Friends of Ojibway 'ecstatic' to see park included in federal budget

Joining us now to chat more about the Ojibwe National Urban Park is Mike Fisher. He’s with Friends of Ojibwe, a volunteer organization raising awareness of the Ojibwe area. Mike, thanks so much for joining us. It looks like a beautiful evening to spend some time in a National Park that the federal government just gave a lot of money to. Yeah, thanks so much. Big. I’m here with supporters from the Friends of Ojibwe Prairie and our close partners with Unit 4, Local 444 Environment Committee. So we’re we’re quite excited we’re out here today to celebrate. So thanks so much for for taking the time to chat. I was just going to ask how did you react when hearing about the money in the federal budget that’s earmarked for the Ojibwe National Urban Park? Oh, it’s fantastic. Like it’s one of those, you see the efforts going on and you see that there’s been those, those commitments to it happening. But really once you see it in the budget and once you see it highlighted that way and the funding becomes real, that commitment from the federal government’s just fantastic. And we’re all ecstatic to see, you know, the full commitment of that funding to make sure that this goes forward and that the work can be done to make sure we get the gem of an actual urban park we’re all looking for. Advocates have spent years lobbying to protect Ojibwe. How big of a step is this towards that goal? Oh, it’s absolutely huge. Really like you know, there’s there’s so much the community is on board, the City of Windsor is on board, the province, the federal government. And you know really we wanted to see this, this commitment and funding because it provides the resources necessary and that commitment over multiple years to get the park going. So you know, we’re really, really looking to see where we could use that funds to move that project forward, how we can identify the lands and partner with First Nations communities and how we can work as well in terms of legislation, how we’re going to protect this part for future generations so that we. Can maintain this wonderful gem and show the rest of Canada what we have here in Windsor, Essex. We just heard Eric Kuzmic kind of talk about a timeline and you know working with some of the partners to to get this finished. What do you hope to see next? Hoping to see again it was nice to see a memorandum of understanding, fantastic to see with Caldwell first station and there’s lots of conversations going on with Walpole Island first station and the Chip one of the Thames. So we hope to you know see continued first Asian support and 1st Asian Collaboration. Certainly want to see the stakeholders here locally get everyone in our community weighing in what they want to see in the park, what they want to see those boundaries. And then again that conversation about how we’re going to protect this long term, how we get to legislate and how we going to protect it in law and in having all those conversations happen together. So that you know what we end up with at the end of the day with the funding. Strong commitment from the federal government really reflects the gem we have here, Windsor Essex to make sure we’re protecting it for for you many, many, many years to come. Thanks so much for that, Mike. That is Mike Fisher with Friends of Ojibwe.