—to make those tools national.
Now, the 2014 budget changed the funding formula for transfers to provinces to a per capita formulation. This means that funds will not only be allocated based on population: it will only be allocated based on population.
We know that demographics are a huge issue in which we could have some provinces with very high costs for seniors, etc. One of the problems we have is that now that you've done this, it will mean, for example, that Alberta gets almost $1 billion in transfers this year when they have a very low seniors population. Yet a place like Nova Scotia gets $17 million; they have very high aging populations in the Atlantic, as they do in my province of British Columbia.
Do you intend to find a way to equalize the transfers based on demographics? If you don't, provinces will in fact not be able to address the needs of their population anymore because you've moved the formula from needs and demographics into a simple per capita basis.