Thanks. That would be me.
I'm Suzanne Kennedy, acting director general of the federal-provincial relations division at the Department of Finance.
Division 11 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to implement the modernization of the fiscal stabilization program that was announced in the fall economic statement. By way of background, the program provides financial assistance to provinces that are facing significant declines in their revenues, resulting from extraordinary economic downturns. The program provides financial help to any province faced with a year-over-year decline of more than 5% in its non-resource revenues, or more than 50% in its resources revenues, with adjustments for interactions between the two. Payments are currently capped at $60 per person for a given fiscal year.
This enactment raises the maximum from $60 per capita to $166 per capita for 2018-19, and indexes the cap to grow thereafter in line with total Canadian economic growth per person. It also specifies that the cap cannot decline. The higher cap will apply to claims for 2019-20 and onward. It works out to a cap of about $170 per person in 2019-20 and 2020-21, as was announced in the fall economic statement.
In addition, it makes technical changes to the calculation of fiscal stabilization payments. These technical changes would apply to claims for 2021-22 and onward. Briefly, the enactment amends the act to measure a province's personal and corporate income tax revenues based on assessments completed over the following calendar year rather than the tax year to which the assessments apply. It also sets an earlier deadline for provinces to apply for payments. Together, these changes would enable claims to be finalized roughly one year earlier, as was announced in the fall economic statement.
The enactment also amends the program to include revenues from transferred tax points in revenues eligible for stabilization, and eliminates an inconsistency in the program's treatment of declines between 0% and 5% in resource and non-resource revenues.
I'll stop there.