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.