I thank the Minister and Ms. Shaner for their comments as well. I

agree with the

Minister: people should be paying their maintenance enforcement. That to me is fundamental. And you’ll see that the statistics, again, don’t lie. People who pay their maintenance enforcement can pay their maintenance enforcement. The people who aren’t paying the maintenance enforcement are the people who aren’t making enough money. If they pay the maintenance enforcement, they don’t have enough money to live. They don’t have enough money to pay their rent, to put oil in their fuel tank, to put gas in their tank.

In all of this we have to be fair to the one parent receiving the maintenance support. We also have to be fair to the individual paying it. And in most cases they don’t pay it because they can’t. It’s almost impossible for them to pay it. I’d like to see something to the effect that you take into consideration, as well, the right of the person paying it and ensure that they have enough money to at least put a roof over their head and food on their table. If the maintenance payments are impacting them to the degree that they can’t live — that they can’t sustain themselves — then that’s something else entirely, and we need to look at that.

I think there are a number of people out there, Mr. Chairman, who find themselves getting behind in maintenance enforcement payments. One thing leads to another, and it just drives them right into the ground. I don’t know if we should be doing that to people. Again, the bottom line is that you should be paying your maintenance enforcement. That’s the bottom line; I agree with you on that. But I also agree that we need to be protecting everybody in this and respecting the rights of everybody involved. Whether this is doing that or not, I don’t know. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.