This isn’t where I was going to start, but I want to welcome the mayor of Fort Erie, who’s here today, Mr. Wayne Redekop.

Before I get into my complete speech, I just want to say to my colleague from Niagara, you’re seeing a different Niagara than I’m seeing on the streets of St. Catharines and Niagara Falls and Welland. We’ve got to do better for people on our streets. But I’ll address that during my speech.

But because the mayor of Fort Erie is here, I want to start by talking about the Fort Erie Race Track. I’m hoping that the Minister of Finance is listening in his office because it’s so important. What’s happening is—and I brought this question up last week—Woodbine is bullying the Fort Erie Race Track as they try to close us down. They’re trying to close us down. There’s no doubt about it. We’ve been fighting this for a number of years. The mayor knows this.

What they started with—and it’s a little complicated, but I’m going to explain it the best I can—is that horses that are in Fort Erie and Woodbine, they stable at Woodbine; they can come and race in Fort Erie. Under Jim Lawson’s leadership—the CEO—he has put a policy in place that if they stable in Woodbine, they can’t come to Fort Erie, which means that’s going to hurt us trying to get horses to come to our track. They are an A-level track. They’re the best of the best. We’re a B-level track, so we run claiming races for $5,000, $7,500, and some allowance races. But the problem is, once they say, “You can’t come to Fort Erie,” where are they going to go?

What Lawson has done is he’s now running races that are B-level races at $5,000 to $7,500 claimers. So he’s keeping the horses in Woodbine to run in those races. He knows he’s not supposed to do it. Here’s the catch—and this is why it’s important to the ministers that are here, because you guys talk about money all the time; taxpayers’ money is important. Woodbine is getting $110 million of taxpayers’ money to run that track, and the money can only be used for purses at Woodbine, which means your purses would run the higher races—$16,000 claimers, sometimes allowance races. So what I am saying to this government: We need your help. Fort Erie has been there for—I think it’s 116 years. It’s by far the prettiest racetrack in the entire country—actually, I think in North America.

The other thing that they did with us—we have a race called the Prince of Wales, and they have the Queen’s Plate. And it’s usually spread out so that you can run the—Triple Crown race is what it’s called. It’s similar to the one they have in the States. But what you can do is they spread it out so the horse that runs in the one race—the Queen’s Plate—then can run in the Prince of Wales. We get 15,000, 16,000 people coming to the beautiful track in Fort Erie. They put the races so close together those horses can’t even run in Fort Erie for our biggest race of the year, the Prince of Wales. It’s called bullying. And you know what? Fort Erie deserves better. Fort Erie has supported that racetrack, including through the town council, including when we had the slots here—which was a big mistake, taking the slots out of Fort Erie. That was done under the Liberals; it wasn’t done under you guys. So I’m asking all you guys, when you guys go to your caucus meeting—Sam, you go to your caucus meeting. You know about the Fort Erie racetrack—