Public Accounts committee  I just want to thank Ms. Fraser for the study. It was well done, and this is obviously an informed dialogue with strong interest, which is appropriate given the magnitude of the dollars involved and the important issues. In terms of the future, there are no pleasant year-end sur

Public Accounts committee  Manitoba is, I believe, close to 40% of the overall budget. So it's not free money that nobody looks at. I think the residents of that community have to ask, what are you doing to make maximum value with that 40% of your budget that you get from the Government of Canada? The alt

Public Accounts committee  I would just say that this year we transferred $14.2 billion in equalization to provincial governments that are below average fiscal capacity, including Ontario this coming year. That goes into the provinces' general revenues, without condition, to help maintain a comparable leve

Public Accounts committee  It's a very important question, and I think what we have to do as a country is take stock of where we are every time this is reviewed. A very important coalition of programming was expiring or desperately required reform in 2006-07. The process that led up to the 2007 budget whe

Public Accounts committee  I'm actually not prone to flowery language, sir, but I don't think I said that. I think I said there is a continuum of financial relationships the Government of Canada can have with provincial governments, and it has a whole range of those choices to make. And I think we do accou

Public Accounts committee  I have to say I'm not an expert on the environment, but I would say that for that money to flow, the provincial governments would have to agree in trust that they would use the money for the environment in the ways prescribed in the trust.

Public Accounts committee  Well, there were no ongoing conditions, but they would have had to agree to use the money for that purpose when they signed the trust. Now, these are partners with the Government of Canada, not just on health care and education and infrastructure but on the environment, and so pe

Public Accounts committee  It was five to seven years.

Public Accounts committee  Is it 2013 when we review the model?

Public Accounts committee  I think it is important, given the federal fiscal challenge over the medium term. The government has reassured provinces it will continue to grow the transfers quite substantially. The Canada health transfer, which is the largest, grows at 6% a year. The Canada social transfer wi

Public Accounts committee  I'll ask Barbara to comment, and then I have a comment as well.

Public Accounts committee  There's $60 billion a year in transfers to the provinces on areas of common priority and shared responsibility, and there's a continuum of accountability and conditionality. In some areas, such as on our current infrastructure, the extra $4 billion, we want to make sure it's incr

Public Accounts committee  That's a really good question. It's not quite a four-minute answer, though, I'm afraid. But that is the question. There are some areas in which the government would be very comfortable providing a transfer with some pre-agreement as to what's going to happen with it; it's a sha

Public Accounts committee  We do that. I'll let Barbara answer.

Public Accounts committee  They know now. They do know it's going to be growing consistently from this very high base, with the GDP growth of the economy. In fact, the revenue flow for the last several years was much higher than any provincial government expected under equalization. So it's going to grow a