Mr. Speaker, I think it is quite legitimate to speak to health care and to the credibility of those who are proposing this particular measure. Let me continue.
Despite a promise from the Mike Harris government, no money came for two years to the Queensway Carleton Hospital for its promised expansion until the federal government transferred additional money to the provincial government.
Let me also point out that our hospital board was fired while John Baird sat at the cabinet table. It is simply not credible to accept that this is about health care. This is a current publicity seeking stunt that has everything to do with Mr. Baird's political ambitions.
Let me now speak to the issue as I see it. The hospital is extremely important to our community, too important to be made into a political football.
It is also important to our community and to this country that the greenbelt be preserved in its integrity. This is something that was part of a plan developed after the second world war to honour our returning veterans. It contributes to making the capital a symbol of pride and unity for all Canadians, a capital that will be passed on as a legacy for future generations.
Whether we like it or not, the NCC is obligated under legislation and regulations to charge market value for any land it leases or sells, as is every federal government department and agency. This was a rule brought in by a Conservative government pursuant to the Nielsen task force report of the mid-1980s.
This is a policy that is also overseen by the Auditor General, who is scrupulous about ensuring that the taxpayers' interests, the people of Canada's interests, are looked after.
I want to put on the record some things that have been brought up in this debate.
There has been a claim that no other hospital pays rent for its property. That is simply not true. The simple fact is that another hospital in this community pays rent to the NCC for property. The simple fact is that a third hospital in this community pays substantial rent to the City of Ottawa which is now in fact increasing that rent for the land it uses. It is also true that the Queensway Carleton Hospital, like every other hospital, pays $75 per bed in taxes to the City of Ottawa. Surely the mover of the motion is not suggesting that the city should forgo its taxes on the hospital as well.
The member has also spoken publicly about this lease costing potentially 40 nurses at the Queensway Carleton Hospital. He knows that is simply not true. He is going on figures that he himself made up and that have nothing to do with the likely real rent that might be agreed to between the NCC and the hospital.
He has also referred to the lease with the Pine View golf course. This is a lease with the City of Ottawa for the land on which it operates the Pine View golf course. In fact the city paid up front for that lease over $200,000, has invested nearly half a billion dollars in assets which now belong to the people of Canada to be leased at market value whenever the current lease expires.
The NCC is being as flexible as it can be within the rules and the laws it is bound to abide by. The hospital and the NCC are in discussions about reaching a mutually agreeable lease. I encourage those discussions to continue. I encourage all members of the House to support those discussions.