Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have so many questions today I don’t know which ones to ask, but let me follow up on my colleague Mr. Moses’ questions.
Now, I’m not familiar with his constituent and I’m not familiar with the contract, but I just want to tell you what I heard through objective ears here in this exchange on the floor of the House. I heard that the health authority assessed an RFP and the local contractor was the appropriate contractor or proposal to win the contract. It got put through the BIP process and they, as a northern BIP company, then, after you’ve applied the BIP process, lost the contract to a southern contractor. Is that what I’m hearing? Because if that’s the case, BIP backfired on us this time.
I’ve listened to the exchange and I’m extremely curious about it, because RFPs are purposefully set up to allocate a score for experience, management, and you’d think if the person had the contract already that they would score very high in that area. So I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services is that where this contract was lost with the application of the BIP on a northern company. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The original evaluation of BIP and how an individual from the authority advised a northern contractor that looked like they had the best bid was based on the fact that the evaluation was done without evaluating the northern content of the southern bidder, the original. Thank you.
Thank you. Okay, so I understand that. So they didn’t look at the northern content piece of the southern bidder’s proposal, but then the northern proponent appealed the evaluation and there is an opportunity, there is a vehicle to do that. Why was the contract awarded while the appeal process was still in play? Thank you.
The contract was awarded after the appeal process was denied by quality assurance, Public Works and Services. Thank you.
Thank you. The details of this are starting to sound more and more like, as my colleague Mr. Moses suggested, that we need a little disclosure on this, because we as MLAs, and residents of the NWT who are bidding on contracts, need to have confidence that their proposals are being treated in a fair manner and this seems to have a few anomalies which would indicate to the contrary.
So along with my colleague Mr. Moses, I would like to ask the Minister if he will provide a full briefing for us on this side of the House on how this went wrong. Obviously something went wrong. The proponent from the North thought they had the contract, then found that they didn’t have the contract and there was a mistake made, perhaps that things should have been recalled and they should have started over again. Thank you.
Yes, we can do that. I will discuss with the two other departments that are involved in this evaluation, those being ITI for BIP and then the appeal process through Public Works and Services. The three departments will get together and develop a presentation specific to this review and provide that to P and P. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So this in fact is three departments. ITI, Public Works and Health and Social Services will do a post-mortem on a process after the fact. What opportunity or vehicle or tool does the Minister have to correct this problem should it be determined from this evaluation of this process that this was in fact awarded to the wrong company? What will the Minister do about it?
That’s a hypothetical question, but I’ll give it if the Minister wants to respond.
Mr. Speaker, I would have to do the evaluation with the departments, like I indicated. Then there are tools that will allow us to make a decision that if we felt that the wrong decision was made at the end of the day, then we would have to consider doing something. I don’t know the process, I don’t know if that technically has been reversed in the past, but at this time the decision was based on an evaluation of the authority, ourselves, ITI and Public Works. So the decision was made based on that. If this re-evaluation going through another appeal process determines a different outcome, then we’ll have to cross that bridge when we get there.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
