Mr. Chairman, with me on my left is Debbie DeLancey, director of budgeting and evaluation for the Financial Management Board Secretariat, and Lew Voytilla on my right, secretary to the Financial Management Board.

Thank you, Minister Handley.

Mr. Chairman, if I may. Yesterday when we ended the day, we had made a commitment to provide a corrected page dealing with Transportations' operations expenditures and particularly on the item of the Colville winter road. I have the corrected pages here to be circulated.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. You can have those distributed. We will go back to detail for Bill 12 on page 16. Public Works and Services, capital, investment expenditures, systems and communications, special warrants, $480,000. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have tabled earlier today a response that I received from the Minister to some questions that I had asked yesterday. I would like to refer specifically to that response now. Under question 3, is the contract exclusive? The first bullet says the contract with NorthwesTel for the provision of fibre-optics is for connection of specified buildings and does not give exclusive rights to supply fibre for any future requirements.

Under the RFP, was not every building in which there is a government office specified? Each building has been specified, so would that not therefore mean that this was de facto, an exclusive contract for NorthwesTel?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Minister Handley.

Mr. Chairman. No, there was no exclusivity on this one. Practically, it may be that way, but there is no exclusivity.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe I heard the Minister say that in practice, or practically, there probably is exclusivity, because all of the buildings were listed in the RFP. Could he confirm that please?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I will refer this to Mr. Voytilla. It is getting into detail.

Mr. Voytilla.

Thank you. Mr. Dent.

Thank you. I understand that the buildings were listed under priority, future, and optional, three different categories in the RFP, and that all of the government offices were pretty well covered under the priority. This does leave very little room for any competition here. I guess my concern here is that, as I said yesterday, I think we have a real potential to grow here. I know that one of the bidders in this process was a consortium of six businesses in town, plus NT Net Society, which provided significant depth for the understanding of how networks work, of how the hardware should be put together and managed. I think it may have been unfortunate that adequate weight was not given to that in the evaluation of their proposals.

Under bullet two, about the exclusive contract here, it says it is unlikely, this is from the information, Mr. Chairman, that I was provided with by the Minister and that I tabled earlier today, it is unlikely that a business case could be made for use of an alternative fibre-optic service provider. This is then attributed to additional costs for connection to the government data centre, and the additional complexity for the management.

I just wonder why this would be seen as difficult when, for instance, this building we are in right now has had a fibre connection since it was built, put in by the private sector and that is still the connection that is used. There has to be a contract worked out to hook this building up, first of all to the data centre, and then from there to Hansard, for instance, which again is another privately supplied route. It is not one that is part of the NorthwesTel route.

How is it that this is a problem when we are already using the private sector for two of the sections in the city?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Voytilla.

Thank you, Mr. Voytilla. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess if that is what Public Works is saying, just the fact that this building is hooked up to the network would call that assessment into question and I would question the advice you are getting from Public Works. Here we have the data travelling from Ministers' offices across the network. It is getting into the system through a private line and the security does not seem to be a problem there. I guess I have to say that it sounds to me like Public Works has made a mistake here, in the advice that they have provided.

Mr. Chairman, in the third bullet there, it says an alternative supplier would be required to supply the service in accordance with the government's preference for fibre only. I had asked the question whether or not another provider could compete, and I know that there is one other provider in town. As I had said, it is a society that has also joined together with six of the ISPs in town, to create a consortium that have fibre in place, so there would be no extra cost. For instance, they are already in the Stuart Hodgson Building, in the buildings downtown, and have a system that has been tested and proven.

Again, in terms of the response to question three, I am afraid I reject all three bullets. I recognize that this was likely provided to the Minister by Public Works, but I do not accept the arguments here. I think that it calls into question the whole assessment for how this contract was awarded.

Mr. Chairman, I also have some other questions. I was wondering if the Minister can tell me what deadline was set for this network to be finished in the RFP?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, the Member did give me notice of some questions he was going to be asking and this is one of them where we are waiting to get information. It should be provided to us in a few minutes here. Right now, I do not have that specific detail.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If other Members do not have any questions on this page, could I ask if it would be possible to defer this item until the Minister has it? He has indicated it will only be a few minutes, so I would hope that we would be able to move on with some of the rest of the bill.

Does anyone else have any questions on this page? I understand the only way we can defer is by motion. Mr. Dent.