Public Accounts committee  Up to 40%.

Public Accounts committee  To answer that quickly, the conditions of the Canada health transfer are in the Canada Health Act. The Canada social transfer only has one condition, and that's for mobility, so that people cannot be denied social assistance because of their residency. But there are no standards

Public Accounts committee  Those are common standards and are done outside the transfer system itself.

Public Accounts committee  It is a good question, and it's something we struggle with. The operating principles are a method of having a common understanding between governments for what the objective is, but we haven't talked at all about the accountability of the people, and I will say from our experienc

Public Accounts committee  I can answer that. Yes, we do have an open process for the trustee. I don't believe that interest is ever accrued. Yes? Krista is the expert over there. I should let her answer that. We have an open process. We sign a contract with the trustees. Those trust agreements are all

Finance committee  In the equalization program, we changed the treatment of hydroelectricity revenues just to ensure the consistency of how we treat those revenues across all the provinces. That is the change that was made.

Finance committee  The easiest answer to that is that the previous government established an expert panel to look at the equalization program, with particular emphasis on the treatment of natural resources, because that has always been an extremely difficult issue in measuring fiscal capacity. That

Finance committee  For equalization, we calculate how much each province gets just prior to the beginning of the year. The new formula has a moving average, but in December of every year we will tell the provinces what they are getting in total for the next year for equalization. That money is the

Finance committee  This was a trust fund set up.

Finance committee  As soon as the budget was passed—

Finance committee  Then the provinces draw it down as they wish.

Finance committee  It is off our books.

Finance committee  The responsibility for administering the fund remains with the Department of Finance.

Finance committee  I was going to add that, as Coleen said, all the fiscal arrangements here in our supplementary estimates (B), which are statutory programs, so we are not requiring new...the money is automatically there in the statutory programs. These will be revised. We revise our numbers in De

Finance committee  These amounts are the cash transfers that represent the budget bill—the appropriations from the budget bill—and they are all cash amounts.