I think it's fair to say that historically the department has been somewhat passive in the collection of its loans. I wouldn't deny that. As part of the reorganization thrust in bringing Mr. Bailey in, we did take a hard look at this. We increased the PYs from three to eight. We now do our own collections in-house, where before we left it to the Department of Finance. So there is a much more driven and a much more aggressive approach to collections. We are using external legal people where we have difficult collections, in an effort to try and collect more. So we are taking a much more aggressive position in trying to recover the money that's lent out, because ultimately if we lose it, it means there's less with which to reinvest for others who are perhaps making the effort to repay their loans.
What I would say to the honourable Member would be there's been an increase in people, there's been an increase in emphasis in collections, and I hope in the coming years that that will be reflected in the write-offs that we have to do. If you remember, last year I did bring forward an accumulation of 10-years' write-offs; somewhere in the region of about $2.83 million.
We want to avoid that. Obviously, in any system you're going to have some write-offs. Some people, through a variety of circumstances, don't repay their loans. But the objective of this department now and the approach we're taking is an aggressive approach in the collection of our loans. Thank you.