Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think taking a closer look at how contracts are being delivered, has already begun. I think that, maybe just to backtrack, when this government had a lot of money back a few years, some of the Members who came from the smaller communities, had addressed it, where there was a desire by the people in the communities to put their foot in the doorway of contracting in business. I think there were some corporations and development corporations that were developed by some of the aboriginal groups in certain areas, communities, and regions that wanted to get into business and wanted to build houses, infrastructure, maintain roads or things of that nature. It started. This Government of the Northwest Territories, the previous governments, have initiated that and when there was a lot of money there, they started to go into negotiated contracts in a lot of those areas. There were sole-sourced contracts that are in place. These negotiated and sole-sourced contracts, I am in full support of if it is to develop expertise in a community in the regions, to try and keep money in the communities. In a lot of cases, we have been successful in achieving that. There are corporation companies that exist today, that if it were not for these policies, they would not be generating revenue and helping the economies in the communities in their regions.
I believe in that process, however, there is a closer scrutiny of those policies now. It seems to be coming from contractors from out in the larger communities. That is the impression at the community level. It is something we have to work through as well. In regard to requests for proposals, I think the public tendering process gets the majority of the contract dollars which come from this government already. There are certain parts of it which goes towards requests for proposals.
There is a difference in those two contracting regarding public tenders where you know what you need, you know what you have to get, so you do it and then companies bid for it. In regard to a request for proposal, you know what has to get done but you do not really know how to do it, so you ask for proposals from companies that are in a position to do it and then you try to get the best package. In that regard, I have no problem with requests for proposals. However, as the money has tightened in the last couple of years, also a side product of the restraints that we imposed upon our own systems to try to balance the budget, it is something that we have to look at and see how we could work through this. Thank you.