Thank you, Mr. Chair. In terms of the trend over the last several years, and the Member is right, we haven’t presented a write-off bill annually, but we have presented bills in ‘08-09, ‘10-11 and ‘13-14. If you want to annualize the write-offs, this decreased from an average write-off in ‘08-09 of $424,000 per year to $225,000, if you look at the current write-off.

In terms of policies around write-offs and specifically for the BDIC, they look at a couple of issues. One is the likelihood of collectability, and part of the write-off itself has been recorded in their books through their allowance of doubtful accounts, so they have recognized the loss in their financial statements already. This is just, in some respects, administrative bookkeeping to get it off the books so you don’t have continuing growth in the allowance number.

The policy is basically to review their accounts receivable, their allowance for doubtful accounts on

a regular basis and make a determination whether or not an account, if there is any real legitimate prospect for collection or if we are better off just removing it.

That being said, as the Minister mentioned, we do continue to keep a record of any accounts that we have written off, and an example of where we are monitoring is if another department entered into a contribution agreement with an individual or a corporation, my office has the opportunity to put those accounts on hold when we set off amounts. We would continue to collect on a fairly active basis.

In terms of other public agencies, in the past we have not seen other public agencies presenting accounts for write-off. Housing Corporation, as we’ll see in the subsequent bill, is presenting stuff for forgiveness, which they haven’t done in the past, so they’re presenting more to the House over time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.