That's partly correct. I don't have the name of the act from the 1950s, but it has been a characteristic of federal transfers since the fifties. It went through the unemployment insurance act, I believe was the name, and followed up through the Canada assistance plan in 1966. It was maintained, in a period when greater flexibility was provided to provinces and territories, in the creation of the Canada health and social transfer in 1996 and was carried through to the Canada social transfer when it was created in 2004.
On November 17th, 2014. See this statement in context.