A lot of ground was just covered, and I will try to be as focused and succinct as I can in my response.
The context of fiscal balance and fiscal imbalance is different now from what it was several years ago. One of the important facts is that of the 14 governments in Canada, most have balanced budgets and surpluses now. This is not true of two of the provinces, Prince Edward Island and Ontario. There are no longer extraordinary federal surprise surpluses, nor do we intend to have such surpluses. The existence of those surpluses led to a rather strong outcry about fiscal imbalance.
At the same time--and I can say this as a former minister of finance--in one of the provinces some five or six years ago, before the health accord...there was tremendous pressure on provincial governments to use whatever extra dollars they had or whatever dollars they could save in health care, because health care was growing at 6% or 7% or 8% per annum on average. Provincial governments were struggling to keep up with that degree of growth in health care, which was consuming something north of 40% of program budgets of the provinces and territories. In Ontario it was 45% to 46% of the operating budget.
So as I say, that intense pressure that was on the provinces with respect to health care spending is no longer there. It's not to say--and I agree with you, Mr. Loubier, I would not be presumptuous to say--there is no issue there, but I would say that the issue is much more modest than it was some five or six years ago.