Incentives always matter in that any government program or system is going to incentivize people to behave one way or another. The challenge for policy-makers, for the men and women in this room and Parliament, is to have the foresight when they put together a program to envision or think through how it is going to impact the real world out there.
As an example, I'm going to go back to the case I made, because it's one that is very topical right now in Atlantic Canada. There's a call to increase federal transfers for health care. Why is that? That is because we have an older demographic, and of course health care costs are going up. My emphasis back home to provincial policy-makers is that this may be fine and that we understand that challenge. In addressing it, it's not just Ottawa that plays a role; provinces as well have to take advantage of the resources and opportunities that are there for them to tackle. Far too often a lifeline from the federal government can be helpful in the short term but actually detrimental in the long term. If provinces are just turning to Ottawa for that lifeline for problems that have existed for decades now, it doesn't serve them by changing what they're doing.
For example, we see energy as an opportunity that will create jobs, as is taking advantage of natural resources back home. The biggest struggle we have is men and women going to Saskatchewan to work in the shale gas industry, for example, which is an industry we haven't opened in New Brunswick and throughout the region. We're losing people to the very industry that we won't tackle or open up in Atlantic Canada. We are losing those young workers and with them the tax base.
Incentives always matter, and again, it's trying to get at what we are trying to do and how best we can help communities across the country.