Well, yes, there is no question; I'm based in Ontario, and I pay those astronomical hydro bills personally. It's been referred to most recently, unfortunately, as a “heat or eat” conundrum. People are actually going without other necessities because in our climate and in our environment, we can't do without hydro.
That is a provincial responsibility and not your purview, but broadening it out, say to carbon taxes in general, the federal government has announced its intent...and again, it will be manifested through the provinces. We don't really know what it's exactly going to look like at the moment, but I don't think there's any question that we all need to consume carbon in one form or another, multiple forms in most instances, and it's going to be a regressive tax. Here in Ontario, it's probably the worst possible incarnation. They're talking about a cap-and-trade system, which, as we've seen in Europe, is a huge corrupt mess that creates lots more bureaucracy with very little gain. Recently, some other countries have actually abandoned their carbon taxes, Australia as an example, because it was such an abject failure.
Again, it's not specifically in your terms of reference for this committee, but I think it's pretty hard to avoid the consideration of taxes like the carbon tax without some kind of corresponding.... At least British Columbia did offset it by reductions in income tax. The Prime Minister has said that the federal carbon tax will be revenue-neutral, and that is just not true at all. For the vast majority of provinces that have announced today the type of carbon tax...Quebec and Ontario, for example, both with a cap-and-trade system.
I think it's the elephant in the room, really: a brand new tax on everything. It will affect everything we consume one way or the other. I think it would be pretty tough for this committee to be able to ignore the elephant in the room.