Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In fact, I believe that you will find that the date was given before which the work could not start and a date was given by which the work must be completed and the total elapsed time in there was about three weeks.
So that three week period, this contractor felt, was the schedule and as long as he had supplied the bid, he was agreeing to meet that schedule, because the dates were stipulated. A period of three weeks to do all of the highways. If he had needed four weeks, he would have asked for an extension.
Given a total price, how often does this government go and ask for unit prices if they have not been shown on contracts, or in bids? It is actually not uncommon for that to happen, to ask a contractor who they are intending to use for a sub or their equipment list? This may have been an opportunity for northern business to see if they could get into this business to purchase the equipment or at least, find a way to get the equipment to ensure that they could get the contract in the future and perhaps save us significant monies.
I see I am running out of time, Mr. Chairman, so really I would like to go back to the Minister. The Minister's response was that he is afraid to get involved in interfering in the contracts because of what happened in the 13th Assembly. If there is no room for ministerial involvement in this government, then we probably do not need Ministers. We should just have deputy ministers. In fact, I think that it is the responsibility of the Ministers to provide political direction to their departments and I would ask this Minister to demonstrate the leadership and follow through on the sort of commitment that Mr. Handley spoke about, as was needed here, to support northern businesses by ensuring that he instructs his department, in the future, to keep in mind the importance of northern business when they are looking at bids.
In situations like this, where they have only one bidder, then I think that they should, perhaps, talk to the bidder about getting the information that might be missing, so that we can encourage the development of northern business rather than continuing to send business south. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.