Thanks. I'm Suzanne Kennedy. I'm the acting director general of federal-provincial relations at the Department of Finance.
Clause 194 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to implement the modernization of the fiscal stabilization program that was announced in the fall economic statement. It has five subclauses. I'll go through those briefly.
The first two would eliminate an inconsistency in the program's treatment of declines between 0% and 5% in resource and non-resource revenues.
The third subclause amends the act to include revenues from equalized tax point transfers as revenues eligible for fiscal stabilization.
The fourth subclause amends the act to measure a province's personal and corporate income tax revenues, based on taxes payable resulting from assessments or reassessments completed in the calendar year following the fiscal year for which a claim is made rather than on the basis of the tax year to which the assessments apply. This change would help enable claims to be finalized 11 months earlier.
The fifth subclause moves up the deadline for application to the program by a province by six months. It also raises the maximum per capita amount a province can receive for a given fiscal year from $60 per capita to $166 per capita for 2018. That amount is then indexed to grow thereafter in line with GDP per capita, along with a provision to make sure it cannot decline. This subclause also specifies that population for the purposes of these calculations is as measured as of July 1.
I'd be happy to take any questions.