I appreciate the opportunity to be here, because it’s interesting, the member opposite, of course—both of them from the Liberal Party and also from the city of Ottawa.

I do have an opportunity later to address the budget bill, and I was looking at my Hansard from my maiden speech on April 18, 2006, against a budget of theirs. I remember saying at the time that it was a “buy less, pay more” budget that they offered. They actually cut funding from the farmers. They cut money from children and youth. They had an entire infrastructure budget, and they forgot the city of Ottawa.

If the members opposite would like to talk a little bit about the city of Ottawa and this historic $600-million deal made with Mark Sutcliffe, our mayor, I would love to hear it.

It is my pleasure to rise and debate today the budget measures act. Of course, all members of the assembly often say, “It is my pleasure to rise,” but really, I leapt at the chance and the opportunity to speak to this year’s budget for a number of different reasons.

First, I’ll say this: On April 18, 2006, I gave my first speech in the Legislature, my maiden speech, on the budget measures act, right after I had been elected to the chamber. As a result, I was able to speak both to the bill but also about the recent election, my ability to go door to door and the new mandate that I had received.

I spoke at the time about my constituents in then Nepean–Carleton—as you know, I represent Nepean now—and about what is important to the people that I represent. At the time, I recall—and I looked back just to make sure I have chosen words for this remark appropriately, but it hasn’t changed: The people of Nepean, indeed the people of Ottawa, expect their government to ensure that they have safe streets to support strong families and an economy where there’s a great deal of self-reliance so people can make more money, and while they earn more money, they keep more money in their pockets.

I was able to deliver that speech many, many years ago to talk about those wonderful people that I represent in the community, and I can tell you today, I still get excited when I go to a local event. On the weekend, for example, Speaker, I spoke to number of young Jewish students who were talking about mental health, given some of the realities we’re facing both in Canada and abroad.

Earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to have both the Premier and the Minister of Housing in the community to acknowledge the hard work that our city council has done under Mark Sutcliffe’s leadership as mayor to announce $37 million for Ottawa housing initiatives. I was able to talk to people like Big Brothers and Big Sisters in our community and, earlier today, to talk to people from Shepherds of Good Hope.

What is different from my community than all of yours is simply one thing: We are the seat of Parliament. Having said that, Speaker, we are so much more, and that’s why I have always decided it was imperative to stand up for the people of all of Ottawa to make sure that our voice is heard beyond the echo chamber that is the House of Commons and the Senate and the national press gallery—that there are people just like you and me that live there, that send our kids to school, rely on transit, want to make sure we can afford both groceries and our mortgage, and we give back. We give back in many different ways of philanthropism, through donations and, of course, through volunteerism.

I think of those folks. I think of Darrell Bartraw, whom we call Mr. Barrhaven, the man who puts on Canada Day every year and asks the province for a modest grant through Celebrate Ontario or Experience Ontario or Reconnect Ontario grants.

I think of these folks in the legion as we look at Vimy Ridge Day today in this assembly and acknowledge the hard-working people. I think of the folks at the Bells Corners Legion and the Barrhaven Legion who both have received Trillium Foundation grants over the years.

I think of the folks at Manordale and the work they do as a community association in supporting our seniors, making sure that they’re recognized and that they’re not shut in.

And I think of the people at the Roberts Smart Centre who need a new facility and have been fundraising to support Ontario’s most vulnerable children and youth who have both mental health issues but also, in many cases, criminality issues and trying to support them so we can better ensure their recuperation and perhaps even re-entry into life.

These are some of the organizations that I support and have supported over the years, and of course they’re also the people behind them that rely on the government of Ontario to continue to meet the needs that we have as we both grow but, at the same time, indicate to other Canadians, and Ontarians in particular, that we are not just a seat of Parliament; rather, we are the second-largest municipality in the province of Ontario. We are the largest agricultural city in the world. We are oftentimes the coldest capital in the world and our physical geography is larger than Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver all told.

One million people—and they all don’t live on Wellington Street or Elgin Street in Ottawa. They live in communities like Navan where farmers, each and every day decide that it’s important for them to be able to work and get support from our government.

They work in places like Orléans where we are going to be having a lot of investments from the Ontario government into the ByWard Market in order to protect and preserve not only a great tourism asset but important communities.

We are investing in homelessness in Ottawa to ensure that the ByWard Market and other places in the city of Ottawa can best accommodate those who need assistance. These are the types of supports that our government in the province of Ontario has given most recently to the city of Ottawa in the form of a $600-million deal that was signed between the mayor, the Premier and, of course, our finance minister, Peter Bethlenfalvy.

I can say, Speaker, that that is incredibly important to me, because as Ottawa grows, so does our diasporas. We have many new Canadians who have decided that Ottawa should be their home, and we couldn’t be more proud to welcome people; we just want to make sure that there is adequate housing for them, that there is skills development and training for them, that there are seats in our universities and in our schools. That’s why I was excited, in this most recent budget, to see that we are a city for all people and our province has acknowledged that. That is why we are investing so heavily and mightily into some of these core issues.

In this last budget alone—and I was pleased when the finance minister acknowledged one very important project I’ve been working on, the Barnsdale interchange off of Highway 416. I was proud that we’re going to upload Highway 174 in the east end of the city.

I was proud that the Minister of Colleges and Universities and the Minister of Health were able to work together to invest in more nursing spots at Carleton University while getting practicum at the Queensway Carleton Hospital.

More schools are coming. They’re coming to Orléans. They’re coming to Kanata, and a Transitway in Kanata. There are more schools in Barrhaven, there will be more schools in Findlay Creek and there will be more schools in Riverside South and in Stittsville.

This was a great-news budget for the city of Ottawa. When you talk about building a better Ontario, we saw it with that key announcement of key priorities in my community that needed to be addressed.

And I couldn’t be more proud, of course, than to say we are going to have the second-largest new hospital build in the entire country at the Civic unit. I was excited last week to receive from Graham Bird an update on the building of that facility. But also, as somebody who goes to the Civic hospital almost on a weekly basis to receive my bipolar supports from my psychiatrist, I’m very excited about what that means not just for the patients and not just for the doctors, nurses, custodians and others who work there, but for the people who are going to be building this state-of-the-art facility that is going to be second to none.

I know in the months and weeks ahead, as the Ottawa Civic Hospital celebrates its 100th anniversary and CHEO, which is the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, celebrates its 50th—when I was community and social services minister, I was able to make a big investment there for their 1Door4Care. They are going to be celebrating these great milestones. That’s going to be exciting.

We’ve got more long-term-care facilities that are being built in Ottawa—especially in Barrhaven, I might add, where I was with the Minister of Long-Term Care not too long ago, and I look forward to doing a ribbon-cutting, of course, with him. This is great news.

And it doesn’t stop there, because we are working with Invest Ottawa to create more jobs in the global expansion fund and ensure that that is dealt with.

Finally, we’re excited that we are going to be investing more into policing. As a city, as I said, that is growing, we are not immune to auto theft. We are not immune to other types of violence and gang activity. And so, having that in our community is going to be critical. Sadly, Speaker, as you’re aware, my community just a month ago dealt, sadly, with a massive multi-murder situation where an entire family, with the exception of the father and a friend, were all sadly taken by one criminal.

So, Speaker, that’s what we’re doing. We’re investing into a new nurse practitioner-led clinic. Things are getting so much better in Ottawa as a result of these investments that I have to say, in the 18 years I’ve been here, this is the most excited I’ve ever been about a budget, and I recognize it’s not easy to be excited about a budget.

Thank you very much to the member from London–Fanshawe. I know she comes here with a lot of vigour to express her opinions. I appreciate them—I actually respect them—but I will disagree with her.

I’ve been privy to having the Minister of Education come to my community and open up child care spaces, much needed in a growing community. Do you know what they called Barrhaven sometimes? “Babyhaven,” because we have a lot of children. I’ve been, as I’ve said, fortunate enough to have the minister come there and utilize his existing budget and what we’ve expanded here into making sure that that’s a reality.

In addition, as I say, in a high-growth community, we’re building a lot of schools, not only in Nepean but in Carleton and Kanata–Carleton and Ottawa-Orléans. In fact, I do believe somewhere in the inner core, they are looking for new schools in some of the other school boards. So in Ottawa, that is what we’re doing to address the shortages that have been long-standing.

(1) We need housing for homeless, which is part of this deal;

(2) We need support for the businesses that are down there, which is part of this deal; and

(3) We need to make sure that we are dealing with the criminal activity that is happening in the market and then spoked out across the rest of the city.

So there is a significant investment there to support the Ottawa police, and, of course, it’s not just about supporting the Ottawa police where it pertains to criminal activity—and safety, let me add—in downtown Ottawa. It’s also there to support communities that are high-growth like mine and Orléans and other places, where their proximity to highways makes them targets for auto theft. That’s something that we’re looking at as well.

Maybe one day he’ll take me out for a plane ride. That sounds kind of exciting.

As long as you don’t throw me out, I guess that would be great.

We certainly want to say thank you to all of our firefighters across Ontario for doing the great work that they do. I do know, in speaking with my colleagues over at the ministry of labour, skill development and whatever else they’re responsible for, they are investing in order to support our firefighters where it comes to that.

But do you know what we have in Ottawa, Speaker? We had one in my backyard in the summer—tornadoes. I know that our government has been responsive to my community—not once, but twice—as we’ve dealt with tornadoes. These are some of the matters that are very important.

I will tell you, though, in that first budget that I spoke to back in 2006, the Liberals cut the MNR budget, and I’m not sure it has ever gone back to where it should be. In fact, there was a time when our MNR officers actually had to sell cookies at a bake sale for the gas in their vehicles, under Dalton McGuinty.

Speaker, it’s unfortunate that the member opposite, also from Ottawa, chose to ask a question about a number of staff in Queen’s Park rather than talking about the issues from the city of Ottawa—why we’re here to fight.

If he wants to talk about the derecho—I drove through the derecho. It happened in my constituency. It happened in Barrhaven.

I can tell you, after dealing with what we dealt with in 2018, the Premier was right there flipping pancakes with me, as myself, councillor Jan Harder, at the time—now retired—and Darrell Bartraw, who I mentioned earlier. We fed over 10,000 people. I was a cabinet minister at the time, and I will never forget the generosity of the people of Ottawa.

As I said, we are more than Parliament Hill. We’re more than the Big Smoke. We’re more than places where laws are made. We are the place where people live.

And we, yes, had two tornadoes—the Premier was at the first one.

We had a derecho in the middle of an election; you’ll recall it.

I can tell you this without a doubt: I don’t stand up here unless I’m fighting for the people of Ottawa.

We have been good friends a very long time, and so I know it won’t come as a surprise to you, particularly because you hear me in caucus weekly, that Ottawa has always been and always will remain my number one priority—and the entire city, but in Nepean, I was so proud that we got the Barnsdale interchange; that it was actually mentioned in the budget speech by the Minister of Finance. I was very proud that they packaged a great deal for the city of Ottawa to talk about homelessness, to talk about policing, to talk about building new homes, to talk about new medical issues that we’re going to be dealing with in terms of nurse practitioners.

I was so pleased to see that we’re finally going to upload Highway 174. This is good for the city of Ottawa, not to mention—I’m not even getting into the new schools that myself, the member from Carleton, the member from Orléans and the member from Kanata–Carleton are going to get in our communities as a result of this budget.

Is it perfect? Meh—is anything? But do you know what’s great? This budget. It’s a lot better than any budget I’ve ever seen in the province of Ontario.