Mr. Speaker, in the period that we are now in, we are in the process of the renewal of the equalization formula.
I am pleased to say that the Government of Canada has worked very hard on the arithmetic. We have a proposal that would increase the value of equalization by some $1.3 billion over the course of the next five years.
I have undertaken in my conversation with the finance ministers on Friday to see if there are some other ways in which that arithmetic could be improved further. I would point out that is $1.3 billion on top of about $9 billion that flows every year through equalization.