Thank you, Mr. Bell. Any further general comments? Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm speaking in favour of the bill. One point of clarification for the floor here this afternoon, in his opening remarks the Minister said that a proposed amendment to the Exemptions Act will raise the limit of the amount of wages or salaries that can be garnished to 30 percent of salaries and wages. So a maximum of 30 percent of a person's salary or wage can be garnisheed, or is it garnished? Madam Chair, is this 30 percent of gross or net earnings? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Minister Bell.

Madam Chair, the amount referred to is after deductions. So up to 30 percent after deductions.

So 30 percent of net pay. Mr. Braden.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. That's fine. That's what I was hoping the answer would be. That's all.

Okay. If the committee agrees there's no further general comments, then are you ready to proceed to the clause by clause? Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chair. If I could have the indulgence of the House, I'd like to just raise a point that I'd like the Minister to speak on, because I'm not sure exactly if we have a clause that this specifically applies to and I don't want to end up at the end of the bill and find out that I did not deal with the issue. Maybe the Minister and his advisors could tell me exactly what clause I should bring this out to if it should not be in the general comments. The only issue I have is the fact that while this legislation improves the debt collection process in that right now garnishees have to be served I believe every couple of weeks, or every time you want to collect. This one would allow the garnishee to be in effect for up to a year, eliminating the need for the creditors to do the work. But at the same time, in some jurisdictions the garnishee notice has to only be served to either the employer or employee, or I should put it another way. If the garnishee notice is served to the employer, in some jurisdictions it's the same as being served to the employee as well, because the argument is how could you serve notice on an employer without the employee knowing? I'm not explaining this well, but I know the Minister and his advisors know about this because I've raised this as a Regular Member.

For example, in cases like the Maintenance Enforcement Act, the requirements for service of notice is a lot more lenient and the Minister was reluctant in putting that sort of leniency in this legislation, thinking that it should not be that difficult for an employee to be served within 30 days of the employer being served. But I can tell you especially in the Territories where there are, for example, diamond mines where there are workers on different schedules where they could work two weeks in there and two weeks out and before you know it, 30 days is up, four weeks is up. If the garnishee is not served to both the employer and employee, the collection might not be able to take effect. I've had discussions with the Minister on this issue and he's suggested that rather than going through the legislation, but going through changes in the rules or regulations could achieve the same outcome. So I'd like to ask the Minister, before we go into the clause-by-clause review, if he could state, for the record, first of all, I hope he understands my concerns here, and, second of all, that he would, once again, make a commitment to work through the internal ways of adjusting the rules of the court to make that happen? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Bell.

Madam Chair, for the record, we agree with the Member. She has made, what we think, is a reasoned argument. We know that we need to go to the judges, at any rate, to have the rules of court changed, so I would propose that what I do is direct my officials to sit down with the judges and propose that this be changed to allow this to happen, and I'm prepared to do that. So I think that's how we can best deal with this. The rules of court need to be changed. As the Member said, notice served to employees, the fact that another jurisdiction equals being served to the employee and I think we can accommodate that by asking the judges for a change in the rules of court. So I will direct that to happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Bell. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have communication with the Minister in writing and I don't want to read it again, and I would like to take the Minister's commitment here to go with. But at the same time, could I just ask the Minister whether or not it would be possible to have those changes made to the rules of court on the service requirement, first of all to confirm that his officials will work toward making it acceptable to have an employer being served the same as the employee and, second of all, whether the Minister could give a commitment as to how long this will take for that to happen and could that happen before the legislation comes into force? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Bell.

Madam Chair, yes, to the first question. The second question as to how long it will take, it's really in the hands of the judges. So I will direct my officials to raise this with the judges. Hopefully they are amenable and hopefully they can move this through expeditiously. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Bell. Ms. Lee.

I think I will go with that. I will keep communicating with the Minister to follow that up. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. General comments. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A quick question on the 30 percent limit, raising the limit to 30 percent of net income. What were we at before we raised it to 30 percent? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Bell.

Madam Chair, as I stated in my comments, currently the exemption is $300, plus a further $100 per adult, $80 per child. This proposed amendment raises that to 30 percent of net salaries and wages. As I have indicated as well, this is something we took from other jurisdictions. This is where the bar sits in a number of other jurisdictions. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Bell. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think just the fact that they worded the exemption, $300 plus a further $100 and $80 per child is kind of misleading. Basically that was the maximum. I am just not sure how this can be explained better. Was the maximum just $300 plus the $80 or $100 for every extra adult or what was it? Is that the maximum that was set before the $300 and now we are moving to 30 percent, or is there another percentage that we were looking for? The word exemption is in there, so what does that exempt, the garnishee, the debt or what? Just explain it to me a little clearer.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Bell.

Madam Chair, I am sorry if it's confusing the way it's laid out here. The $300 currently could be exempted from seizure. So you could be left with only $300 if you had a court order against you. That was the one amount. Now it varies, depending on whether you were looking after children. There was a certain amount, if that was the case, but $300 was the number you could be left with per month. Now we are saying the most that somebody can go after is up to 30 percent net of what you make each month. Thank you.