Mr. Chairman, I think we are getting to the end of this discussion, and I just want to summarize my feelings and I have one question. I think a lot of progress has been made since the first proposed new social housing rent scale was tabled by the Minister. I think I had some strong words at that time, that it was doomed to failure, that it was impossible to implement, that there would be the possibility of tenant revolts, or people quitting their jobs, or people moving into houses on the beach with the scale that was proposed. I think things are a lot better now.
I would just like to note the phase-in over four years. I know it is costing the corporation some money but, to me, that's the only way you are going to get people into home ownership. That is, to give them the lead time, especially beyond the tree line, off the highway. They need more than a year to prepare for home ownership and they need counselling and other support. We now have the time for that with this proposal.
Secondly, I think the cost of living index has been fixed up by using the MACA scale. There were a lot of concerns expressed by Members that the way of measuring the cost of living, based on the Social Services food basket, was crude and inappropriate for housing. That has been dealt with in a satisfactory fashion. I believe that the fear that was expressed during Baffin consultations about elders being responsible for collecting the rent from those living with them has now been eliminated by the exemption from rent of elders.
And, there are other improvements, such as the sliding scale based on the condition of the unit. So, all in all, I think it is a much better package and I do thank the Minister for responding as he has. I still have a couple of questions, though. One has to do with assessing and collecting rents on household income. I'm happy now that the elder is not going be responsible for paying that rent. However, my question is, if the rent isn't paid and you have three or four people working in the house, which is common in my riding -- and these are the people whose rents are going to go up -- has the corporation figured out how it is going to collect from those various workers in the household? Are there going to be separate leases with each tenant? What is the mechanism for collecting rent?
I think it is complicated because of the fact that sometimes people work and sometimes they don't. So, the situation is often fluid, even from month to month. Can the Minister tell me if the corporation has figured out a simple way of collecting rent from numerous members of a household? Thank you.