The province’s finance minister says they have turned their attention from changing the equalization program to fiscal stabilization.

Tom Osborne was in Ottawa to meet with other provincial finance ministers and federal finance minister, Bill Morneau.

Osborne says the fiscal stabilization program was setup to help provinces who face a sharp decline in resources or royalties from natural resources. He adds that the province did get help through the program in 2016, albeit less than $8-million.

He says obviously the formula, and many of the terms in how it is calculated were outdated. They set out to make changes and presented a proposal, that all provinces and territories had agreed to, to Morneau.

Osborne admits all provinces agreed it’s more likely than not that resource producing provinces, like NL, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, would benefit from the fiscal stabilization program, but it could be any province for a variety of reasons.

The finance minister says when it comes to equalization, every province operates in a silo. He says if the province were to get a dollar, it would come from someone else’s allotment, therefore nobody is prepared to cooperate on equalization the same as they would fiscal stabilization.

Osborne claims that any funding the province gets from this would not impact another province’s entitlement to revenues under equalization or other programs.