Mr. Speaker, not at all. Under the proposed consolidated transfer the provinces will have a great deal of flexibility in choosing priorities as to which issues they wish to handle and how they wish to handle them.
Moreover, as we have put in the omnibus bill, there are some basic fundamental principles such as those contained presently in the Canada Health Act or those presently in the Canada assistance plan which protect residency requirements that provide the bear minimum requirements we expect the provinces to adhere to.
When it comes to choosing programs or priorities it is up to the provinces. We are giving them the flexibility to make those as opposed to many of the restrictions that held back provinces from doing the kind of innovative work they wanted to do which was clearly and explicitly put forward as one of the assessments and recommendations from the House of Commons committee which assessed this problem as part of the social review.