I'm glad you pointed out that we should not be starting from scratch. We've been talking about this issue for too long. Actually, I think in many ways the document that is most instructive is the Katie Cooke task force report. She was appointed by prime minister Trudeau senior in 1984. Two years of work went into developing what exactly the federal government's role could be and what a good framework agreement would be.
It stated that there had to be co-operation among the federal, provincial, and territorial governments and it laid out a path for that to happen. That was in 1984. Recommendations were actually given to the Brian Mulroney government in 1986. Then, yes, we do have the Dryden initiative under the Paul Martin government. It is something that I think can absolutely be built on.
So could the multilateral framework agreement that came before that, that was initiated by Jane Stewart, who was then the minister of whatever it was called then, because I can't remember these name changes.
We have a lot. We know what has to be done. We also have some idea of how much money it's going to cost. All I want to do quickly is point out that actually the Dryden plan, and the federal budget that supported that, offered $5 billion over five years. If we get what we think we might be getting in the budget tomorrow, which is $500 million over 10 years—we're talking about $5 billion over 10 years valued in 2017 dollars—we would actually be doing a lot worse than what we would have done under the previous initiatives.
Money is a big part of it. It has to be enough money. The other thing about the money is it has to ramp up. You can't give a billion dollars in the first year. We won't know what to do with the money. It will be too much. We need a little the first year. We've asked for $600 million; if we get $500 million, that's fine for 2017. But every year after we need that, plus more. We can't grow a system, we can't improve quality, and we can't improve access if you're giving the same flat allocation each year. It has to be more. That has to come from the federal government because the federal government has fiscal capacity that the provinces and territories don't have.
We also have to keep in mind that the provinces and the territories have really been shouldering the entire cost for the last decade. It's time for the federal government to get back into the field, as they say. It's hard to avoid sports metaphors. But they really have to get back into the game. They have to pay and show that leadership in money and also in policy development.