Thank you. The deputy has made the case for bundling and suggested that money was saved. You've heard from this side of the House the question about whether or not money was really saved with the bundling. Instead of insisting on HP compatible equipment, it's quite possible we still would have ended up with HP and we would have gotten a better price from HP because they knew they'd have to compete. So I don't know that we can really say that we're certain we saved $100,000.
But philosophically, one of the things we've heard from the larger private-sector companies operating in the Northwest Territories, specifically I'm thinking of BHP and Diavik, is that they recognize the need to get away from bundling contracts. They, I guess, see that northern firms likely would not be able to have the capacity or be competitive on them, and have split up a lot of contracts to allow for some northern value added. This is something that the private sector has gotten into, not because they have to, but because they see that it makes sense and it's something that they feel a good corporate citizen should do in trying to build northern capacity.
Our government doesn't seem to take the same approach, or at least in this case they didn't take that approach. They felt that despite the fact that by their numbers 20 percent of it could have been tendered by northern companies, they felt the bundling and the savings were more important than working to build northern capacity. I guess that's what disappoints me. We know that that means there was tax revenue lost, there were transfer payments lost. We don't whether or not this cost us jobs or didn't cost us jobs, and I don't think we'll ever have an accurate read on that when it comes to specifics.
But I think we have this philosophy. We expect the private sector, and appreciate that the private sector adheres to this to a large degree. I think it only make sense for this government to do it. This is the flagship department, let's keep in mind, when it comes to competitive process, when it comes to contracting. I think all of the departments take their marching orders from this department. Certainly, if this department can do this, let's keep it in mind that other departments are paying attention to how they conduct themselves. I really wonder what other departments will do when they see this kind of conduct.
I think the departments try very hard here to make the case that this was the best expenditure of public dollars. I think it runs roughshod over our philosophy that says we may not always get the absolute best dollar, but we think there are other things that come into play here and we recognize that and that's why we've set up something like this BIP. It may be difficult to measure and that's something that we're trying to do over the next year -- the Department of RWED is -- but it still is important. It was important enough to the members of this House to not throw away the BIP and to not do away with the policy in total.
I would just like to express that I am disappointed that the bundling happened in this regard. Again, I'm disappointed that we didn't check with the local business community to determine what capacity they really did have to deliver on some of this stuff. I can tell you that after seeing the list of things that were purchased, they dispute the 80/20 split and say it's more like 60/40. Had we consulted with them, we could have had that debate and I'm sure rectified a lot of these issues one way or another, but we didn't and that's unfortunate. Thank you.