Madam Speaker, there is a company that recently chose, over two locations in the United States, Detroit being one and I cannot remember the other, to set up its new multi-billion dollar facility just outside of my riding, in the riding of the member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington. She was there when the Prime Minister made the announcement, and she was quite excited about it at the time, as she should be.
The company, which is called Umicore, decided to set up its brand new lithium battery manufacturing plant right outside my riding, in her riding of Hastings—Lennox and Addington. The most telling thing about that was when the CEO was asked why he chose Ontario over Detroit and other options. The answer was that Umicore is making a sustainable product. It sees itself as a corporate leader in sustainability. When it puts inputs into its product, it wants to make sure they are clean. It recognizes that because of great leadership, like that of the member for Don Valley East and other provincial Liberals from a few years ago, we no longer burn coal in Ontario. We have the cleanest energy grid of all the options those companies are looking at.
Where are we in the world right now? We are at a place where it is no longer just individuals demanding sustainability and saying they choose sustainability over profit or over money. It is now companies that are actively saying they do not want to set up in an area where they know the resources going into their product are harming the environment. That is exactly what we are seeing now.
We have come to the point where even corporations understand the fact that clean energy is absolutely key, yet we do not even have a Conservative Party in which a member will stand up and say they believe in climate change. The member was asked a direct, straightforward and simple question by the member for Don Valley East, who asked the member if they believe climate change is real, and it was a complete non-answer. It is just so easy to stand up and say one believes climate change is real, but the member refused to do that. I do not understand why.
They are mouthing “yes” to me now, but now they just need to verbalize it. They need to allow the voices to come out of their mouths and admit they believe climate change is real. That is all we are asking Conservatives to do. I know they have it in them. They are this close, and I am here to be the support they need in doing that.
I know the Speaker wants to interrupt me to start question period, and I look forward to continuing afterwards.