Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to address the issue of government contracting today. In 2008-2009 we spent upwards of $515 million in contracts. The government’s stated objectives for contracting is to acquire goods and services in a way that enhances suppliers’ access to contracts, encourages competition, reflects fairness, transparency and accountability in the spending of public funds.
Mr. Speaker, over 10 percent of our total procurement, roughly $53 million, was acquired through sole-sourced means. There is little doubt that as a government we need to contract, but from what I have seen, and continue to see, from this government is a propensity to sole-source contracts to the detriment of our stated objectives.
Sole-sourcing throws competition out the window. It is much more likely to show favouritism to friends and family and our pursuit of spending public funds with transparency becomes very questionable. Looking through the Government of the Northwest Territories Contracts Over $5,000 Report from 2008-2009, it becomes very clear that we have a habit of handing out sole-sourced contracts to former employees for consulting services. The report is very short on the nature of the work that was conducted. Why are we sole-sourcing so many consulting services?
Mr. Speaker, judging by the amount of references to studies, reports and strategies by the Finance Minister in this year’s budget address, it looks like an all-you-can-eat buffet for consultants. I’ve always taken issue with the government’s reliance on consultants and it is even worse if the consultants continue to be retained via sole-sourced contracts. Whatever happened to trying to get the best price?
Consulting services for communication services in particular is out of control. Hundreds of thousands of dollars just handed to one company. No competition, no RFP, no transparency, no accountability.
Shame.
My fear, and I’ve said this before, is many of our senior managers are becoming or actually spending most of their time as contract administrators. The work is being consistently farmed out to consultants. How do we or can we get some of this work done by our departmental staff? The trend of spending on consultants and sole-sourcing contracts can easily be reviewed on an annual basis.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted.
Can we not come up with a goal of reducing our bad habit of sole-sourcing and our reliance on expensive consultants?
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
