Certainly we would agree with the need to make sure that there still is a strong set of national social programs and that those need to be maintained. The difficulty we have today—which I think we all recognize from our home constituencies—is that provinces are bearing a lot more responsibility for the cost of the social programs that are being delivered. In order to simply maintain the programs that we have across the country today, we are going to need to make sure that there is more funding available, whether it's for health care, social services, or education costs. That can be addressed through the fiscal imbalance issue.
There are two other issues that need to be addressed. One is the fiscal imbalance issue as it pertains to more funding through the Canada social transfer and the Canada health transfer, and then there is the issue of equalization, which speaks to the general fiscal capacity of the provinces. Both issues will need to be dealt with. But I would agree that Parliament will need to be cautious to make sure that this is not an exercise in offloading.