Of course, if we're going to be reducing costs in the aviation ecosystem in Canada, passengers would see lower costs, as this is a system that's based on a user-pay model.
When airports were divested from the federal government to our non-share business corporations, they essentially reinvested all profits back into the infrastructure. We're unique in that way in Canada. I think that that has proven to be a good model when we look at the time span, but we just faced the pandemic, and it was a challenging period. Other than health care, this is probably the industry that has been most challenged.
It went on for so long, and I think we're all still recovering financially from those impacts. Carriers are. It was certainly a challenging time for Lynx, which we saw, but challenging for all carriers and challenging for airports. Now we're on the other side of that challenge, which is the good news. We need to be looking to the future and talking about how we're going to grow our industry. It is a growth industry, which is good news.
When we look at that in terms of airport rent, the $400 million that is paid to the government annually for land lease would be better used reinvested in essential airport infrastructure across this country, as there is a great need for infrastructure improvements.