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.