That's a very good question. There's a lot to consider there.
I recall sitting with a former colleague of all of you, my good friend whom I introduced to the Liberal Party many years ago, Arnold Chan, when he worked for the province. He pulled me aside, ironically, at a little bistro on Yonge and Sheppard, I think in Mr. Ehsassi's riding, to suggest that the green project, the Green Energy Act, was going to leave a devastating impact on Ontarians. Ten years later, he's correct.
Of course, I look at my bill, at 5.7¢ or 5.8¢ a kilowatt hour, moving to 17¢ a kilowatt hour. These are massive increases in the cost for pretty much everyone—not just for manufacturing, as you have pointed out, but for consumers. Let's not forget that a $6.5-billion debt for the province of Ontario is also being incurred each and every year in order to, as it were, cushion the effect of these increases.
If you want an example of how not to go about pushing green energy, the Ontario model, from which many of my colleagues in the House now have really derived their push on energy, this is definitely not a model to follow.
What concerns me about all this, though, is that there is very little discussion about the fact that Canadians are seeing ever-increasing levels of costs—the cost of living and the material effect it is having on their bottom line. Is it any wonder, Mr. Poilievre, that we see MNP, insolvency trustees, coming out saying that 53% of Canadians are less than $200 away from bankruptcy?
While we talk about all these wonderful ideas about how we want to convert the rest of the world, while we are dealing with a veritable crisis—a health crisis, not a climate crisis—why are we talking about something that is completely irrelevant and perhaps devastating to the economy as a whole, at a time during which we should be rewarding and working hard to get our energy sector back up and running?
We have a great record. I was a member of Parliament for a riding [Technical difficulty—Editor] invented clean energy. Fifty years before that, we had the Adam Beck hydroelectric projects.
We have produced clean energy. We should continue down that road and emphasize technology as it comes forward [Technical difficulty—Editor] and not taxes that burden the Canadian economy at a time that is extremely sensitive for most Canadians.