Thank you.
Yes, the new settlement funding formula that I've described—and I detailed the criteria in response to Ms. Davies' question—applies to the nine provinces outside of Quebec.
Quebec established a special bilateral agreement with the Government of Canada in 1992, I believe, the Canada-Quebec immigration accord, which among other things established a formula for federal transfers to Quebec, notionally to provide for settlement services delivered by the Government of Quebec. Just to give you an example, in 2005 the funding to Quebec was $177 million, and this upcoming fiscal year it will be $258 million; that's an increase of 46%.
Quite frankly, the formula is not based on how many immigrants are landed, nor necessarily what their needs may be. The formula is based on the growth in federal government spending minus debt service costs. It has no ceiling, but it does have a floor. So if federal government spending were to be cut, as it was in the mid-1990s, transfers to Quebec for settlement services would stay even. But as federal spending goes up—and in the past many years it's been in the range of 6% or 7% a year—so too do the increases in settlement services to Quebec.
Do I have that right, Mark?
Okay.
It's basically an automatic escalator, and some people ask me whether that is fair for the other provinces. My answer is, you can come to your own judgment about that, but I can only deal with what I have the power to deal with, and that is a bilateral agreement that can only be amended with the consent of the Province of Quebec.