Thank you, Mr. Chair. My understanding that as a government there are about, I don’t know, probably 11 or 12 million dollars in unpaid rent and unpaid mortgages. So it’s a significant problem for the government and I think that usually evictions are the last course of action that the Housing Corporation takes, it’s after a long period of time to try to find solutions. Generally the Housing Corporation, if anybody makes some sort of repayment offer, generally the Housing Corporation accepts it.
I think we have to go back to fundamentals that perhaps there’s an expectation out there that housing is free, and if that’s the case, then it becomes a question of who is going to pay for it. Is it Income Support? If people aren’t paying their rent if they’re not on income support, then how can they move ahead?
I think a number of principles should be that anybody that works, they should be better off when they work rather than when they’re not working because their rent is going to increase. I think that we need to wait for the Shelter Policy review report to come out. We need to look at the process, like who is the person of last resort when it comes to deciding on eviction? I assume it’s the local housing authority, whatever the appeal process is there. I think then we have to look at the alternative.
Personally, I don’t think I would support evicting people in the middle of winter. I understand there are people that have been evicted and are living in tents in 15 below weather. So as a government we need to take all of this into consideration and find a
reasonable approach to dealing with evictions. Thank you.