and administration—to companies that they, in turn, controlled but which were outside the regulatory framework; in other words, there was no price control on them, which is why a regulator is there.

That was a good amendment, one put forward by Unifor which would protect customers from being gouged. No one will be surprised to know the government voted that down.

Now, we brought forward another amendment, and I want to thank Environmental Defence and Stand.earth for their suggestions for protecting customers from higher bills and that Enbridge pay for their own expansions. Pretty straightforward. Enbridge’s consultants know that there is a time limit to the gas distribution system in Ontario and across North America, and if the system starts phasing out more quickly—and it’s headed in that direction—the remaining customers get stuck with higher bills.

The amendment was to ensure that Enbridge, its investors, paid those extra costs, not the customers. No one in this room will be surprised to learn the government voted it down.

This bill is about making customers pay more, it’s about Enbridge getting richer, and when we actually get into the details of the bill in committee with amendments that would protect customers, they were refused by the government. It is focused on making sure Enbridge makes as much money as it possibly can.

I’m going to go back a bit to the decision by the OEB, the Ontario Energy Board, the regulator responsible for protecting customers from utilities.

Just before Christmas, the Ontario Energy Board announced the decision that would make Enbridge Gas responsible for the cost of expanding its gas system and protect almost four million customers from hundreds of millions of dollars in higher heating bills. Actually, I’m understating—we’re talking billions.

This is a very important point: Enbridge has investors. It has cash flow. If it wanted to put money into those new connections and collect from those new customers over 40 years, they could do that; no problem. They don’t have to take the money out of your pocket. They don’t have to take the money out of the pockets of the constituents that you represent. They could take it out of their own cash, but instead, they want it to come from existing gas customers.

I should say—again, I refer back to that 2002 decision by the Ontario Energy Board: They noted a pipeline Enbridge had been built that was uneconomic, one that actually drained money out of existing customers, and they said, “No, you can’t take that money from customers. The shareholders have to pay for that.” This is not unprecedented.

If Enbridge wants to put money in, they can put their shareholder money in and see if it comes back. But no, they treat customers like an ATM. They get permission to go to the machine, hit the button and take the money out of your pockets. That’s what’s going on.

The Ontario Energy Board, whose job is to protect customers from gouging, whose job is to protect customers from being taken advantage of, said, “No, we’re not going to support the increase that you’re asking for, billions of dollars for expansion of the system. It’s going to cost $300 to $600 per customer over the next four years.” They said, “Enbridge, it’s your expense. You pay. It’s yours”—entirely legit and something that’s been done before. The very next day in December, the minister announced that this government would be taking steps to reverse the decision of the Ontario Energy Board, the regulator they put in place.

Now I have to say, for those who have been around for a while, I used to refer to the Ontario Energy Board under the Liberals as glove puppets, as Muppets, and I think I was accurate, because I watched the performance. Those on the other side who were upset at many of the decisions made by the Liberals should be well aware that the Liberals skirted around the OEB. The OEB was there for a lot of show and display, but when it came to the fundamental questions, the Liberals said, “Well, very nice to have you, glad you enjoy your pay, but we’re going to make this decision. You’re not going to be part of it.”

So when this regulator actually stood up and said, “Hey, we’re going to follow our mandate and protect the customers of Enbridge,” I was astounded. They actually did their job. They had read their mandate. They listened to the evidence that was presented to them over a year—thousands of pages of evidence—and they said, “Damn, we’ve got to protect people.”

Of course, the party that used to attack the OEB for not standing up for customers realized that and said to themselves, “Boy, if this decision is allowed to go forward, then we’ve got Enbridge—a big company, very profitable—going to be very cranky with us.” That’s why we have this bill before us today. Enbridge and the government came together very quickly to protect Enbridge—within hours—and give the minister talking points, and obediently, the minister used those talking points and does to this day.

But, Speaker, wait; there’s more. Not only did the government decide right then to protect Enbridge, but they wrote the law to ensure that the regulator would no longer actually regulate. The bill restructures things so any well-connected lobbyist or team of lobbyists can get around the regulator. What kind of heaven have they created for utilities who want to pillage the public? The regulator, the Ontario Energy Board, is now there in many ways as they were for the Liberals: for display and not for protection of consumers. It’s an expensive decoration. It disguises where real decisions are made about your hydro and gas bills.

This is straight out of this government’s greenbelt playbook: decisions made in backrooms to protect powerful private utilities; not to protect you, not protect the Enbridge customers who are out there, not to protect the constituents who you represent, but to protect Enbridge.

The Premier is going to raise your gas bill. When you get the bill in the mail later this year with a notice saying, “We’ve got an increase,” I think you should remember who made sure that that happened. Make sure you remember who put their thumb on the scale to ensure that the price is higher. This Premier has acted and is acting to protect the very wealthy Enbridge and stick you and your family with the bill.

Not only is this decision that was protecting gas consumers going up in smoke, but future decisions will be in trouble. There were a few people who had comments. The Toronto Atmospheric Fund made a presentation. What was interesting to me was that typically they’re much more focused on environmental and climate issues, but in this presentation to us at committee their focus was on the reality of ending effective regulation. They wrote:

“We have reservations regarding the extent of the new ministerial authority proposed in section 96.2. As noted above, the OEB has a mandate to protect ... consumers’ interests”—I noted that before; that’s their job. That’s what they did—“while facilitating rational expansion of gas infrastructure....

“The OEB does this using a well-regarded transparent and evidence-based process in which all stakeholders are invited to participate, introduce evidence and challenge evidence introduced by other parties. This quasi-judicial standard of decision-making provides a safeguard, ensuring balance and alignment with goals of keeping energy costs down and expanding the energy system.

“Proposed section 96.2”—which is in the bill that’s before us—“permanently supersedes this transparent, evidence-based process with unrestricted ministerial authority to decide which gas infrastructure projects are in the public interest and who should bear the cost of the projects. Unlike the OEB, there is no obligation for the minister to consult stakeholders and transparently weigh evidence in an open process before issuing directives. This change also encourages project proponents to focus efforts on ministerial advocacy instead of putting forward rationale arguments and credible evidence in OEB applications and proceedings.”

What they’re saying is that the regulator is fully and truly just The Muppet Show; that everyone who can afford a lobbyist goes around that Muppet, goes to the minister, makes their pitch and, if they’ve been to a wedding or a stag, probably is successful.

Similarly, the Society of United Professionals, which represents the actual OEB staff, the Ontario Energy Board staff, spoke about the end of regulatory independence and they talked about the impact on investors coming to Ontario of the Muppet-ization of this regulator:

“At the heart of the society’s opposition to the proposed Bill 165 is the removal of regulatory independence from the OEB. Publicly traded companies that rely on regulated rates, and credit-rating agencies that determine credit quality in the province’s utility sector, need to trust that the regulator maintains its independence and does not become a political arm of the government.”

In a recent analysis, Standard and Poor’s Global, the bond-rating agency, laid out the four pillars of Ontario’s natural gas and electricity regulatory environment. They are regulatory stability, tariff-setting procedures, financial stability and regulatory independence. They further state that they “believe the Ontarian regulatory framework is the most credit-supportive kind, benefiting all key stakeholders.” However, they warn their assessment of the province’s regulatory framework could change if there was “a loss of regulatory independence or instances of political interference in the framework.”

Well, I’ll tell you right now, if you’re a credit-rating agency and someone is applying to invest in energy infrastructure in Ontario, and you know that you no longer actually have an independent regulator—that you actually just have a lobby machine that determines energy decisions based on who is most effective at getting to a minister—then you have an impact on the credit rating of investments made in this province. That is an argument that I would have thought would work on the government, because the argument was made in front of government members in committee, but it was ignored.

Also interesting were the words of the Industrial Gas Users Association—so you’re talking big employers in Ontario, major industries who use a lot of gas. They said there were two unintended consequences of the bill. I think they were overly generous, because I think they were entirely intended, but they said “unintended,” I think because they’re polite. They said that selective approvals—the ability to approve projects by going around the regulator—would push up costs for industry in Ontario; that uneconomic, nonviable projects would be subsidized by the industries that we depend on right now to employ tens of thousands of people.

So the big industries that this government talks about all the time didn’t like this. You should understand that they were not fans of ending regulation in Ontario. They said that the independent regulator has been useful in keeping costs down, but what we’re seeing now is going to drive costs up.

They also said they couldn’t understand why procedural fairness was something that was ruled out by the bill. I didn’t get into that, but there actually are rules in Ontario that governments and bodies should follow to ensure that decisions are made on a fair basis. Those were wiped out in this bill when it comes to energy regulation. They suggested that it was not a good thing to have that happen.

So, the Premier is planning to raise your gas bills this year, and in future remove any protection that Ontarians may have from lobbyists reshaping energy policy in backrooms. Man, I feel like I’m back in Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario. It is amazing. For anyone who was here for the gas plant scandal—

Interjection.

Well, it shouldn’t be shocking—

What’s happening with this is that the government has decided that they do not want an energy board that actually regulates based on rules, regulations and evidence. They want energy decisions made based on lobbyists and influencers who get to cabinet ministers and the Premier. That’s the basis of what’s going on.

I do find that shocking because I thought after our experience with the Liberals and them playing around with the energy board that this government, even if I disagree with them, might have more interest in a regulator that actually functions—

Interjections.

He’s clearly the minister for Enbridge—there’s no two ways about it—just as the Liberals were the ministers for TransCanada Energy. They were the ministers for whatever power producers wanted to build a gas plant. That’s who they were the ministers for. Yes, this is the minister for Enbridge. He’s looking out for Enbridge. He’s not looking out for you. He wants you to pay more. He wants you to have a higher gas bill. That’s the reality.

No, I don’t support the 20-year time horizon. I think, increasingly, it’s going to be unpredictable how long those lines will actually be functional. I think to be fair to gas consumers around the province who will have to pay more to subsidize this, they shouldn’t be the ones who take the risk that there will not be repayment.

As I noted earlier, coal use in this province for residential heating collapsed within a decade. Frankly, as we see improvements in other technologies and if heat pumps see substantial advances in the next few years, I can see mass abandonment of the Enbridge gas heating system. That would mean that in 20 years, it may not be there as an investment that you can collect on; it may simply be gone.

So zero seems the appropriate risk level—

No, I thought the point was really good, that he was endorsing it, that it worked and it worked well. I think that’s what we need for people across Ontario, something that works well that they can afford.

Interjection.

He wants to keep heating costs down. Well, look at the evidence. The evidence is that to keep heating costs down, you go to electric heat pumps. The technology is changing rapidly.

One thing that people should be aware of is that in the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act that’s in place now is investing heavily in advancing the technology for heat pumps so that heat pumps that already are quite functional at minus 30 will be even more efficient, more effective in the years to come. Places like Norway—Norway, people know about it, near the Arctic Circle—60% of the households have heat pumps. That’s how they heat themselves—60%. Finland, pretty close, around 50%. Sweden I don’t have the number for, but my guess is it’s in that range. They seem to be able to function, and they’re up by the Arctic Circle. If you want to be practical about cost, if you want to be practical about a system that gives you a more predictable kind of heat or energy basis or security, go to heat pumps.

He was talking about how this decision would discourage developers from using cost-effective and efficient gas. Well, frankly, it would encourage them to use cost-effective and efficient heat pumps. They’re going to put in an electricity line anyway; let’s face it. So if you’re putting in an electricity line, don’t worry about the gas, unless you’ve got a customer who really wants gas. Then you can offer it to them. It isn’t barred by anyone. If Enbridge believes what it says in its filings, in its claims, it’s certainly happy to invest in it. They can do that. They don’t have to come to us, the other gas customers, to pay for it.

Also, the pragmatic approach of the government to energy: Interestingly, the Electricity Distributors Association and the Royal Bank of Canada, who are not noted, again, as particularly radical organizations, both said that when it came to dealing with the immediate crunch in Ontario for meeting demand, it was far more cost-effective and far faster to invest in conservation and efficiency—both of them—and not just faster and more effective, but substantially cheaper. This government has totally ignored that advice. The Independent Electricity System Operator has said numerous times that energy efficiency is cost-effective. It is a great deal. That minister is ignoring the electricity distributors who, frankly, know a fair amount about electricity in this province, and the Royal Bank of Canada, that has an interest in this matter. His own organization, the IESO, has talked about the value of conservation and efficiency in terms of low cost and the ability to deliver quickly the sorts of reduction in demand so that we don’t have any power shortage. So I can’t say that his approach is really that pragmatic.

And just briefly about difficulties in both Alberta and Texas for failure of electricity systems in deep cold: In the most recent problem in Alberta, two gas plants went off-line in the middle of that crunch—two gas plants. They couldn’t be depended on. And in storm Uri in Texas, when they had those blackouts, again, it was the gas system that couldn’t handle the cold. The pumps for the gas systems were frozen. So in both cases we’re talking about problems with the gas infrastructure; that was the biggest issue.

I’m going to wrap up, Speaker. Don’t forget; this is really plain: The government wants you to pay more on your gas bill. It wants to raise your gas bill. It wants to ensure that Enbridge has higher profits. It wants to take money out of your pocket to the tune of 300 bucks over the next four years. Everything else is just smoke. All the other arguments are strange-looking scenery and don’t bear on the guts of it. This government wants to raise your gas bill. That’s it.

The OEB didn’t say, “No. You can’t put your money in and supply people with that 40-year loan.” Go ahead—no sweat. But you can’t take it from the existing gas customers. They are tapped out. So I say to you right now, your government should go to Enbridge and say, “Look, you’ve got big pockets. You put the money out. You try and collect it over 40 years.” Because 25 or 30 years from now, that system will have shrunk dramatically, and whoever is left holding the bag is going to have very big expenses, and I think Enbridge knows that.

We would tag-team going after them, yes. We used to go after them. We would go after them in committees, we’d go after them in the House, because we knew they politicized the process. And you guys are following that road—sorry; this government, Speaker, is following that road of politicized energy decisions. The outcome is not good.

So not only does the current government want you to immediately be stuck with a bill for a massive subsidy to Enbridge Gas—and I’m talking $300 per customer over the next four years—it also wants you to be stuck with the cost of future projects that the OEB, the regulator, might dismiss because they hurt the interests of gas consumers. The process of hearing evidence in public by a board of people with experience and a mandate to protect the public interest is replaced by a process where the best lobbyist, as I said before, brings home the bacon—your bacon—to whatever company wants access to a subsidy from you. This is not well received in many quarters and, frankly, is contrary to advice that the government has received. I’ll go to the advice first, and then I’ll go to comments from other quarters.

In its recent report, Ontario’s energy transition panel, appointed by this government to look at the transition—frankly, again, to the minister’s comment, a transition away from gas home heating to electrification of home heating; the minister made that clear—made a recommendation that is inconsistent with Bill 165. They recommended the OEB “should conduct reviews of cost allocation and recovery policies for natural gas and electricity connections, as well as natural gas infrastructure investment evaluations to protect customers and facilitate development of the clean energy economy.”

Well, this isn’t protecting customers. I didn’t hear the minister say once that when we change this, it will mean that the rate reduction that the OEB mandated will be maintained. No, no. The rate reduction the OEB maintained is out the window. Customers will not be protected. You can go all around the mulberry bush, you can do the ring-around-the-rosie, you can be the jack in the jack-in-the-box—whatever. It ain’t protecting customers. It means higher bills. That’s what this legislation delivers. Their own electrification panel recommended the OEB make the kind of decision that the OEB made, and that’s the one that this government is working hard to reverse.

Other organizations in the energy field had comments like this: Adam Fremeth and Brandon Schaufele from the Ivey Energy Policy and Management Centre wrote—again, Ivey school is not your left-wing hotbed, right? It ain’t. They wrote, “Overriding an independent economic regulator is a big deal. It is not something that should be done lightly. The government’s decision explicitly undermines the OEB and threatens credibility of future energy investment in the province.”

Note that: “future energy investment.”

When you have a government that operates in a way that is capricious, that is not open, that is not rules-based but is influence-based, then—it’s not true with all investors; maybe some think they can get that influence and get what they want, but a lot will say, “Ehh.” You put money into that province, you don’t know if you’re going to get it back. You don’t know if actually you’re going to get a return on your investment. You could be side-swiped by someone else who’s got more powerful lobbyists. I think their comment is a good one.

“Moreover, it’s not obvious that this move is in Enbridge’s long-term interests. Once a precedent to effectively overrule a regulator is established, there’s little to stop future governments from using the same tactic to different ends, perhaps against natural gas infrastructure.”

Interesting comment, very interesting comment.

Do you have rules-based, law-based regulation in Ontario, or do you set it up so it’s influence- and lobbyist-based? I think that’s the choice before us. We know what the government has proposed. Not only do they want you to pay more on your gas bill—320 bucks over the next four years—they are also setting up a situation where you don’t know what the rules are. The rules are whatever the lobbyists and the influencers can make happen.

I’m going to quote Mr. Mondrow again, energy regulation policy expert at Gowling: “Minister Smith would be well advised to consider the wisdom of the energy panel’s recommendation and leave the matter of further consideration of new energy connection cost recovery policies with” the Ontario Energy Board. I don’t know; he seems to know regulation. He seems to know energy policy. “Leaving this in the hands of the independent regulator would maintain transparency, consistency, public accountability and a thoughtful and reasoned balancing of interests. That, after all, is the reason for an independent energy regulator.”

I think that’s a pretty good summary. Why do you have a regulator?

The logical last step in this bill, really, is dissolving the Ontario Energy Board, because frankly, you realize they’re of no use to you. They’re an impediment to you, actually, just dictating what energy policy will be, based on what lobbyists and other influencers want to do. Those lobbyists—Enbridge—want to take money out of your pocket. They want to raise your gas bill.

Adam Fremeth and Brandon Schaufele from the Ivey Energy Policy and Management Centre also noted “the government’s decision to override the OEB should have virtually no effect on affordable housing in the province.” In other words, they fundamentally disagree with the Minister of Energy in his arguments that he made earlier today.

Now I’ll quote an environmental organization. Environmental Defence wrote, “This legislation would be bad for new homeowners”—true enough—“bad for existing gas customers”—yes, because they’re going to pay more—“and bad for the environment. The only one that benefits is Enbridge Gas.”

Richard Carlson, energy director at Pollution Probe, said, “The OEB was clear, correctly in my opinion, that the energy transition is under way and there’s uncertainty about the future of natural gas use in the province.”

Also, “As far as I know, the government has never intervened this directly in trying to alter an OEB regulatory decision, and that should be incredibly concerning to everyone.”

I think those are all fair comments. You have a government that, in order to look after its friends at Enbridge, is going to rewrite the law to make the regulator irrelevant and make sure that you pay a higher bill. No wonder people are concerned.

I want to take just a few minutes, because I don’t have a lot of time left, to comment a bit on the other items that came up in the minister’s speech earlier today. The minister said he wants to protect consumer choice. Well, frankly, consumer choice hasn’t changed. People can put in gas furnaces if they want. Developers can put in gas furnaces if they want. There are two options. One is that the investors, who receive billions of dollars from their investment in Enbridge, can put in a little more money to pay for those hookups and pay themselves back over 20 or 40 years. If they think that Enbridge Gas will still be in the home heating business in 40 years, they could do that. They could charge money to a new homeowner, if the new homeowner actually wanted that, but I would say if the new homeowner actually looked at the economics of a heat pump versus a gas furnace, they would go with a heat pump because it’s a better deal—no getting around it.

To say that he’s protecting consumer choice—not the case. Consumer choice isn’t being removed. What’s being removed is the subsidy paid for by all the other gas customers—just to be clear, $300 per customer over the next four years. Not a good deal for those who are customers.

This OEB decision would increase costs: I’ve already gone through the evidence—not the case. In terms of homeowners, the OEB determined it would be a wash, a very minor change one way or the other, and frankly, other commentators have said it wouldn’t be of great consequence.

Predictable energy environment: Well, I have to say, I noted earlier about the fact that increasingly we will be integrated into the world market for natural gas. To the extent that we stay with gas, our costs become more and more unpredictable. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Frankly, to say that it would be predictable doesn’t make sense. I think you’re far better off setting up a situation in Ontario where people depend on energy generated in Ontario—electricity—rather than depending on gas imported from the United States. Again, about 60% of our gas is from the States, and we are competing with others around the world who might want to buy that gas at a much higher price. If you’re talking about predictability, a predictable energy environment, you want to move away from fossil fuels and you want to move away from natural gas.

He talked about a common-sense approach. Well, I think a common-sense approach is that existing gas customers don’t get stiffed with a bill—$300 over the next four years—to make Enbridge richer. Frankly, the common-sense thing to do would be to look at the OEB decision, which was a very reasonable decision based on an awful lot of evidence, and say, “Yep, that makes sense.” The best deal for new homeowners is to direct them towards an electric heat pump. The best deal for existing gas consumers is not to charge them more money, not to raise their bills. That would be the common-sense approach.

Let me see. There were some—oh, yes, I just have to note the minister’s satisfaction with his own home heat pump: that he didn’t freeze in the dark, that it kept him warm through the winter. Hey, that’s great.

Interjection.

There’s another reality. A number of you who are gas customers—in fact, almost four million of you who are gas customers—know that around 2022, the price of gas went up dramatically. Now, what was happening in world events at that time? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the disruption of the supply of natural gas to Western Europe, and frankly, you had a situation where the world market was setting the price.

We in Ontario pay a much lower price than people do on the world market. But something that you need to know—a few things you need to know. One, about 60% of the gas we use in Ontario comes from the United States. It used to come from western Canada; it’s coming from the United States. And in the United States, there are large numbers of liquefied natural gas export terminals that are shipping that gas out. In fact, recently, there was a pause put on a few of those in part because industrial manufacturers in the United States were saying, “These exports are killing us. They are killing us. You need to stop exporting all the gas, because it’s changing our cost picture.”

Well, in 2022—and I remember this, because (a) I got a bill, and (b) my constituents came to me about it—a big spike in gas prices. If you will remember your gas bill, about half is the cost of getting the gas to your house; that’s the pipes in the ground. The other half is the gas, and that other part comes from the price of gas out on the open market.

I want to say to all of you that although it’s unpredictable as to whether or not we will see other spikes—and I have to say, wars happen and disruptions of energy supplies happen, and if I knew what the price was going to be, I would be running a side deal in gas futures and making a lot of money, so I won’t predict that. But I will predict this: the potential for great volatility. That is a huge problem for people, the inability to be certain what it’s going to cost them in the year to come to heat their homes. That is an issue, and to the extent that we stay with gas or expand the use of gas in this province, we expose more and more people to the volatility of those gas prices. That is not a good thing.

I had said at the beginning, and I want to say this again: The OEB didn’t say you can’t have a gas connection to a new house; it wasn’t a ban on gas. If Enbridge wanted to install new gas connections to new homes, they could do it with the capital that’s provided by their investors, and they could try and recover it over the next few decades. But I have to say, they understand the volatility of the world; they understand the uncertainty of the world and the potential that within two decades or three decades, you’ll have a dramatically smaller market for gas heating in this province—again, I follow the minister’s statement talking about electrification of heating—so that it may not be a good investment for those people who are backing Enbridge. No, they want to put the burden on you. They have asked the Premier to put the burden on you, the customers of Enbridge Gas, the multi-billion-dollar risk.

So Premier Ford wants to raise your gas bill. He has decided that higher profits for Enbridge Gas are more important than protecting you. He wants to increase the money that goes to Enbridge, and he wants to take that money out of your pocket. He’s protecting his buddies at Enbridge and sticking you with the bill, and that’s about $300 for each gas customer over the next four years. And that’s why we’re debating this legislation today, legislation to allow the government to overturn a decision by the energy regulator, the body set up to protect you, the customers, from the actions of utilities that want to squeeze as much money out of you as they can.

Speaker, high price is certainly at the heart of what we’re dealing with here—no getting around it. It’s an issue that people have very immediately on their minds. They go to the grocery store; they try to buy something electronic; they have to pay higher rents; they’re paying their energy bills; they’re squeezed.

However, there are other issues here, even if they’re not as top of mind as cost of living. The reality is the world is getting hotter. Weather is getting more extreme. It’s getting more unpredictable. Those climate changes are affecting the price of food, of insurance and a variety of other things. They are increasing the cost of operating government because they’re causing more damage to infrastructure. Drought and higher temperatures are reducing food production in many places, and we see the impact at the grocery store.

It’s not just climate change that’s affecting us at those grocery stores. There are retailers—big ones—that are taking the opportunity to squeeze as many pennies out of people as they can. But the reality is that as the world gets hotter and our climate more unpredictable, food prices will increase. As insurers face higher claims from catastrophic weather events, they pass the cost on to their customers. I’m sure many of you have seen those higher insurance bills.

I’ll just say there are three jurisdictions right now where the rise in those bills has led to some really dramatic changes: Louisiana, Florida and California. Many insurance companies are leaving those jurisdictions because they can’t charge premiums high enough to cover the replacement cost of the houses destroyed in extreme weather or in wildfires. Those places are having to provide a very limited state-sponsored housing insurance, where an awful lot of the risk is left with the homeowner and where those states are not happy that they’re having to provide that insurance, because I’m sure it doesn’t actually pay for itself.

As we get hotter, as weather becomes more extreme, people are not going to be able to afford the premiums that insurance companies will charge to protect their homes and their property. This is not a distant problem; this is a problem happening today in the southern United States and which will make its way north into Ontario and into Canada. Already in Canada, the insurance bureau has said something like a million homes are facing the potential of losing home insurance because of flood risk.

So we’ve got a situation where day-to-day life is going to become more and more difficult. In order to stabilize the climate and protect us all from rising food costs and to make sure that things like insurance are affordable, the world is engaged in an effort to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. To do that, we have to move away from fossil fuels like gas. That means many things, but one of them is that when we have a chance to reduce future gas burning—from heating, for example—we should take it. We’re in a situation now where new homes, if they get a heat pump rather than a furnace and an air conditioner, can actually have lower-cost heating and cooling than if they went down the gas route. The OEB recognized that in its decision.

Happily, this would mean lower costs for homeowners. Let’s assume that Ontario actually does build one million new homes over the current decade. Given that so far the targets are not being met, I think there are real questions about that. Let’s just say you didn’t reach 1.5 million but you reached a million. We have about four million homes in Ontario now. If all new homes were gas-heated, then we would face a very large new source of carbon pollution in Ontario. I don’t know how the government would meet its very weak target of a 30% reduction, but we would be making the world hotter and we would be paying for it out of higher gas bills. That’s what this legislation means.

Premier Ford wants to raise your gas bill, take more money out of your pocket and make the world hotter, more volatile and more difficult for all of us. That’s what we’re debating today: the whole question of whether we will protect customers, whether we will let the Premier increase your gas bill or not. He’s protecting his buddies at Enbridge Gas and he’s sticking us with the bill, and we’re talking about $300 over four years. Anyone who wants to pay an extra 300 bucks to help Enbridge Gas, please put up your hand. I’m sure that when the vote comes there will be a chunk of people in this room who will stand up and say, “Yes, I want to pay more and I want to help Enbridge.”

Now I’ve talked about the direct cost and the, let us say, absence of facts in the arguments made by the government in the minister’s presentation, but I also want to talk about the impact of effectively restoring the previous situation where the Ontario Energy Board is just a glove puppet for the Minister of Energy—not a good thing.

It’s bad news to change the law so that all future energy decisions or regulations through the Ontario Energy Board will be made in the same way the Premier made his decision about the greenbelt or about Staples or about privatizing health care: out of public sight, by politicians on a massage table or in Vegas or at a wedding party where they’re celebrating and drinking wine with lobbyists. Do we want that to be the way decisions are made around energy?

Let’s look at how the decision was made by the Ontario Energy Board on protecting people from higher Enbridge rates. Again, I’m going to go back to the excellent article by the energy lawyer Ian Mondrow:

“At 6 p.m. on December 21, the OEB publicly issued a comprehensive decision on an application by” Enbridge “for approval of Ontario gas distribution rates commencing January 1, 2024. The decision is the result of a thorough public hearing process, which involved more than a year of review, thousands of pages of company and expert evidence, a comprehensive oral hearing and a thorough process for submissions by” Enbridge, “OEB staff, and a number of informed, indeed expert, customer and public interest intervenor representatives. The comprehensive, well-written and fully reasoned decision is 147 pages long....”

So what do we have? We had a public process that people could attend or follow. I followed it for the last year. Thousands of pages of evidence were introduced—I have to say, I didn’t read thousands of pages; I read quite a few hundred, but not thousands. Interesting stuff. The consultant for Enbridge—two consultants. One consultant, their economic consultant, talked about the threat of a death spiral for this particular utility, because as the cost of heating by gas went up, more and more people would leave the system, and as more and more people left the system, those who were left behind would pay a higher fee, and more and more people would leave.

So, real risk to the system—how do you manage that? Part of the way you manage it is, you actually focus on repair rather than expansion, so you control your costs. That’s something the OEB was very interested in.

Again, you had a public process. You had people who were trained in adjudication and had familiarity with the energy system listening to presentations by those who had expertise with energy, who were hired as consultants to give information. These were not lobbyists who were wining and dining the board. They weren’t taking the board out for lunch, getting them drunked up and then sending them back into the room. No. They were trying to present evidence so that, in fact, you could have a rational assessment of the options before us.

What does the Premier want in the place of a public hearing with evidence that could be challenged by numerous intervenors and by adjudicators themselves?

Well, first of all, this bill gives the government power to overturn the key decisions within that OEB order that’s under discussion. This gives the government the power to increase your gas bill, to take money out of your pocket and put it into the pockets of Enbridge investors so they get richer. That’s what this is about. The government wants to have the power to make Enbridge richer and you poorer. It allows the minister, with the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council—that’s the cabinet—to direct the Ontario Energy Board that the construction of a new natural gas transmission line is in the public interest.

Normally, the Ontario Energy Board would hold a hearing to determine whether a proposed project is in the public interest—does it actually do what it should do; will it put a financial burden on the other customers; is there a justification for this that allows an investment of the money that’s taken out of the ratepayers’ pockets?

This provision in the act would oblige the Ontario Energy Board to grant leave to construct without a hearing. In other words, we go to energy decision-making by lobbyists and members of the government’s cabinet, or maybe just by the Premier’s staff—I’m not sure which; only the RCMP knows for sure who makes these decisions. It means that the ability to actually have decisions or proposals reviewed in public, with evidence presented, considered, challenged and adjudicated doesn’t have to happen anymore. It’s just lobbyists bringing home the bacon for their clients, and that bacon is you and me paying more out of our pockets to make Enbridge richer. It allows the minister, with the approval of the cabinet, to overturn any OEB order that either refused to approve a gas transmission line or required the beneficiaries of the expansion to pay upfront capital costs. In other words, if the OEB determines that a gas pipeline project is not in the public interest, then the cabinet can force the OEB to let it proceed anyway.

At this point, you have to ask: Why do you have a regulator? Because, frankly, they’re just scenery. They’re a mountain picture painted on a wall. They are of no consequence, because the real decisions will be made by lobbyists, cabinet members and the chiefs of staff who report to the Premier and those ministers.

There are other ways that Bill 165 would allow the Premier to force gas customers to pay costs that the OEB would otherwise not allow. Currently, no one can construct a new gas pipeline in Ontario unless the OEB determines this expenditure is in the public interest and grants leave to construct. This rule seeks to ensure that expenditures are properly scrutinized so gas consumers are not forced to pay for costly, uneconomical projects. So by deciding to allow politicians to make that ultimate call as to whether or not a gas line is in the public interest, instead of an independent regulator, there’s a risk—man, sometimes I really understate. This politicizes the energy regulation process. It just says, “Nope.” Thoughtful consideration—may I even say, just businesslike consideration—is out the window; it’s who has got the pull, who knows who and who can actually get the decision that you need.

There is an example of a previous government that operated this way: the Liberal government. For those who weren’t here when they were in power—

As my colleague expressed, it’s shocking, the thought that a multinational corporation that makes huge amounts of money by squeezing cash out of homeowners and tenants might mislead people. I know it’s incomprehensible to many here but, in fact, it could well be true.

The National Observer reports, “Enbridge has a new fight on its hands as Competition Bureau Canada officially launches an investigation against the gas giant over allegations the company is misleading customers about the role of gas in the energy transition.

“Specifically, Enbridge has promoted new gas hookups as the cheapest way for Ontarians to heat their homes, while branding natural gas as ‘low carbon’ and ‘clean energy.’”

That’s being challenged by the environmental organization Environmental Defence.

The National Observer reports, “‘Enbridge’s dishonest marketing is duping people into’” installing new gas hookups and spending thousands of dollars on new gas furnaces and other appliances, “‘falsely claiming it’s cheaper than heating with electricity, which is just not true,’ said Environmental Defence program director Keith Brooks in a statement.” It’s good that the Competition Bureau has agreed to investigate Enbridge.

“The complaint filed by Environmental Defence, Ontario Clean Air Alliance, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and a group of Ontario residents” in September, “accuses Enbridge of falsely claiming gas is the most cost-effective way to heat homes. Enbridge has made this claim online and in communities it has pegged for expansion in an attempt to increase its customer base.”

Environmental Defence summarized the situation this way: “Enbridge is misleading consumers into connecting to its gas system using false and misleading representations.... Enbridge is telling potential customers that gas is the most cost-effective way to heat their homes and suggesting”—and this I find totally entertaining—“that it is ‘clean energy’ and ‘low carbon.’ None of these representations are true.” That lack of honesty about what’s real and not real when it comes to home heating is something that people should keep in mind.

But the other issue—and this is a big one because, as the minister has said, we’re moving away from gas heating in our homes: People get caught paying as gas heating fades away. People are increasingly deciding to save money and protect the climate by switching from gas to electric heat pumps. As this process expands, the cost of the gas grid for those who stay with gas is going to increase, and new gas lines, installed to service new customers, will increasingly not have customers to serve. That was a finding by the Ontario Energy Board.

We’ve had these transitions before. This is not unique or novel in the world. Most of you have not followed energy history. I am a strange person; I actually look at the history of energy in this province. About 1958 or 1959, the TransCanada pipeline came through to Ontario from Alberta, bringing natural gas. This opened a whole new way to heat homes that was cleaner, more convenient and probably cheaper than coal. From 1960 to 1970, the portion of homes that used coal for home heating went from 30% to 1%. Within a decade, 30% of Ontario homes no longer used what had been a very popular fuel.

So I want to say to people here that you can have a very rapid transition from one technology to another, frankly, probably, with very little in the way of government programs in this case. People looked at, “Hey, we can spend all this money on coal, or we can go with an option that we don’t have to shovel, that is more convenient, that is just a flick of a switch on a thermostat in the wall. I’m going to go with gas”—a decade. And I have to tell you, just in that same report I looked at, that 1% at the end? Man, they were spending a fortune, because the whole of the coal delivery infrastructure shrank and became a much more expensive fuel to get. I don’t know why those 1% held on, but they did.

We’re facing a situation in Ontario where as we move away from gas home heating, something that the minister has said we’re doing, people who stay on the gas system, who get sold on to the gas system, are going to be stuck with much higher bills, and the pipes that are put in the ground are going to be paid for by those who can’t afford to buy a new heating system, ones whose furnace is eight years old. They’ve got about a 15-year lifespan. If your furnace is eight years old, you’re not going to get rid of it and buy a new furnace. Mostly, people can’t. They only buy when they have to, and they will get stuck with those higher bills. That’s a risk for homeowners and tenants. That is a problem that people are going to face in the future.

Frankly, continuing the subsidy from the existing consumers—and remember, Premier Ford wants to increase your heating bill. He wants to drive up your gas bill. He wants you to pay more so that he can create deeper problems for you in the years to come. I want—

Interjections.

Speaker, just to be totally clear, Premier Ford wants to raise your gas bill. That’s what this is about. Premier Ford wants you to pay more month after month, year after year. That’s what this is about. He has decided to protect higher profits for Enbridge by taking more money out of your pocket and the pockets of millions of others across this province. He’s protecting his buddies at Enbridge, and he’s sticking you and all the other customers of Enbridge with the bill, and that bill is going to be about $300 per customer over the next four years.

So if you think you should pay more on your gas bill, you should support the minister. And if you think you shouldn’t be stuck with that bill, if you think Enbridge should be the body that actually coughs up the few billion dollars that are going to be necessary, then you should oppose this bill that’s been brought forward.

I don’t know how to make it any plainer. I don’t know how to make it any plainer: He wants to raise your gas bill; he wants you to pay more so that Enbridge makes more money. That is what this is about. He wants to reverse the decision the Ontario Energy Board made in December to protect you from higher gas bills.

Now, it’s the job of the Ontario Energy Board, the regulator, to look out for consumer interests when energy companies apply to raise their rates. That’s their job. That’s their mandate. They are told, “Look out for consumers. Look out for the public. Make sure they aren’t gouged, they aren’t ripped off, they aren’t pillaged, they aren’t silently stolen from. Look after those customers. Whether they’re electrical utilities or gas utilities, protect the customers.” And that’s what they did. They did their job.

And now, the government is horrified that people are going to be protected from higher gas bills. They’re horrified that Enbridge will not continue to make the crushingly huge profits that they have been making, and they want to reverse that.

Enbridge is a multi-billion-dollar company. And frankly, there’s a bigger Enbridge that runs gas transmission lines across North America and there’s the smaller multi-billion-dollar corporation here in Ontario—not exactly on the edge of poverty; companies that have a few bucks available if they wanted to actually help customers. That isn’t what we’re dealing with here. What we’re dealing with here is a company that wants to squeeze every last penny out of you.

This bill will strip you of protection from Enbridge’s attempts to gouge customers across this province. The minister doesn’t have to do that. The Premier doesn’t have to do that. The Premier could protect you, could protect your family and protect families across this province. He knows that people are having a tough time. We have those debates, those discussions, here in the Legislature all the time. People are pushed hard. They’ve got rising rents. This government won’t protect them from rising rents. They’re having a tough time with mortgages. They’re having a tough time with grocery bills. You’ve got major retailers that have been engaged in squeezing people, squeezing their suppliers, squeezing the customers. He knows that people are having a tough time staying afloat, and yet—and yet—today what we’re doing is debating a bill that would protect the profits of Enbridge and raise the gas bills that people have to pay. It will take money out of people’s pockets. That’s the reality.

I have to say this: I’m saying that I’m impressed, and not in a good way, that the minister kept a straight face while he made that speech. That was extraordinary. I am impressed—not in a good way, but I am impressed.

Let’s go back a little bit. Just before Christmas, the Ontario Energy Board announced a decision that would make Enbridge Gas responsible for the cost of expanding its gas system and protect almost four million customers from hundreds of millions of dollars in higher heating bills. This is a very important point. Enbridge has investors; it has cash flow. If it wanted to put the money into those new connections and collect from those customers over 40 years, they could do that. They don’t have to take the money out of your pocket or your pocket or my pocket. They could do it out of their own cash—no sweat. But, instead, they wanted it to come from the existing gas customers. The Ontario Energy Board, whose job is to protect customers from gouging, whose job is to protect customers from being taken advantage of, said, “No, we’re not going to support this increase that’s going to cost $300 per customer over the next four years. We’re going to say, ‘Enbridge, it’s yours. It’s yours.’” And the very next day, the minister announced that they—this government—would be taking steps to reverse the decision of the Ontario Energy Board, the regulator that they put in place.

Now, I have to say, for those who are around for a while, I used to refer to the Ontario Energy Board under the Liberals as the glove puppets. You had the Minister of Energy’s hand there stuck up an energy board regulator and saying whatever the minister needed to have said. I was astounded that this regulator, this board, actually stood up for customers, stood up for consumers—astounding. They actually did their job. They read their mandate. They listened to the evidence and they said, “Damn, we gotta protect people.” Of course, this party that used to attack the OEB for not standing up for customers realizes that, “Boy, if they stand up for customers there are going to be some pretty heavy-duty private interests that are going to be really cranky.” So that’s why we have this bill before us today.

Now I want to go back a bit further. There’s a subsidy that gas customers do not even know they’re funding. If you talk to most people, they look at their gas bill and they see “gas” and then they see “distribution,” the cost of getting it through the pipes to their house. They don’t know that part of those rates is paying the cost of expanding the system. They think, “No, I just want to pay for the pipe that comes to my house. Why do I have to pay for these investments that you’re making that you’re going to make money off of?” That isn’t where their heads are at. I tried this out on my nephew at Christmastime. I said, “Do you know you’re subsidizing these new expansions?” He was outraged. He said, “Why? I just want to pay for my gas bill. I just want heat, that’s all. They want to expand, they can pay for it.”

I have to say, the independent energy regulator decided to put a stop to this subsidy because it raises energy bills for existing gas customers and for new homebuyers. This is not a wonderful gift for them. It sets them up for higher costs in the years to come and it also increases financial risks for the whole of the gas system.

Ending the subsidy would save gas customers over a billion dollars over the next four years in avoided pipeline subsidy costs. That comes to about $300 per customer. There are about four million customers on the system. Of course, that billion dollars doesn’t include the interest and the profit payments that go to Enbridge. So I’m talking the bare minimum, right? I’m just talking the minimum number that was cited by the Ontario Energy Board.

What ending the subsidy would do, aside from protecting existing customers from being gouged, is that it would encourage developers to install electric heat pumps in new homes instead of gas, which would provide cheaper heating and cooling for new homebuyers. And that is based on a variety of studies showing the reality of comparing the cost of capital and operating for gas-centred systems with capital and operating for heat pump systems.

So ending that subsidy would be a win, a win, a win and a win. It would lower energy bills for existing customers—wildly popular—and lower energy bills for new homeowners because they would be getting a less expensive system. It would lower carbon emissions—and actually, I think that matters. And it would avoid even more costs down the road to convert away from fossil fuel heating in the houses that were built with heat pumps from the start.

But there is a loser in all this. I have to be clear. There is a loser: Enbridge Gas. They would lose a lot of money. Frankly, they can afford it. They’re not exactly on the ropes. They’re doing well. I would say that if they are not making super gazillions of profits, but just billions in profits, they can probably survive, but many, many tenants and homeowners are having a tough time surviving. So our task, I believe, is to protect those tenants, those homeowners and not protect these multi-billion-dollar, multinational corporations.

Now, Enbridge is lobbying hard to stop that decision, to overturn that decision, and it has launched two challenges. Its court challenge boldly complains that the decision will mean “Enbridge Gas has no right or ability to invest and earn a return on capital for new customer connections.” In other words, it’s going to reduce their profits. Actually, I don’t think the OEB said you couldn’t invest; you just couldn’t invest with money provided by your existing customers. If their investors wanted to put money in, hey, there’s no barrier to doing that. They could go ahead. Now, there are questions they would ask, and frankly, the consultants who they quote in their submissions to the Ontario Energy Board raised big red flags about the potential for a lack of return in the future on those investments.

Minister Smith is trying to pass this legislation, the bill before us, to overturn that decision. The government of Ontario has decided to stand with Enbridge and its lobbyists, using the argument that change will reduce housing supply and affordability. But developers can just forgo gas and install heat pumps instead. If they have a customer who really wants gas, they can do that, but everyone gets an electrical connection in any event. So why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to install an electric heat pump and forgo that extra cost of putting in gas? And even if you didn’t want to go there, why do people around this province have to subsidize this? Why do people in Kingston or Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Windsor have to pony up an extra 300 bucks over the next four years to subsidize this multi-billion-dollar corporation?

You don’t have to take my word about the fact that this is not going to affect the cost of housing. I’m glad I went to public school in Ontario. It gave me at least one skill: I can read; sometimes I can do math—although people challenge me.

Ian Mondrow is a partner at the law firm Gowling WLG, practising in the area of energy regulation policy, and he wrote an op-ed that was published in the Globe and Mail. He can see that leaving the regulator’s decision in place would protect current gas customers and new home owners. Now, this is not the NDP research department—and, frankly, you should know that that is an excellent department. I’m just saying that they’re not ideologically ours; Gowling is not known as an NDP firm. But I’m going to quote the op-ed from this lawyer who specializes in energy regulation policy:

“While including gas connection costs to developers up front would marginally increase the cost of a new house, an offsetting rate credit recognizing the upfront payment would lower ongoing gas rates, resulting in a wash for homebuyers. The other choice would be to forego gas servicing in favour of electric heat pumps, thus lowering the operating costs of the house—a win for homebuyers.” The member from Perth–Wellington was talking about new home buyers. Well, you’ve got someone who specializes in energy policy saying this would be better for new home buyers. “Either choice would reduce Enbridge capital costs, and potential stranded assets, in the range of $1 billion over the proposed five-year gas rate plan period, significantly reducing delivery rates and customer risk.”

Two associate professors, Brandon Schaufele and Adam Fremeth of the Ivey Business School, wrote a post about this as well: “The government’s decision to override the OEB should have virtually no effect on affordable housing in the province.”

So if this bill passes, this ain’t going to make housing any cheaper. It is not going to be to the advantage of homebuyers. In other words, the government’s action will make you pay more and will not help new homebuyers, but it will mean higher rates for your gas bills. The Premier wants you to pay more. The Premier wants to raise your gas bill. Don’t get confused. Be very clear and plain about this. The Premier wants you to pay more.

Now, gas is no longer the cheapest heating source. Investing in gas pipelines for heating is financially foolish because they will become obsolete and a massive cost to all current and future customers as we stop burning gas to heat our homes and other buildings. Even the minister was talking about electrification of home heating. He knows it’s coming. What that means, over the next few decades, is that fewer and fewer people will be burning gas, and the people who leave the system will not have to carry the burden of the cost of those pipes that are in the ground, but the ones who stay will be stuck with it. There are cheaper alternatives to what’s been before us.

The OEB recognized that, like rotary dial phones, like Blockbuster Video, natural gas furnaces are coming to the end of their time—not tomorrow, not in 2025, but over the next 20 years, cheaper alternatives such as home heat pumps are undermining Enbridge’s market for home heating. The minister said exactly that. We’re going to be electrifying our homes. So the OEB ruled that Enbridge can’t spread the cost of hooking up new homes over decades or charge it to current gas customers like you, like the people who are watching this, like the people in this room who actually are still Enbridge customers. They’re going to be stuck with this cost. That’s what the Premier wants to do. He wants to increase your gas bill. The OEB said that Enbridge or new home developers have to take the risk, not new home buyers or current Enbridge customers. It recognizes that this would likely mean many more people installing the cheaper heat pumps to provide heating.

It was interesting to me that, again, the minister said he’s got a heat pump. He said when it gets really cold, the electric furnace backup in the installation comes on. Fair enough. I’ve got a heat pump at home. I’ve never been cold; I’m assuming the backup comes on when it gets really cold. But he didn’t say he was freezing in the dark. He said the system worked. If he had been freezing in the dark, believe me, all of you would have heard it. You would have heard the descriptions of the frozen bowl of water for the cat in the kitchen. You would have heard about the need to bundle up the kids and whisk them off to a hotel somewhere. No, he’s totally comfortable at home because he’s got the backup right there. Most of the time, the heat pump—probably all the time because the newer heat pumps are good down to minus 30—they’re totally fine in our climate.

I’m going to go back to Ian Mondrow about the question of how we can actually deal with the issues before us. Because passing legislation to reinstate a subsidy that’s completely out of step and risks financial disaster down the road doesn’t make sense.

The minister, in his statement, in his speech, said that the decision of the OEB would increase the cost of energy, increase the cost of a new home, and the facts do not support that claim. When you look for those facts, when you round them up, when you put them together and you compare them to the minister’s statement, they are not related; they’re not distant cousins. There is no blood relation between the facts and the minister’s statement. It’s just not there.

I’m going to go back to the energy-regulator lawyer from Gowling, Ian Mondrow, who had this to say about the claim by the minister. He writes in a more formal style than me but I think he’s quite good: “Early the following day after the release of the OEB decision, Ontario’s Minister of Energy released a statement expressing that he was ‘extremely disappointed’ with the OEB’s decision.... The minister asserted that the OEB’s determination on this point ... ‘could lead to tens of thousands of dollars added to the cost of building new homes, and ... would slow or halt the construction of new homes, including affordable housing.’” Well, good God. That’s a scary thought.

The lawyer, Ian Mondrow, goes on: “If those facts were true”—and I like the “if”—“then the minister could well have a legitimate and immediate housing policy concern. The facts as determined in the OEB’s decision do not, however, support a ‘tens of thousands of dollars’ increase in home costs, and it does not appear that the decision will in fact ‘slow or halt the construction of new homes.’ The conclusions expressed in the minister’s statement”—and, frankly, his speech today—“are inconsistent with the facts relied on, and determinations made, by the OEB’s three-member expert panel of commissioners as a result of the comprehensive hearing process undertaken.”

I want to say a few other things about the area of charges. I’m speaking to you gas customers who are going to get stuck with a higher bill if this legislation passes. One is that claim that gas heating is the cheapest option. Numerous studies now show that, when you compare the combined costs of equipment and energy, heat pumps provide cheaper heating than gas heating. Just look at putting in a heat pump or putting in a furnace or an air conditioner—those capital costs and then the cost over the lifetime, it’s cheaper to go with a heat pump.

In fact—and the minister referenced this in his speech—Enbridge, which keeps spreading the claim about gas being cheaper, is now facing an investigation and hearing at the Competition Bureau for false advertising.