Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We appreciate all the comments the Members made on the motion that’s before us. Recognizing that there is a concern, this obviously is something that we will be considering during our review of the rent scale.

One thing we have to realize, though, is that lowering it may be a disincentive to some of the higher income earners moving out of public housing

and into homeownership. Using the gross at 30 percent, it affects a lot of the lower income earners more than the higher income earners, because the higher income earners have opportunities to put their money into sheltered areas where it’s not calculated.

As we heard from Mrs. Groenewegen, this obviously is going to affect the LHOs’ operations. They’re going to be getting less money, obviously. We have to be looking at other ways to try and recoup some of the lost investment.

There has been some discussion on seniors. It’s always a discussion that as Members we shy away from. The hard reality is to start making adjustments, you’re going to have to recoup some of the funds from somewhere else.

So that being said, I have committed that this is going to be part of our rent scale review. Because this is advice to Cabinet, we will be abstaining from voting on the motion. Obviously I am committed, as Minister of Housing, into responding to the motion that Members have put forward and we’ll look at it very carefully when we’re doing our review of the rent scale. Members will be afforded other opportunities to make comments on this as we proceed into the review.