Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am here to introduce Bill 8, Write-off of Debts Act, 2013-2014. The bill authorizes the write-off of debts and assets listed in the schedule to the act.
Pursuant to Section 24 (3) of the Financial Administration Act, Legislative Assembly approval is required for the write-off of government debt that exceeds $20,000.
Pursuant to Section 82 (2) of the Financial Administration Act, Legislative Assembly approval is required for the write-off of a debt to a public agency that exceeds $20,000.
I wish to emphasize that a write-off of a debt does not relieve a debtor of the liability for repayment. The government or public agency will continue to collect the outstanding amount. Through continued monitoring by staff, future recovery of the debt may still be achieved.
The debts and assets being presented for write-off relate to the NWT Business Development Corporation.
That concludes my opening remarks. I would be pleased to answer any questions Members may have.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. I will now turn to the chair of the Standing Committee on Government Operations that considered the bill for opening comments. Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Standing Committee on Government Operations reviewed Bill 8, Write-off of Debts Act, 2013-2014, at a meeting on May 29, 2014. Following a clause-by-clause review, a motion was carried to report to the Assembly that Bill 8 was ready for consideration by Committee of the Whole.
This concludes the committee’s comments on Bill 8. Individual members may have comments or questions as we proceed.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. I’ll now turn it to the Minister if he has witnesses he would like to bring into the House.
Yes, Mr. Chair.
Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.
Minister Miltenberger, if you could please introduce your witness to the House.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Mr. Warren St. Germaine, the assistant deputy minister and comptroller general, Department of Finance.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Mr. St. Germaine, welcome to the House. Thank you for joining us this evening.
Committee, I will now turn to the floor here to see if anyone has any general comments. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have some questions. I don’t really have comments, but in going over the bill at committee, there were a number of things that I wondered about. Maybe I can just, sort of, wonder those out loud and then the Minister can respond.
We haven’t seen a bill like this every year and I wondered if I could get a sense of the trend over the last, say, 10 years or even five years of how much we are writing off annually. Is it an amount that’s going up or going down?
I also wondered about the policies and the guidelines that we use to write off debts. I know these are, as they mentioned, debts of the Business Development Investment Corporation, but how often are our policies and guidelines reviewed and updated? Since we’re basically taking money off the books as we write off an amount of money, I wondered how hard, I guess, we, as a government and as the Department of Finance, how hard they work to collect the money that we are about to write off, and in terms of collections, if we do write it off, if once this bill is passed there are still some debts there, does the government still try to collect that money? Or once it’s written off, do we just say, okay fine, and we totally forget about it and it’s gone away?
I know the Minister mentioned that these are Business Development Investment Corporation’s, but I gather that we do write-offs of public agencies, and I wondered if there were any other public agencies besides BDIC that we would encounter write-offs for. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. For those responses we will go to Mr. St. Germaine.
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.
Thank you, Mr. St. Germaine. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thank you to Mr. St. Germaine. That answered all my questions. I have nothing further.
Thank you. Committee, are there any other general comments?
Detail.
Okay, I am hearing we should proceed. Does committee agree to go clause by clause?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. We are actually going to defer the clause by clause until we give consideration to the schedule found on page 3. So if I can get everyone to turn to page 3. Schedule, debts written off, total amount, $898,682.31. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Bill 8, Write-off of Debts Act, 2013-2014. Clause 1.
---Clauses 1 and 2 inclusive approved
Thank you. Bill as a whole.
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Does committee agree that Bill 8, Write-off of Debts Act, 2013-2014, is now ready for third reading?
---Bill 8 approved for third reading
Thank you. Bill 8 is now ready for third reading. I would like to thank the Minister and Mr. St. Germaine for joining us this evening. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witness. Thank you.
We are going to move our attention again to what was previously agreed on earlier today. We are going to go to consideration of Bill 9, Forgiveness of Debts Act, 2013-2014. I will turn to the Minister responsible for the bill to introduce it. Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to introduce Bill 9, Forgiveness of Debts Act, 2013.2014. The bill authorizes the forgiveness of debts listed in the schedule to the act.
Pursuant to Section 25 of the Financial Administration Act, Legislative Approval is required to forgive a debt to government that exceeds $1,000.
Pursuant to Section 83 of the Financial Administration Act, Legislative Assembly approval is required to forgive a debt owed to a public agency that exceeds $1,000.
The debts being recommended for forgiveness are as a result of death, compromise settlements, a business no longer in operation, or in the public interest.
That concludes my opening remarks. I would be pleased to answer any questions Members may have. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. I would now like to turn to the chair of the Standing Committee on Government Operations, the committee that considered the bill, for opening comments. Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Standing Committee on Government Operations reviewed Bill 9, Forgiveness of Debts Act, 2013-2014, on May 29, 2014.
Following the clause-by-clause review, a motion was carried to report to the Assembly that Bill 9 was ready for consideration in Committee of the Whole.
This concludes the committee’s general comments on Bill 9. Individual Members may have comments or questions as we proceed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. I will turn to Minister Miltenberger and ask if he has any witnesses he would like to bring into the House.
Yes, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you can please escort the witness into the House.
Thank you, committee. Mr. Miltenberger, for the record, could you please introduce your witness back to the House.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Mr. Warren St. Germaine, assistant deputy minister and comptroller general from the Department of Finance. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Again, welcome back, Mr. St. Germaine. Committee, I will now open up the floor to general comments. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick question. Is it written off, forgiven, or how do we address an issue of somebody having rental arrears that’s on the list that I know still lives in public housing? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. For that, I’ll go to Mr. St. Germaine.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. Most of the rental arrears are dealing with individuals who are deceased and so on. I’m not aware of individuals who, in fact, have rental arrears that we’re forgiving that are still in public housing. Presumably the Housing Corporation would have reviewed their files to determine the validity of the amounts being presented, but we can pursue that, if you wish.
Thank you, Mr. St. Germaine. Mr. Hawkins.
I guess, by what method or measure shall I pursue this matter if I see someone on the list who is alive, who has rental arrears under this act? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Clearly, the Member and I would not want to engage in that type of discussion in the House, so if the Member would share that information with us, we would make sure it gets forwarded on to the Housing Corporation to be tracked down and sorted out. Thank you.
I’m fine with that and I’m happy to start straightening it out as soon as I’m done talking here.
The only issue I would have then, is if we passed this act noting the amounts, does that stop us from pursuing it through other methods? Especially when I know they’re alive. I know, roughly, where they live. I can’t 100 percent guarantee that they’re in public housing, but I do believe they are. So I can at least say confidently, two out of the three I can check off with great confidence.
So how do we deal with this? If we pass the act, have we taken away our ability to pursue this money? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. A process question, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. By definition, forgiveness is just that. Once the bill is passed, there’s going to be some investigation that’s going to be required. There might be factors that the Member is not aware of, that we’re not aware of, things like was the person indigent.
In terms of the Member’s concern, at this point, once this bill is passed, it is forgiven once it’s given assent by the Commissioner.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, in essence… I mean, I’m happy to provide the name and I’ll do that, like I said, once I’m done here in this process. But, frankly, once we pass it, what’s the point of giving the name to the Minister if we can’t pursue it? I guess that’s what I’m getting at, is should we pause on a certain section without identifying anybody in particular? I’m just trying to get a sense, because I think I just stated that once its forgiven it’s forgiven, there’s nothing to pursue at that point. So I’m just sort of lost on the process here, and I think that it’s a fair question.
Looking through the file, there is only one individual that’s not deceased on the list. The information was provided to all the Members, including for all those accounts that are up for forgiveness. So I would suggest from the information that we have that it’s a justifiable forgiveness. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Committee, we’re just going to take one quick second here. Thank you.
Thank you, committee. Mr. Hawkins.
