Merci, Monsieur le President. I rise today to speak to a matter that is very familiar to the floor of this House. That is the backlog of cases that exist with the rental officer of the Northwest Territories. The honourable Members for Hay River North and Yellowknife Centre have risen to attempt to get some sort of resolution to this matter. I commend their work on this important issue.
The rental officer exists as the final arbiter between the various tenants, both public and private, in our Territory, resolving matters pertaining to rent arrears but also property damages, disturbances, and the obligations of the parties to their lease agreements. The rental office does great and necessary work for the people of the Northwest Territories, and they should be commended for their dedication and professionalism in the face of two of the most personal matters in the lives of citizens: money and shelter.
However, Mr. Speaker, the continued short-staffing of the office has caused delays, pushing the majority of cases from being seen within 60 days to over 90 days. When the cases involve the owing of rent arrears, this causes the amount owing to often compound, snowballing further into an amount that is even more difficult to recoup while still sacrificing the income-generating potential of the unit.
To give an example, Mr. Speaker, one of my constituents just recently went through the proper process of trying to evict a tenant who was months in arrears and filed the notice to terminate the lease with the rental officer. At the time, he was informed by the rental officer that it will be three months before he could get a hearing. Three months after that, he was informed the hearing would be pushed back another two months, costing him thousands of dollars more in unpaid rent. Northerners shouldn't have to go broke because of the under-resourcing of an already overworked office. Any delay in seeing the rental officer to resolve these matters can have a huge negative impact on the livelihood of a landlord, in addition to causing an undue amount of stress and anxiety on all parties involved.
Mr. Speaker, this is a matter of interest to all citizens of the Northwest Territories because, in the end, someone will have to pay. In the case of small-scale landlords, they often have to eat the loss while waiting for an eviction to be processed. In the case of larger landlords, that loss has to be made up somewhere else, which will result in higher rents for other tenants. All in all, delays of the rental office affect us all. I will have questions for the Minister of Justice regarding what is being done to alleviate the pressure felt by the staff of the rental office. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.