Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Premier or for the Minister of Transportation. On May 2, 1996, the mayor of Rae-Edzo and Grand Chief Joe Rabesca wrote a letter to you concerning a tender call made by the Department of Transportation, which was by invitation only for quality assurance work and Highway #3 on kilometre 165 to 175. As you may be aware, Rae-Edzo does have an active engineering company that is locally owned and operated for that active Dogrib ownership. This company strives to train local people in various aspects of the engineering field. However, due to a reluctance of the Department of Transportation in recognizing this company, they cannot get work in order to train our local people. It is imperative that our people receive training and education in the field of engineering.
Today I spoke to the owners of this company and their main concern is to be able to bid on various contracts that become available. There is no reason why they cannot. My question is, why has the Department of Transportation felt it was necessary not to include this company in the bidding process for this particular job, considering the high component of training that would take place. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.