Thank you, Mr. Chair. On the same matter, I think we have to find a way to take a lot of this debt off the books. Some people are passed on; they’re still out there. We do have a process by way of writing off bad debts in different areas — education loans and things like that. It doesn’t really serve justice to the corporation. For a lot of this debt, in most cases and in other scenarios, it would have been written off or written down through the process of writing off bad debts, and that’s what these are. These are bad debts, where people got themselves into arrears, or in some cases they passed on and it’s still showing up on the books.
I think there has to be a way of clearing off a lot of this questionable debt that’s on the books. It does have an effect in regard to the debt wall of the Housing Corporation. The people assume there’s all this money out there that’s owing to the corporation. A lot of this money is not owing to the corporation. It’s just people who haven’t paid their arrears, and you carry it on your books year after year. People may not even be in the Northwest Territories, but we’re still carrying them on our books.
I think we have to find a way to assess, evaluate — find ways of writing down this debt. At some point, eventually, we can write it off after it’s carried on the books for a period of time — five years, ten years, 20 years, whatever. I think it’s an item that has to be considered and looked at.
You mentioned the different sections with the federal government, that we have federal dollars that are obligated to us, but again, we do have the Financial Administration Act. We have the processes to write off bad debts. Could some of this debt be put into the Financial Administration Act — an authority that allows us to write off certain types of debts — and reclassify some of this debt under those legislative authorities where we can do that? I’d just like to know if that’s something the corporation would seriously consider.
There are people here that have passed on. Because they were tenants of the corporation — they had arrears or whatnot — it’s still showing up on the books. The corporation does not have the ability to write off debt. I think that’s the bottom line. I’d just like to know if that’s something, seriously, that has to be considered.
At some point we’re going to have to confront this issue. We do have to find a way around it. It’s one of those phenomena, that you cannot write off debt in this corporation. I think we should be able to do that.