Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, that's an easy commitment to make. That's the work that we've already begun with respect to the Indigenous -- or with respect to the procurement review that took place and we saw tremendous change in the last four years where money that was previously leaking out of the territories is now being kept within our regions. But we can certainly go much further than that. At this point, we've only just begun the work of the work plan that is going see changes, such as a vendor performance management. And what that's going to do, imagine this, that we actually didn't know if somebody committed to having work kept in the territories, whether that's through procurement dollars or whether it was through their labour that they were going to be hiring, we had no mechanism by which we would actually monitor if our contractors were doing that. That is now in place, and it is important to make sure that we actually implement that and follow through so that if people aren't doing the things that they commit to that we know about it and we take action to respond.
We also need to make it more available to people in regions, to communities in regions, governments in regions, and the businesses there, what projects are coming down the pipes, what size are they, and are we structuring our procurement processes in a way that they are accessible to those who want to be bidding on them. There's already a lot of work that has begun. We've got a one-stop shop for procurement. That was a tremendous change. It's made it much easier. We do a lot of engagement with businesses to help educate them on how to do the procurement applications. But, again, earlier involvement and earlier knowledge as to what's coming allows people to be bidding in a way that is more successful.
That said, there's always going to be room for improvement. We've only just changed the BIP program, and one of the things I noticed when I was looking at the numbers this summer was that there's still an awful lot of companies that are not on BIP. Is there a reason for that? What is it not doing for them? What is it not providing to them? And is there a way to make it more accessible so that they can actually access that preferential treatment opportunity.
And lastly, certainly not least, is an Indigenous Procurement Policy. If we can unlock Indigenous businesses in the Northwest Territories to access our procurement, we will only benefit everybody in regions and in the GNWT as a whole. Thank you.