What is hardest, Mr. Chairman, is that there are no major francophone corporations located outside of Quebec. We had to raise money by turning to ordinary citizens. As I said the last time, a young boy from Rimouski sent us $5, and the cloistered sisters sent us $11.23. We received those kinds of amounts from everywhere, and in some cases, it almost reduced us to tears. I felt like sending cheques back to certain people and telling them that they needed the money more than we did.
Professionals such as francophone doctors and accountants, people with a little more money, are the ones who sent us higher amounts. The money we were able to raise was unbelievable. We even received donations from the Northwest Territories and from Nunavut. The people who helped us were not necessarily the wealthiest. All these people supported the Montfort Hospital cause, and that is why we wanted to thank them.
We worked for five years, and I am still working at raising money today. The modest amount of $85,000 which we received may not be a lot of money for you, but it is what we needed to take our case to court. First, it was the provincial government which committed this injustice. So we had to go to Toronto to fight. They certainly would not have come to Ottawa. Getting everyone to Toronto cost an enormous amount of money. We also had to bring everyone together, to see whether they really cared about the Montfort Hospital. We had to meet with them. When we realized they numbered 10,000, we had to find the biggest room in town. That was also expensive. The amount of money we had to raise was unbelievable.