Robert C. McLeod

As I said earlier, we give them every opportunity to try and rectify the situations that some of them find themselves in. I can point out to the Member that in the community that he mentioned, the overall collection went from a very low number to over 100 percent now; the collection rate. I understand that we’ve had some of these issues in the past and I think the folks there are getting the message, which is encouraging to the Housing Corporation and encouraging to the LHO, because they’re able to use that money now to do some much needed repairs in the communities.

We’ve had other places...

We are looking at a couple of options as to the actual site clean-up itself. We have two avenues we’re looking at right now. We are just in the process of trying to see which one would work best. It is our intent to find every way possible to have this site cleaned up. Once we’re clear with that I can communicate to the Member privately and give her an update as to the status and where we’re at with getting the site cleaned up.

The actual construction of the units or the capital projects that we’re putting up during the summer are usually contracted out. It would be up to the contractors to determine if they needed summer students. They would make that decision and there’s a lot of factors they would have to look at; obviously, the amount of training they have, safety, and all that. It would be up to the contractors to make that decision.

Four.

We did have an appraisal on the site there, and the cost of removing all the infrastructure there was significantly higher than what we would have got for it had we sold it off as surplus. That’s the stage we’re at right now.

The departments within MACA have come back and said, well, they’ve funded for six students and this is what we’ve identified now. I think there’s an opportunity here for maybe all of us as MLAs to bring on a summer student. That would be an additional 19 summer students that we could potentially hire for two or three months. That’s something that we should consider.

In this day and age we have a lot of students that are out there looking for summer employment. I think it’s incumbent on us as Members, as departments, as all the delivering agents in the communities, the communities themselves, to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently we have three. That’s not including what students the LHOs themselves might take on, which will probably bring the number a lot higher.

Thank you. We are using those tools. We try to support local business as much as we can. There are some folks that enter into joint ventures with contracting companies to bid on the work that’s required in their community or possibly negotiate the work that’s required in their communities. So I know what the numbers are; I know the numbers that the Member is quoting, and from the numbers I’ve seen and the assistance that we’ve provided to the local contractors, we were able to help them build up the capacity so when public tender comes out they are able to bid and be successful. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We currently have six summer students within the department. In some of the smaller communities, the recreation department in the community would use some of the money from MACA to bring on one or two summer students. If we were to take into consideration all the different agencies and delivering agents for some of the departments -- MACA or housing -- then we’d find that our summer student numbers would go up. The communities themselves would be able to try and access monies to bring on a summer student.

Mr. Speaker, I would have to have discussions with the LHOs to truly see if it’s less work for them. They would prefer that their tenants come in on a month-to-month basis, because you have tenants that may be working for three months and then for the other two or three months they may not work, they may get a job for a month. That’s the reason they come and ask them for month-to-month assessments, so they can assess their rent based on their income for the past month. I think that’s a situation that has worked well.

As far as equalizing it over 12 months, do we collect at the end of 12 months...