That's a big question to be very brief on.
Essentially, you have to know that this ties in a policy choice, where the government makes an informed choice about how to deal with an issue that I mentioned was an urgent issue and an issue of common priority with the provinces. Obviously, we have some considerable faith they're going to be moving on the common priority.
We can establish the terms of conditions for a trust, have it signed and publicly announced before the money is transferred, but if we require ongoing conditionality over it, then the question is that it's not something that is taken out of, let's say, an unanticipated surplus in one year and transferred. So if there is additional conditionality, there's a question of whether you have to spread that over multiple years, when you may not have that flexibility available.
The government, at each occasion, takes stock of the track record. And I would say provincial governments recognize that this is.... There are none in this recent budget, but there have been trusts over the last several budgets. They recognize that if they're going to be a valued partner, they're going to be a valued partner. And they have recognized that the government has taken some steps, such as a public commitment to specific action, and they have interest in their legislatures to ensure appropriate progress is being made.
But it's almost like enhanced transfers, which were recently made to equalization and territorial financing, or enhanced growth of social transfers. Once they've gone for a common priority, the federal government does not require conditionality to that process. That's where it is with the trusts.
Now, the policy trade-off is that there are some occasions when a federal government might have an unanticipated surplus, where it could make some funding available for a priority with a partner that doesn't require long-term conditions. So if you have those conditions, you might not have that fiscal flexibility in the following few years when the money might be spent. That's the trade-off that's made.
I can only assure you that it's an informed choice that's made by government, consistent with our accounting rules—as long as I'm properly describing our accounting rules.