Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe reacts to federal budget

Joining us now for a reaction to that budget is Ottawa's Mayor Mark Sutcliffe. Thank you so much for being here. It's my pleasure. As we heard from Matthew, one of the biggest line items, $11.2 billion to put Canada on a path to end homelessness over the next decade. What do you hope that means for this city, for the promises you've made? I'm really excited to see this. We need the federal government to be our partner in ending homelessness. We've made a commitment we're going to end youth homelessness by 2030. We've also made a commitment to build a lot more supportive and transitional housing in the next five years than we originally planned to do. So the federal government making investments in this area is... I'm going to help us with that, and we're looking forward to partnering with the federal government to get this done. We have an opportunity, a historic opportunity, to end youth homelessness in Ottawa and then to keep going and end homelessness, period. And I'm looking forward to working with our federal partners on that. The city has been hoping for a bailout on transit, as you know, from higher levels of government for years, not to mention help expanding the LRT to Kanata and Barrhaven. But we didn't see anything like that in the budget today. Are you disappointed? What's your reaction to that? We're going to continue to work with the provincial government and the federal government on our transit priorities. The budget is one day out of the year, but I have a good working relationship with the federal government. I have a good working relationship with the provincial government. We talk almost on a daily basis about our priorities with people who are either in cabinet or with the premier, the prime minister, with people who work in their offices. So we're going to continue to advance those priorities. But there was still a lot of good news in this budget for Ottawa. When I see, you know, the talk about support. Supporting the museums in our city. Those are huge tourist attractions that are going to bring more people to the capital region. So that's great for our economy. There was a lot in there about the defense industry as well, which we're well positioned to capitalize on. So lots of good news in this budget. And, you know, a lot of your campaign commitments rely on federal and provincial help. Not only transit, also infrastructure. It doesn't look like it's here in this budget. Are you seeing anything here that gives you hope that, you know, any of that money will come through? Well, again, I work closely with both the provincial and federal governments and the budget is one day out of the year. We're going to keep working together tomorrow and beyond. And I'm going to continue fighting for Ottawa's fair share. As you know, too much of what we pay in income taxes and sales taxes goes to other places like the GTA to pay for infrastructure in those cities. We need to keep more of that money in Ottawa, have it invested here in our priorities. And I'm going to keep fighting for Ottawa's fair share. And when you meet the prime minister next, what are you going to be asking him? Do you have a big ask? We'd like to continue working with the federal government on all of our priorities, but I'm really excited about this homelessness funding. So I'll be interested to know exactly how that will be rolled out and how it will support the plans that we already have in place to end youth homelessness by 2030 and to build more supportive and transitional housing going forward. There are a number of other priorities that we're going to work on together. And as always, I'm very excited to work with the local MPs in the National Capital Region Caucus, including the Prime Minister of Canada, who is the MP for Nepean. Thank you so much. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe joining us tonight. Thank you. Thank you.