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.