moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider transferring the land currently leased by the Queensway-Carleton Hospital from the National Capital Commission to the Hospital at a cost of one dollar.
Mr. Speaker, it is often that we rise in this House to discuss matters of important national character. Today I have the distinguished pleasure of speaking on a matter of local importance to my constituents. It pertains to the Queensway Carleton Hospital, which sits about three minutes outside the constituency I represent and services a catchment area, including roughly 400,000 people, some of whom are in the most aging demographic in the whole country. This is a hospital that provides indispensable care to constituents throughout my riding and also throughout the city of Ottawa and the national capital region.
Today I discuss a unique issue. The hospital sits on land that is owned by the Government of Canada, the National Capital Commission. It has paid nearly a million dollars in rent since its formation in the early seventies.
The current lease arrangement that exists between the hospital and the government will expire in roughly eight years, at which point the Liberal government is threatening to raise the rent by several millions of dollars to equal full market value. This would have the pernicious impact of costing the hospital, in the words of its outgoing chairman, as many as 40 nurses. It could also block plans for the hospital to build a cancer care centre and to provide family doctors right on site in a community that is sorely lacking of those resources.
My motion calls on the government to do what most municipalities and provincial governments already have done for their local hospitals, which is to turn over the land to that hospital for the price of $1. This is standard treatment for most municipalities and provinces. In fact, there are at least two hospitals in the city of Ottawa alone that received their land from the city of Ottawa for the price of $1.
It merely follows in a logical order that the Government of Canada would do the same thing for this local hospital.
This issue was brought to my attention by great community leaders like D. Aubrey Moodie, who was one of the hospital's founders. He indicated that this was a problem, but so did the chair of the hospital and its CEO and members of its board. All of them had attempted in the past to bring this matter to the attention of the government, but with no success. In fact, people attempted to bring this matter to the attention of the member for Ottawa West—Nepean. Her inaction on the matter had caused them to turn elsewhere to find some resolve.
I would like to begin by thanking some members of the House who have supported our hospital thus far, members of the Conservative caucus. We also have had support from members of the New Democratic caucus. I make particular mention of the member from Winnipeg who has showed excellent resolve and the Bloc member for Repentigny who also has supported the local hospital.
Neither of these members have direct interest in this hospital, as their geography puts them at quite a distance. Because of their altruistic desire to see health care provided across the country in a manner that is fair, equitable and complete, they have come to support of this hospital.
So far though, I say with great regret, we have not seen any support from any member of the Liberal caucus. Not one member of the Liberal caucus has taken any action whatsoever to bring about positive resolve for our community hospital.
In advance of their rising, I will address some of the bureaucratic obfuscation that we can expect from the Liberals in tonight's debate. I will go through argument by argument and dismantle piece by piece all the bureaucratic obstacles which will be presented by the Liberal caucus in this evening's debate and beyond.
First, they will argue that, if the hospital gets its land for $1, then the government's entire real estate portfolio will come tumbling down, that tenants of all sorts across the country will suddenly demand that they too should have land for $1 and that the assets of the Government of Canada will therefore be cannibalized.
I reassure them in advance that the sky will not fall if this hospital gets its land.
Let me provide the reasons why. First, municipalities do this all the time. Second, the Government of Canada has done it before. For example, the National Capital Commission owns the land on which the Pineview Golf Course is located. It charges that golf course $1 per year in rent.
The government will argue that the golf course made a down payment of $200,000 some years ago. That is true. This hospital has made a down payment of nearly $1 million because it has been paying year after year. The hospital has paid five times as much in down payment and now merely asks for the same treatment the Liberal government has given a golf course. Members opposite, even those who represent the region, oppose the hospital and come to the defence of the Liberal leader who is responsible for this problem.
Third, other hospitals in the country sit on federal land. Veterans hospitals and aboriginal hospitals sit on federal government land and the government charges them zero rent. In fact, only one hospital in the whole country pays rent to the federal government and it is the Queensway Carleton Hospital. It is the exception to the rule. It is my view that exception should continue no longer.
The next argument Liberal members will make is that the hospital's lease expires in 2013. We have plenty of time, “Don't worry, be happy”. Hospitals have long term planning cycles that go 10, 15 and even 20 years out. They hire demographers to plan what population will be in the region 10 or 15 years from now so they can make budgetary decisions and capital investments today that will support the long term care of the community.
This hospital needs to plan whether it can build a cancer centre, dental offices and family doctor centres on campus, as the board is actively considering. Those decisions, if they are to be taken forward 10 years from now, must be made today. The financial decisions and overall planning of the hospital campus must happen now. Those decisions cannot occur with this multi-million dollar cloud hanging over the hospital's head. It is impossible for any institution to make decisions of that enormity if it may have to face a multi-million dollar rent increase within the current hospital planning cycle. In other words, it needs to know immediately what its situation will be at the termination of this lease.
Finally, the hospital plans in the imminent future the possibility of constructing a building on-site which could be rented to family doctors, dentists and other health care practitioners which would generate revenue for the hospital and bring more specialists to our community. That cannot occur unless the hospital has control of its own land and an assurance that all the rental revenues that would come from those buildings would go to the hospital and not to the Liberal government. Again, this issue needs urgent resolution.
Another argument Liberals will make is that Treasury Board rules prohibit them from giving the hospital control over its own land. They will point to clauses in the Treasury Board guidelines which indicate that full market value rent must be exacted from the tenant in order to live up to the rules of the Treasury Board. They managed to do it for a golf course, but let us go even further.
The Treasury Board is a cabinet committee, meaning that the Liberal cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister, and he should be responding to this issue today, has the full authority to overturn or create some sort of dispensation for this hospital at any time it pleases. In fact, it makes all the rules and the cabinet is the master of its own destiny. That means this decision is entirely within the hands of the Liberal leader and his Liberal cabinet.
The Liberals cannot simply blame the NCC and claim that the decision is out of their hands. They are the ones who are responsible for the punishing rent that awaits our hospital. They, at the next cabinet meeting, should they have the political will, have the authority to decide there and then next Tuesday morning to give the hospital its land.
Why will the Liberal Prime Minister not make that decision? He is dithering again. What is funny is that the Liberals did not have to dither that long when it was their friends who needed money. When they were handing out money in the sponsorship program there was not some complicated process of rules that had to be followed. They simply handed the money over to their friends.
To this day, through the Technology Partnerships Canada program, Liberal lobbyists are making money hand over fist and breaking all the rules. It just seems that the Liberals are fully prepared to bend and break any rule they want when it puts money in the pockets of their friends but when it comes to a hospital, oh, there are rules. We cannot have the rules broken because a hospital perhaps will not profit the Liberal Party of Canada.
I would argue that it is far more important that we provide this hospital with its land and its financial security than it is for that party to continue to pillage the public trust and waste Canadian tax dollars. However once again we will see Liberals rise in the House and they will list 15-year-old reports and bureaucratic rules dating back before I was born, collecting so much dust because they have not been pulled off the shelves for decades and decades, but they contain some small clause that would stop the Liberals, they claim, from giving the hospital its land.
That kind of bureaucratic obfuscation will not convince anyone. It will not convince this party, which actually supports health care and fights for its citizens, and it will not convince the people of west end Ottawa who desperately need the services of this hospital.
Today we stand before the House with an historic opportunity to defend the interests of an entire community of 400,000 who rely on a hospital. There is no reason why every member of every party in the House cannot unite hand in hand with the goal of this hospital's future prosperity in mind.
After having heard some of these facts I have shared this evening, I am sure that members of the Liberal Party will have changed their view and that when they rise today they will have agreed that this hospital is worth more than the rental cheque that the Liberal Party and the Prime Minister want to collect from it.
I want to close with a message of empowerment to inspire the government to change its ways. I will close with a very brief story if I have the time.
There once was a young boy who had a sage teacher, up to whom he looked all the time. He came to the teacher all the time and asked him questions for which that teacher always had an answer. He tried to stump him with question after question and he never could. The wise old sage always had a response.
The boy went to the sage old man with a butterfly in his hand and said, “Teacher, is this butterfly alive or is it dead?” The older gentleman thought for a moment, “How do I answer this, because if I said it was alive, the boy would squeeze it and suffocate it and if I said it was dead, he would open his hands and up to the sky it would flutter”, so there was no right answer. The boy asked once again, getting more cocky and happy, he said, “Is it alive or is it dead?” The wise old man said, “Young man, the answer is in your hands”.
The answer is in the hands of the Liberals. I call on them to do the right thing, to rise in favour of health care, to defend the interests of the Queensway Carleton Hospital and the thousands of patients that it serves. Let us rise together for this noble cause.