Thanks. I think it's a very good question.
First, to address more generally the question of coordinating between federal and provincial plans, I think every one of the provinces, including Manitoba, that has put forward a poverty reduction strategy has pointed to the role of the federal government, perhaps most explicitly in Ontario, where they really said they could not meet their targets in their child poverty reduction plan without the participation of the federal government.
One approach to this might be for the federal government to see its role in two ways, one as the deliverer of particular programs where the federal government is in the best position fiscally to do so. One of those programs is the Canada child tax benefit and the NCB portion of it. The federal government is clearly in a better position fiscally than any provincial government; it's a national need. It has to do with the role of the federal government in guaranteeing Canadian citizenship, and so on.
Secondly, I would argue that the federal government needs to take a bilateral stance in almost a province-by-province, territory-by-territory way, because the provinces have started at different places and have gotten different places. So I would agree that there would have to be some capacity, some fund established within the federal government that pays attention to issues of interprovincial and inter-territorial equity, but that the particulars of what's going to be put in place are going to have to be negotiated bilaterally. Quebec, for example, is in a much different place and has made many more investments than Manitoba has. They've started earlier and have moved farther. Certainly Newfoundland and Labrador are in a much different place.
Federal governments have done this before. When there were significant changes in youth justice requiring different kinds of provincial systems, the federal government of the day established a fund and dealt bilaterally with each province to put that in place.
So briefly, there are two federal roles: the deliverer of some programs, and the entity with the capacity to develop bilateral agreements with provinces.