Mr. Speaker, the G.N.W.T. puts a lot of tenders out there across the Northwest Territories worth millions of dollars. The economic benefits from these tenders should apply to all people and all businesses and regions.
The regional businesses should have an opportunity to submit prices on building materials supplied by the N.W.T. Housing Corp in their region. The reason I raise this is that there was a recent material tender put out for the supply of material commodities for N.W.T. projects throughout the N.W.T. You had to bid all or nothing. That’s part of the problem. If you want to bid on material in the Beaufort Delta, you had to submit a bid for commodities across the N.W.T. It’s all or nothing, Mr. Speaker.
It’s not fair to the regional businesses to bid on supplying material in their region and their community but don’t yet have the capacity to bid across the N.W.T. It’s not fair to expect a supplier to bid on supplying two-by-fours in one of the coastal communities when their centre is in Fort Smith or Hay River or even Yellowknife. It costs them a lot of money. And I’ve seen a few cases of contracts that, in my opinion, are tailored for certain businesses.
As a government, Mr. Speaker, we can’t allow this to happen under our watch. We can’t be a party to this. We have to create a fair and a level playing field for businesses all across the N.W.T., because this is a way of tailor-made tenders and the awarding of tenders to certain businesses. It’s not creating a level playing field.
It’s something I would like to see us address as a government. We can’t be a party to this. We talked about everybody benefitting from the contracts and the economy across the Northwest Territories. By doing this, we’re not going by what we say. It’s something this government needs to address as soon as possible. It’s not a fair process. And I personally don’t want to be a part of this process if that’s how we’re going to continue to do business.
