Finance committee  My name is Nipun Vats. I'm the director of the federal-provincial relations division at Finance Canada. I apologize for not being at the table. It's a bit crowded. Basically, $100 million was committed in the budget, and $30 million for this fiscal year is being appropriated thr

Finance committee  Thank you for the questions. I can answer the first one with respect to the additional fiscal equalization offset payment to Nova Scotia and the changes to that. These offset payments are based on the 2005 offshore agreements with Nova Scotia. They compare the equalization th

Finance committee  These transfer payments provide significant funding to provinces and territories with respect to equalization. It's an unconditional grant whose objective is to enable provinces to provide relatively comparable services at relatively comparable levels of taxation. The CHT is fund

Finance committee  There aren't actually any changes this year with respect to the funding formula for major transfers to the provinces. There are some legislated growth rates with respect to the major transfers. First of all, in the equalization program, the total entitlement grows by a three-year