Thank you for your question.
It's a concern we've had for years, since the Canada Assistance Plan was changed. Originally, it was transformed into the Canada health and social transfer. We wrote a paper, back in the mid-nineties, called “The Dangers of Block Funding”, which identified precisely the kinds of issues you're raising.
We saw some positive developments in the country around, for example, the national child benefit. What is of interest, and what I think is helpful in this regard, as a model, is that it's a negotiated federal-provincial-territorial agreement. So the federal investment comes with an associated set of criteria or principles that have to be addressed with respect to receipt of the money. So it sets up, in a sense, an accountability mechanism.
I know there are opting-out provisions, and these always have been addressed. But when you do have these kinds of principles in place, everybody looks to those principles and those barometers as a means of measuring performance. I think it is one of the ways we can respond to this open funding. We tie it in more to a negotiated agreement.
Similarly, with respect to the child care agreements and the early childhood development framework we had in the year 2000 and then in 2003, we had an associated set of principles for that investment. It's, again, at least one way of looking at tying the money, to the extent we can, in a federation.
I don't know, Ken, if you want to add to that.