Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll speak in favour of this motion as well.

Again, this suggestion is something that may result in reduced revenues for the housing authorities through the rents that they collect; however, Mr. Speaker, I think that there is a lot of merit to this transitioning idea. I mean, some people could say, well, if you have a three-month transition period, then people will work for three months and then they’ll quit their job. I mean, we can take this to any extreme you want. You know, the fact of the matter is that if people get a good job or a reasonable job that they like, they’re not going to quit it in three months so that their rent will go down. I mean, I would hate to think that they would have to do that.

Mr. Speaker, in the real rental world, not the Housing Corporation’s version of things, if you want to increase someone’s rent, for whatever reason, you have to give them 90 days notice. Why is that? That is because if their rent is going to go up, it gives them that 90 days to rearrange their financial budgeting and affairs. It may give them a chance to consider if they want to continue to live there. They may decide to shop around for some other place to live. There’s a purpose why, in the private market, you can’t increase people’s rent without giving them that 90 days transition. The reason why we get around that in the Housing Corporation and the housing authorities is because we say that the rent does stay the same, it’s the subsidy that changes. It’s the amount of subsidy that changes based on their income. That’s how we get around that. But I think there’s some good rationale to that whole 90-

day thing. I don’t think we should be too quick to dismiss that idea.

The other thing, Mr. Speaker, that my colleague Mr. Abernethy mentioned is that if people do get into a situation where their incomes have gone up to the point that their housing, at the rent scale that we have, becomes unaffordable, they are perfect candidates for counselling for homeownership and we should have that flagged somehow. How do we flag them? Mr. Speaker, I believe that there should be a relationship between the housing authorities, as the landlords, and their tenants. They should know what’s going on in their lives. We have tenant relation officers. I think there should be counselling. There should be give and take of communication and information: if people’s families are downsizing because they’ve got kids leaving home; if they’re embarking on new employment opportunities; if they’re expecting children or they’re taking in foster children. Whatever. Whatever their circumstances are in their life. I think that in a really kind of humanitarian, humane kind of a way we could have tenant relations officers in our communities who know what’s going on with their housing clients and that they could counsel them in these situations.

I do think that the idea of the adjustment phase, the transition phase, it’s a very common theory. Like I said, in the private sector it’s a very common theory. It’s even a common theory in our work here as legislators. If we ran an election and didn’t get elected again, we have a 90-day transition. If you’re in Cabinet and you’re going to switch to a Regular Member’s housing allowance, you get 90 days. There is a cushion. There is a transition. It’s a common theory. It’s a common practice and I think it could apply very well in this instance, and I will be supporting the motion. Thank you.