The CBC report that $10 million in federal funds was channeled to a company closely associated with Stephen Harper's cabinet minister Julian Fantino's campaign team comes as no surprise but raises a lot of questions.
Two Conservatives have quit their own riding association in Vaughan north of Toronto, accusing incumbent candidate Julian Fantino and the Conservative government of handing $10 million in public funds to a private non-profit group involved in a major health-care development.
Richard Lorello, the local Conservative candidate in 2008, says he resigned because a federal grant, announced in March just before the election was called, is earmarked for the Vaughan Health Campus of Care (VHCC), which has two of Fantino's fundraisers as prime backers.
"The optics look really rather strange," said Lorello, "that the same people who helped Fantino are the same people [whose non-profit group is] receiving $10 million in government funds."
link: Conservatives quit over Vaughan health-care money - Toronto - CBC News
The details of the Vaughan hospital project are complex. Suffice to say, there are rival interests bickering over competing sites and sponsorship as is so often the case in Vaughan. The CBC's report is potentially misleading in its statement that the $10 million is intended for health-care development. In fact it's for real estate development adjacent to one of the proposed hospital sites. The model is common; developers like to build a medical office building adjacent to a hospital knowing proximity will guarantee reliable and profitable tenants (doctors, ancillary services, drug stores).
In this care, one of Toronto's richest developers and a Fantino backer is behind a so-called not-for-profit corporation promising to build the medical office building, now richly described as a health care campus, and is receiving $10 in federal funding. The federal government is not funding construction of the hospital as some Vaughan voters have been told.
Not-for-profit is not how anyone would describe Michael DeGasperis who has been involved in many controversial real estate development projects in the GTA. Unmentioned in the hospital/health campus story is how the two projects will benefit the remaining real estate to be developed alongside the proposed health facilities. Generate traffic to the hospital and medical offices and you have a ready-made stream of clients and customers for more commercial enterprises, restaurants and shops and you increase the value of the residential real estate projects that can boast access to a hospital and medical care. The latter is not insignificant in the GTA, especially Vaughan, where getting health care often means a long, time consuming and expensive commute.
It's not a bad business strategy to donate some land to build the health campus, get a federal grant to offset the cost and dramatically increase the value of rest of one's property holdings in the neighbourhood. It is however a poor political strategy to get one's campaign involved with handing over $10 million in taxpayer funds to one's friends. Credit to the Conservatives who concluded their best strategy is to disassociate themselves from Fantino's campaign.
This raises a lot of questions that have nothing to do with health care in Vaughan but a lot to do with how Julian Fantino operates. It is definitely worthy of more scrutiny.
