Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister Miltenberger explained it very well. CMHC declining funding is probably one of the biggest drivers. Another one is the fact that we
don’t collect enough revenue from our tenants. If we collected the amount of revenue that was due to Housing, then we wouldn’t have to keep coming back for the $1.7 million. Housing normally has been very good at funding it from within, but with the declining funding, again, it’s getting more and more difficult to try and find this money. We’ve actually had to bail out a particular LHO because they were unable to pay their utility bill at their local hamlet office because they weren’t generating enough revenue.
These are challenges we face and we’re looking, as part of the Shelter Policy review, at the idea of raising what we charge tenants for utilities. We’re faced with challenges there again. We’ve got 768 seniors that pay no rent, but yet those units have to be maintained. If we collected even a minimum amount of rent for those 768 units, that might help offset this again.
We have challenges all around, as the Minister said. We try not to pass these on to the residents as much as we can. That’s why we end up having to eat a lot of these costs. Thank you.