Wally Schumann

For the last three years that I have had this file, I have very limited conversation with industry around the BIP policy, as I said. In particular in the Member's riding, I cannot recall any of the major contractors in his region reaching out to me and having a discussion about it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize Robert Bouchard. He used to live in Hay River North; now he moved to the good side of town, Hay River South; and deputy mayor. Welcome to the House, Robert.

I didn't quite hear the question. I believe the Member said: what do we do if the person isn't following the conditions that they said they would do in the tender? Well, first of all, if a person is not following the conditions of the contract that they were awarded, I suspect that they are subject to penalty or even disqualification of being able to continue to do the work until they rectify what they have bid, to get the bid adjustment to determine that they were awarded this tender that they would have to follow the contract that they signed.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Infrastructure is not in charge of BIP. ITI is in charge of BIP, but Infrastructure follows the BIP policy in our procurement process. When we put out a tender, depending on the size of it, say it's under $1 million, because that's the conversation that we have been having, $1 million under and $1 million over, there is a line in there that you can put, which encourages local use of labour, local use of northern content, local of use of business, and that helps you do your bid adjustment to how much northern content you have. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When we are negotiating these agreements, internal trade or external international trade agreements, BIP is something, to put in simple terms, that we try to protect for the residents of the Northwest Territories. These things are negotiated through reciprocity agreements, and some provinces do not like the fact that we have this, in particular a couple of western provinces that are totally against it. However, we have been able to negotiate them into it to protect northern businesses and residents.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. After our conversation the other day, I talked to my assistant deputy minister, and she is in conversations with BC, and we are actually gathering some more information on internal trade on this issue.

As per the conversation yesterday with the Minister of Finance, he is in charge of the fibre line, but, as maybe the Member is not quite aware of, the table that I am responsible for with Minister Bains is that we have allocated money, or the federal government has allocated money through our discussions, to support rural communities with infrastructure to have Internet across Canada; 50 up, 10 down. That's the federal government's responsibility. They're working on that. They've allocated, I believe, some money to do that in the North in rural and remote communities. As the Finance Minister...

That is something I think that we are going to have a look at and evaluate as this project goes forward because this is a very unique project because the Tlicho government worked side by side with us to bring this project to fruition, and they were a big supporter of what we were doing. The federal government obviously supported the process that we are doing under the P3 concept that they had, that is now rolled up. However, we want to try this out, make the best benefits we can for the Tlicho residents and their businesses and see the opportunities and see how this works out, but that is not...

The Member is absolutely right. I don't have that level of detail here, but we can gather that once he sends me an email and get back to him by the end of session. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This information is all publicly available on the Department of Finance's website, but if the Member will give me the questions, if he sends me an email with the questions, I will commit to getting him all of that information back by the end of the session.