I have a return to written question asked by Ms. Lee on March 29, 2004, with respect to bad debt collection for corporations, boards and agencies.
Bad debt collection for the NWT Housing Corporation, NWT Power Corporation, Workers' Compensation Board, NWT Development Corporation, Aurora College and the Business Credit Corporation are done in-house. At the request of these agencies, the Financial Management Board Secretariat places holds on funds payable by the Government of the Northwest Territories for possible set-off action. In addition, Aurora College provides the necessary information to the Financial Management Board Secretariat to have set-off applied to Canada Revenue Agency refunds.
All other delinquent account collection action is the responsibility of the Financial Management Board Secretariat with the exception of the Department of Finance who is solely responsible for the collection of taxes. Departments are responsible to follow up on overdue receivables until such time as they are considered delinquent. Departments are then required to submit their delinquent receivables to the Financial Management Board Secretariat for collection action.
In its role as the main collection agent for the Government of the Northwest Territories, the Financial Management Board Secretariat contracts an outside agency to perform some collections. Files transferred to the outside collection agency are mainly accounts under $5,000 and debtors that the Financial Management Board Secretariat has had no success in locating.
The contract for outside collection services was tendered and renewed effective June 16, 2003, for a three-year term. This was the second contract tendered for collection services during the last six years. Six years ago, the Financial Management Board Secretariat also contracted to a southern agency for any debtors located south of 60. At this time, both northern and southern collection action is contracted to the same local agency. Both contracts were completed using a competitive tendering process.