I think that we have these four segmented agreements to the following effect: this pot of money is for people who are EI-eligible, and there are fewer people EI-eligible; this pot of money is for non-EI; this pot of money is for disabled persons; and this pot of money is for older workers. These are unemployed and marginally employed folks who need access to a wide variety of programs. What the provinces are doing when somebody comes in the door is that they're trying to provide those services in a seamless way, and then behind the scenes are trying to figure out how they use these various pots of money, as well as provincial money, in order to be able to provide the services to the people coming in the door.
I do think that a more streamlined federal-provincial funding mechanism would be useful. That's got to do with what the services are for the people coming in the door. I think we also need to have a more robust research stream, and particularly a comparative research stream. That would be a very significant role for the federal government, but which is not in place at the moment.
The provinces are generally fairly highly resistant to being compared with one another, which is why I think the labour market programming needs to be done in a collaborative fashion between the federal and provincial governments. They can agree to some overall goals, for which they would then be willing to provide information and data. They could be compared and judged one from the other by using a system like benchmarking. That requires administrative data, not the kind of data that you would collect from Statistics Canada. That's why I think we need a more robust research mechanism, particularly one that is federally led. The provinces themselves would then be responsible for the array of programs within a more streamlined funding mechanism.