Mr. Speaker, first, I believe it is unparliamentary for a member of Parliament to denigrate another member of Parliament with regard to his or her work or performance. I am sorry that the member from Nepean was named by the member and in fact is on his website again attacking another member of Parliament with his own judgment as to the quality of her work. I believe it is unparliamentary. As well, as we know the Speaker has already reprimanded that member for similar activity.
The member has not presented all the facts with regard to a number of the things that he said. I will give a couple of examples.
First, he indicated that no other Ottawa hospital is paying any rent because the city, the province and so on have given up all their debt and yet the Ottawa Hospital does pay $200,000 in rent for its land and the hospital, which goes to the city, also pays a per bed charge to the city. Therefore the member was incorrect in his information.
He also made light of the situation that there is a golf course on national capital lands and that it only paid a $200,000 deposit. If he had given all of the facts he would understand that it has ongoing obligations to maintain that property up to certain standards which would normally be the cost to the government. The member has, in those two instances and in many other cases, not given the full information.
I would like to ask the member a question which I posed at the government ops committee when he first brought this forward. If he is aware perhaps he could give the answer now.
The concern was raised that since the hospitals are funded in terms of their operations by the Province of Ontario, by provincial governments, that rent is included in that. To the extent that the Government of Canada or through the National Capital Commission would either charge no rent or effectively eliminate its current rental charges, the province would then offset and therefore effectively all that would be happening is that the federal government would be paying bills that were the responsibility of the provincial government, which would seem to be inappropriate and in fact would not help the hospital because on a net basis it would be in the same place.
If the member is aware of the answer to that, he knows the question from the government ops committee, could he confirm whether he has checked to see if the hospital would be insulated from an offset from the Province of Ontario?