Finance committee  The purpose of the Canada health transfer is to be a contribution towards the financing of public health systems, but within the provinces. That's why the withholding provisions of the Canada Health Act are applied to it: that's its purpose.

Finance committee  That's right. You have a three-year moving average, so some of your data points are going to be common as you move three times. You will have an updating of the data as you go.

Finance committee  I'm not too aware of the deep history. I know that the 2004 accord was negotiated. I'm not familiar with all the history prior to that.

Finance committee  In the press release of December 2011, there was a table that set out what the past growth rate in provincial and territorial health expenditures has been, and it contains a projection for going forward. We now have most of the provincial and territorial budgets, which have indicated, I think it would be safe to say, that in most cases the provinces and territories are aware of the significance of health spending for their overall budget and budgeting and that most of them are putting plans in place to target lower growth rates.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  You're correct, in that if you weight any population count by any factor, it will be different from equal per capita, yes.

Finance committee  The minister's announcement in December 2011 confirmed what the future transfer arrangements are going to be. It has been determined that it will be on an equal per capita basis for the Canada health transfer past 2014-15 and that the growth rates will be as set out.

Finance committee  It's the CHT.

Finance committee  Those were specific initiatives that were undertaken as part of the 2004 accord. Any decision about that hasn't been taken.

Finance committee  You would be getting away from a system in which relativities.... We have an equalization program that measures fiscal disparities between provinces. You would be putting in another allocation method, yes. As I said, if you took any factor and applied it to raw population count, you would get a different allocation, whatever the factor was that you chose.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  And for the estimates that are currently used to allocate where the population is, we'll continue to follow a cycle that we do now. So they are updated afterwards.

Finance committee  For example, the formula now is an equal per capita cash and tax allocation. We're going to be moving to an equal per capita cash allocation, so it's always been—

Finance committee  You have younger people and older people. That's going to be one factor the provinces and territories are going to take into account as they allocate their funding to administer their health systems.

Finance committee  It's all on the projected growth, because you're determining a payment for a province for that year. So you're using the data that you have for the year that you're paying, and the two prior years, which is going to contain a mix of Statistics Canada data and forecast data.