The Westerner for June 10, 2013

Mayerthorpe, Alberta:  Al Holmes advised that he attended the dedication of the Memorial Statute that salutes the memory of the 4 RCMP officers killed in the line of duty - a very moving presentation

Become a Rotarian Today:  Ross Hallett presented the new Rotary District 5370  pamphlet that is available to assist in getting people interested in joining Rotary

Rotoract:  Mike Ryan advised that he has been approached about forming a Rotoract Club (age 18 to 30) at Grant McEwan University

Gift Cards:  get your cards from Brian, commission goes to our club for non restricted funding of projects

50/50:  $66 carried over as Don McDermid and Ed did not match cards

Happy Bucks:  Al Holmes for 89th birthday; Nadine Fulmer for successful period for Rotary Employment Partnership as 6 handicapped persons have been hired recently; Don McDermid upon successful inspection of 395 Air Cadet Squadron and the impressive display of youth becoming tomorrow's leaders; Ed for participation in Alberta 55+ athletics; Doug MacDougall for first place in recent duplicate bridge tournament

Guest Speaker:  Brent introduced Linda Maks - formerly a  senior loans officer with 3 banks (Bank of British Columbia [now HSBC], Canada Permanent Trust {now Toronto Dominion Bank} and Bank of Montreal), aid to director for tv @ CBC; English facilitator @ Centre for Immigrants; Alberta Regional Director for Boys & Girls Club; employment consultant for Alberta Ability Career & Employment Association - now Stakeholders Relations Coordinator for Money Mentors.  Maks is the tenth largest Chinese family group and translates to wheat.  Money Mentors is a private non-profit organization that grew out of the Government of Alberta privatization process.  Under the federal law Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act there are 4 levels of insolvency.  Bankruptcy, consumer and division one proposals plus receiverships are done by Trustees in Bankruptcy licenced by the federal government.  Orderly Payment of Debts was seconded to the provincial governments.  That process was delegated to Credit Counselling of Alberta (in 1997) which became Money Mentors because the Money Mentors organization also does personal financial management and budgeting seminars which was felt to not be properly described under the Credit Counselling name.

Creditors of any of any legal person {personal or corporate} resident  in Canada have to deal with either the Trustee in Bankruptcy or Money Mentors if they receive notification of a proceeding registered with Industry Canada pursuant to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.  Other organizations try to compete with Money Mentors in providing proposal services but they do not have the right to force the creditors to participate.  Often people dealing with this type of firm are referred by the debt solutions firm to a Trustee in Bankruptcy to complete the proposal process but only after they have been paid their fee (now exceeding $1,200. for one hour of interview and maybe one mailing of information to creditors). The federal government frowns on this activity but, in 25 years of frowning, they have not been able to legislate this type of business activity out of existence. 

Linda advised that there are weekly seminars at no cost to the participates on money management.  From these seminars and, possibly, directly from phone or email inquiries, people are entered into the Orderly Payment of Debt Program.  Linda did not mention that they have to be able to pay their unsecured debt in a 3 to 4 year period or they do not qualify.  Non qualifying people have to consider bankruptcy or consumer proposal processes through a Trustee in Bankruptcy.  The only payment option is that they pay 100% on the dollar.  This 100% payment option includes a 15% processing fee deducted from the cheques issued to the creditors. Thus they are able to tell debtors that this is a no fee process.   The cost is applied to the creditors but is probably acceptable as inhouse collection and/or collection agency activities would exceed !5%.

Money Mentors paid $15.2 million to creditors in 2012 and have paid a total of $142 million since 1997.  In 2012, Money Mentors has established a rebate program to debtors if they successfully complete their Orderly Payment of Debts procedure.  Persons qualifying for Orderly Payment of Debts must have an income stream.  This includes income from AISH, and employment insurance.  If the debtor has unsecured unpaid student loans then the program can exceed the normal 3-5 year term.

The second mandate is mentoring financial money management skills and providing counselling and budgeting workshops -available to all Albertans.  The classes started with sessions every 2 weeks.  Now, Money Mentors provides CALM classes (Career and Life Management) in high schools and attendance by high school students is now mandatory.

Linda was thanked by Kieran