Thank you, Mr. Chair. People who currently owe arrears to the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, we try not to penalize anyone. Although at the same time, we do have to be fair to all residents in the Northwest Territories, so we cannot allow people not to pay their rent and then expect their neighbour to be paying their rent, and we have people waiting to get into units. People do need to know that if they come in and they make a repayment plan, and they pay for six months consecutively, they get back on the waiting list, so nobody actually should be penalized for longer than a six-month period.
We are looking at other ways to address the arrears because it is not acceptable when people have arrears that are $50,000. That is not something that I am comfortable with. We are looking at ideas that we have come up with such as programs that people can actually provide sweat equity into some work programs so that people can actually look at arrears, and I am hoping that. There are some ideas that we have come up with. We are not going to write off arrears. That is not fair to everyone, but I am hoping that the survey results will actually show us more productive ways that we can actually support people in addressing the issue of arrears.
I should say that, hopefully, in the future this will not be an issue at all. I have given direction that after two months we automatically start the eviction process. It is not that I want to evict people, but if someone is paying $70 a month, it is a lot easier to pay off a $140 bill than it is to pay off thousands of dollars in bills. Thank you, Mr. Chair.