Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you, Minister, for appearing today.
As I've said before, we see this as an improvement. Previous bills had no seats for Quebec, and now at least we've broken that barrier. I'm interested in your comment on the difference between the previous bill and this bill, but I'll come back to that in just one moment.
Mr. Lukiwski was good enough to open up the discussion around that formula change, and I want to focus and be very clear about the change in the formula. I've heard everything you said, so I won't repeat the questions and have you repeat the answers, but my one question would be, if this is an improvement and more accurate, then why wasn't it used before? Why all of a sudden are we seeing a modification to the formula and components of the formula have changed? I hear you saying it's better, but my comment would be, if it's so obviously better on something this important, with the number of intelligent people over the years who have been looking at these files, why do you now believe this is an improvement, as opposed to the idea that it's in there for convenience for the government because the math works better? You see my question. I'm trying to be up front about it.