Finance committee  I worked for four years in Edmonton.

Finance committee  Okay, well, that's as far north as I went.

Finance committee  I thought I would surprise you.

Finance committee  I'm done then.

Finance committee  I'll just say that we had budgetary surpluses for many years before your government came to power, and I think there are ways to achieve—

Finance committee  Actually, in the transformation of the health care financing, part of the transformation is to place a ceiling on growth based on economic growth. But the other part of the transformation is that the distribution of the envelope will now be based, starting in 2014, solely on per capita.

Finance committee  —but at least there was an element of redistribution that was involved, and that is being lost. Now it means that all provinces will receive this element, regardless of needs, and indeed in terms of the difference in age distribution among the provinces it's going to make a difference.

Finance committee  If I may, Mr. Chair, the story of rising costs in health care is not a Canadian story. It's an international story and it's—

Finance committee  There are differences, but there's no way that reducing the contribution of the federal government will improve automatically—

Finance committee  —the performance of provinces. What we see across the OECD is that the cost of.... Well, there's aging, and there are also scientific advances. In health, scientific progress does not so much reduce costs as increase costs, because it allows us to solve more problems and to create treatments that are often expensive.

Finance committee  If there were, at least one province would do better than others. There is a general trend here.

Finance committee  Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I am appearing today in my personal capacity, but also as a professor of political science who has been working for several years on subjects like the architecture of Canadian social programs and transfers, the issues I have been asked to address today.