Robert C. McLeod

Really lots. We have 428 active files, number of clients. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There were a lot of good comments around the table and I appreciate some of the extra positive comments that we heard. There was a couple of kudos to some of the work that has been going on in the NWT Housing Corporation, so that, compared to last year or maybe the year before, shows me that we are making progress.

We try and work with committee as close as we can to keep them up to date on some of the initiatives that we have. We recently had a strategy briefing with committee, so it has always been my intent to take the feedback from committee and see if we are able...

All the new programs we have now are all forgivable. The ones that are mortgages... I mean, we’re starting the legal proceedings just this particular year. Within the last five years, we really haven’t done much towards being...(inaudible)... We try as hard as we can to work with the clients and legal action is the last resort. Unfortunately, that’s where we find ourselves today having to take legal action against those that are in most arrears. Thank you.

Yes, I would.

The 40 percent for the mortgage is fairly consistent. The 76 percent, I think as we move back into the LHOs doing the assessments and that, I think we’re going to see a bit of spike in the collection rate. I think we’ve already seen a bit of a spike. It may have been at 64 percent at one particular time, if not lower, and so the number is starting to climb and I’m sure as more and more folks are going into their LHOs to get assessed and then being able to pay their rent right there, I think we will see that 76 start moving up. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, if it was a home ownership issue, then it would be the homeowner’s responsibility to ensure somebody is watching over his house. Having said that, though, we still continue to try and work with folks that find themselves in situations like this, to see if there are ways that we can assist them. At the end of the day, the ultimate responsibility I would think would have to be on the homeowner to ensure their place or units don’t freeze up. In the cases where it does happen, we do what we can to work with these folks to try and repair some of the problems. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we ask our LHOs to have a collection rate of about 90 percent, and I think for the mortgage we look at about the same amount too. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we are coming forward with a slight change in policy to address some of the Member’s and other Members’ concerns. It is one that we would have to bring before committee and have the discussion with committee, but we do recognize that it has been a problem across the Northwest Territories and we’re taking the necessary steps to do what we can to help homeowners access some of the programs we offer. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The mortgage collection rate is about 40 percent and the rental collection rate is about 76 percent right now. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we would go into the community and work with the community to identify the shortcomings as far as their firefighting ability goes. As far as equipment goes, we’ll help them to identify the equipment that they need and then they would have to work with the municipal government to ensure and they would have the ability to purchase the equipment. Thank you.