Mr. Speaker, this has been a very interesting debate, especially for those of us who have served on a hospital board, and probably many in the House have at one time or another given up their own time and energy to do this. In my previous role as mayor I served on four hospital boards over the course of my terms.
It is wonderfully appealing when someone says that they have a wonderful idea, that they will do something for free. Of course, the hospital board would say that yes. Of course, the residents of that riding would say yes. The constituents would say it was a wonderful idea . Then we would realize that in terms of fairness, and it seems this debate is about fairness, what about all the other hospitals?
Some hospitals make PILs, payments in lieu. There are those which do pay taxes and those which are in other situations. We are talking about one simple case. It would be a wonderful world if we were able to do this, I agree. However, I think it is patently unfair to every citizen of this country to assume that we could say to one riding that this is federal and it would be wonderful to do this. In this life, it just does not happen that way.
We talk about hospital situations throughout the whole country with each hospital trying to manage its budget in an equitable manner. Then we have the federal government addressing--