One Dollar Rent
Queensway Carleton Hospital was built on NCC land, and since its opening, had paid roughly $1 million in rent to the federal government. Rent of $23,000 per year was set for a contract through to 2013, at which point the rent was expected to increase to reflect the current market value of the land.
Pierre Poilievre, MP representing Nepean—Carleton, attempted to reduce the rent of the hospital to $1 per year during his first term in office. Poilievre, a Conservative in the opposition at the time, introduced a bill in November 2005 seeking to reduce the hospital's rent. It was supported by the Conservatives and the New Democratic Party, but was voted down by the Liberals and Bloc Québécois.
Poilievre was re-elected in the 2006 election, this time as part of the Conservative minority government. He was named Parliamentary secretary to John Baird, President of the Treasury Board. Together, they unveiled a plan on August 2, 2006 which would use treasury board funds to pay the NCC rent on behalf of the hospital, such that the hospital pays $1 in rent.
Read more about this topic: Queensway-Carleton Hospital
Famous quotes containing the words dollar and/or rent:
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“We want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)