Mr. Speaker, officials from the provincial and federal finance departments have been meeting regularly for quite some time.
The meeting that was held had been scheduled and follows the normal schedule of such meetings. I made it very clear that we did not expect to come out of that meeting with a final decision but that at the ministerial level we would engage in a discussion by the officials that would continue for quite some time.
In fact, the meeting ended up roughly where one would have expected. That is, those provinces which are contributing were seeking one formula and those provinces again by another formula were seeking to protect that position.