Robert C. McLeod

We’ll break it out by communities.

We are on 6-17, Mr. Chairman?

We were glad that we were able to have the two positions in the Member’s riding. If the regional office determines that that’s what they could use again, then I’m sure that’s what they’ll be doing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am here today to discuss the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs’ 2010-2011 Main Estimates. The department’s main estimates indicate that $91.288 million is required for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. This is an increase of $5.2 million or 6 percent from last year’s main estimates. The funding change is related to increased funding for community governments to address forced growth, ongoing increasing strategic investments to focus on youth programming and services, and the establishment of stable, ongoing funding to support large multisport games events.

Of the...

The communities can take everything else on, they’re not obligated to take the lands.

Yes, I’ll have a discussion with the MACA Minister. It is an area we’ve seen a great improvement and I was responding to Mr. Bromley before when I mentioned that there were some issues worked out between his communities and the Housing Corporation to making land available. We were having good discussions with one of the Member’s communities where they’re thinking about making land available. As I said before, putting houses on the ground is something that we do. Land tenure is something we continue to work on. Communities are starting to realize now that it is to their benefit to have land...

The money that we got from the federal government for the Canada Economic Action Plan, this coming fiscal year, ‘10-11, is the last year of that money. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, there’s always an opportunity there for LHOs that want to take this work on themselves. You’ll find in most communities this is a source of summer employment for a lot of people. There are people that have been working on M and I projects for the last 16, 17 years and it’s basically their employment for the year. What they would do, as far as extra money goes, the budget that’s budgeted here, I mean, they’d fit that into their budget. Their money would probably go a lot further than if they were to bring a contractor in, and I think some of the LHOs are recognizing that. So taking...

The Member raises a good point. It’s always beneficial if we discuss the arrears and get the message out there, that there are a lot of people that have been coming to the LHOs and making arrangements to start working on their arrears. In most cases with the LHOs it could be as low... I mean, anything that they can pay a month is usually welcome. We’ve seen cases where folks have started a repayment plan, they’ve honoured their commitment, they still are in some arrears but because they’ve honoured their commitment, they’ve been put back on the waiting list and a few of them have actually got...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member raises a few points that are of concern to us. Federal funding is obviously the big one. That’s something that this year alone I think we’re in the neighbourhood of $670,000 that we’ve lost. Since the start of this, I think it’s up to $5.8 million and that goes into the Member’s next point of improving the rent collection. I think that would go a long way into alleviating some of the money that we could be losing from CMHC. It’s a message that we’re starting to get out there and I think folks out there are starting to realize that it’s to their benefit, too, if...