A report was put out earlier this year that looked at all of the tax and spending done to support innovation and skills training. The tally was $23 billion spent by the federal government. The problem, however, is that for almost 90% of that envelope, the federal government hasn't analyzed whether the spending, through taxes and money, is being effective or not.
For me, before we talk about further spending, I think we have to get a better sense of how the money that's currently being put aside for both innovation—which leads to productivity—and skills training is being used. I'm happy to provide a link or the report in question.
I'm going to have to disagree with my colleague here, though, in terms of the conditions argument. I think one of the reasons why public education programs work well in Canada, compared to, say, the United States, is that we do not have conditions on transfers. We have decentralization that allows the provinces and local governments to determine how best to spend the money in order to get maximum results.
We have a problem with regard to health care in that we have money transferring from the federal government to the provinces, but the provinces don't have the ability to fully experiment with what works for their residents.
I think I would caution against further transfers over and above those we do, and particularly those with conditions, because that does two things. One, it reduces the ability of governments at the more local level to experiment, which we have several successful examples of here in Canada. Second, it disrupts the accountability and the transparency of how the money is raised, because one government is raising the money and a different level of government is doing the spending. Taxpayers are going to have a hard time determining who's accountable for this or that initiative. I would strongly caution against a more federally centred approach on these measures, which would—