Madam Speaker, I take this opportunity to wish the people of Canada the best for the season from the constituents of Windsor-St. Clair. I congratulate my colleagues on the end of the term and thank them for their co-operation over the year. I wish them the very best and of course yourself as well.
Election day 1993 gave us a tremendous majority and with that came a mandate for change. Windsor and Essex County is one area in which there was a tremendous Liberal vote. The ridings of Essex-Windsor, Windsor West, Essex-Kent and my own riding of Windsor-St. Clair voted overwhelmingly Liberal and remain overwhelmingly supportive today of the Liberal government.
That is not to say there is not room here in a prebudget debate for us to set out a little shopping list of things we are concerned about, that there is not room to say the people of Windsor have their concerns and they want to communicate to the Minister of Finance and to the government those concerns.
Windsor is a special place. It is the centre of my universe. It is special because of the way its people relate to one another, try to take care of one another and relate to the rest of the nation. People who do not know the community tend to think of Windsor as a blue collar town, as perhaps a kind of rough, tough and ready border city. They are right, it is, but it is also a very sophisticated and very beautiful community.