Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are directed to the Minister of the Housing Corporation in conjunction to a written question that I requested of the Minister to give me information on the negotiated contracts with Housing. Mr. Speaker, it’s important to realize that capital projects are the means of developing a lot of our community economies, especially building capacity and also bringing down the high cost of living. More importantly, it’s bringing down our social costs for the high unemployment numbers we have in our communities, and also developing the local economies and developing our local workforce to give them the opportunities so that they can build their skills in the areas of apprenticeships, and more importantly, give them the opportunity, in most cases, for their first job.
Mr. Speaker, I’d just to ask the Minister, in light of the information that I received, in five years with three negotiated contracts with an expense of $800,000 or $876,000, but in the same period the contracts for the same three communities were $9.67 million, Mr. Speaker, it shows you that the distribution of wealth in capital projects in the Northwest Territories is not really being expended in our communities but outside our communities. So I’d like to ask the Minister exactly what is his department doing to remedy this situation so that we can see the return of our capital investments in our communities and they stay in our communities.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Housing Corporation recognizes the importance of having as many local people doing the contracts as possible. That’s why we ventured into some negotiated contracts with local contractors to help them build up the capacity so they can compete in an open market. We see that in the case of some of the ones that we’ve negotiated contracts with in the past. They are competing in the open market.
The Member says that there was $800,000 in negotiated contracts. Some of the numbers I have put that number a little higher. I mean, the one particular contractor, almost $1 million since 2004-05 in negotiated contracts. They also won some publicly tendered contracts which were quite high. In another community where there was about $1.6 million in negotiated contracts from 2007-08, and they’ve also won publicly tendered contracts. So that indicates to us that helping to build the capacity to compete in an open market is obviously working. Thank you.
The information that the Minister provided definitely doesn’t illustrate the picture he’s trying to portray here. There’s been five years of negotiated contracts with the Housing Corporation expending over $12 million in capital investment. Only $800,000 was expended in five years in my riding. Out of that, $9.67 million went to companies outside of my riding. That’s the point I’m trying to get at. We have negotiated contracts, policies and procedures, we have sole-sourced, we have a whole bunch of opportunities we have to use. So I’d like to ask the Minister why is your department not using those tools and implementing those policies that we have as government to build capacity in communities.
Thank you. We are using those tools. We try to support local business as much as we can. There are some folks that enter into joint ventures with contracting companies to bid on the work that’s required in their community or possibly negotiate the work that’s required in their communities. So I know what the numbers are; I know the numbers that the Member is quoting, and from the numbers I’ve seen and the assistance that we’ve provided to the local contractors, we were able to help them build up the capacity so when public tender comes out they are able to bid and be successful. Thank you.
Thank you. Again, this Minister and his department totally disregards the policies and procedures of this government when it comes to negotiating contracts, sole-sourced contracts, contracting guidelines we have in place for government projects, government capital to be expended in communities. There are support letters given by the MLA, there are support letters given by the bands, the municipal governments, but yet this government totally refuses to acknowledge that. Those are efforts by community governments to show that they need these opportunities to build capacity in their communities. So why is this government and this Minister not living up to the wishes of those community leaders by those support letters to have negotiated contracts in their communities and continue to refuse them?
This government and this Minister do not disregard policy. You can’t, obviously, go against policy.
We understand we’ve gotten letters of support. We’ve entered into two more negotiated contracts with contractors in the Member’s communities, two in one community, even though both have requested a negotiated contract, and according to the policy, if two or more request a negotiated contract, we could have used that as an opportunity to go public, but we recognize that we need to help the local economy. So we entered into a negotiated contract with two companies in the same community and we did put three of the duplexes out to a public tender so everybody has an opportunity. They have an opportunity to bid and they proved to me and to the corporation, at least one of them, that they can be successful in an open market.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, it took political will and lobbying to the Premier to get this Minister to move on this effort so that he could back down from his reluctance to negotiate contracts. It took public influence to get this Cabinet and government to agree to two projects in my riding.
There were letters from Fort McPherson and Tsiigehtchic. None were approved to Cabinet. The only reason that went to Cabinet is because the Premier was speaking to the public individuals in the communities by the community leadership so that we can see some benefit from these projects in our communities and not see the wealth go to the other regional centres. I’d like to ask the Minister, since you’ve become Minister how many negotiated contracts have you taken to Cabinet in the Northwest Territories for housing.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
