Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, have been contacted by people in Yellowknife that were disappointed that this has been handled this way, the contract for computer hardware. I have to say that it's unfortunate, but it seems like it's a continuing theme. It hasn't always been this department, but I certainly have a considerable number of concerns about consultant contracts that have gone out from various departments in this government for the provision of IT services. We almost always seem to set certain standards that require that a large southern firm has to be the one that's sourced to provide the service or, in this case, the hardware.
Without trying to rehash everything, I know I have certainly got to echo the concerns about supporting northern business and making sure we develop the capacity in the NWT to have some of this expertise become home grown. One of the reasons we decided we needed a business incentive policy was to encourage the development of local business, northern business. We are always listening to the Minister of Finance talk about how having more people in the NWT translates into a bigger grant. We get about $17,000 per capita.
So it continually surprises me when the government, after saying we have a business incentive policy and that we want to encourage business, and that we want to develop capacity, and we are continually talking about ways we can develop capacity in the regions and then when it comes to business, we sometimes say it's going to cost too much to do it here, we are going to have to do it another way. It's going to cost us less. That's not much different than saying, rather than buying in the North, we should buy modular homes from down South and ship them out to communities because that would be cheaper and we would get more houses that way. We might be able to do that, but we would have far fewer jobs and that might translate into less money to buy even fewer houses than what we can put up now.
So we need to take a look at the broader economic implications of not supporting northern business. Mr. Rattray has talked about buying a truck a part at a time. Well, there wouldn't be much of an after market out there for extra truck parts if people didn't do that. In fact, it's an amazing number, something like 60 percent of all new vehicles or new trucks, in particular, are modified by after-market parts. So it wouldn't be unusual to be able to find, I don't think, different parts that could perhaps work together.
I can't believe we are talking about how 25 years ago we standardized on HP. What would have happened if we had standardized on Wang or IBM or some other brand? We would have had to change. Why are we trying to say that in 25 years the technology of other hardware providers can't match what we are getting from HP, a company we standardized with 25 years ago? Of course, HP is going to say they have to provide it. They have a good contract they are going to get. I would be very surprised if we couldn't find somebody to bid on competitive hardware to HP. There is no reason you couldn't put in the tender documents or the RFP that the vendor had to make sure that all of the pieces worked before they got a substantial amount of the money. So you would be fairly well protected to make sure that it was going to happen. At the very least, by going out to RFP or tender in the North, you would at least have helped to transfer some of that technology by developing the partnerships between northern contractors and southern suppliers if the southern ones really do have to come into it.
I have often brought up issues in this House where we have been given the argument that because of the knowledge management policy, we have to do things a certain way. In my experience, in my opinion, I have seen too many occasions when people have used the knowledge management policy as a means to over spec the supply and require that large southern firms deliver the goods. I think that's a real mistake. I don't know why we keep doing it, but I can't believe 25 years after we standardized on HP, we haven't taken a real look at whether or not we need to maintain that standardization. What we brought in 25 years ago certainly isn't working today. I can't believe we are talking about the same operating system. Platforms couldn't be anywhere near the same, so what difference does it make if we standardized 25 years ago? If it's more than three years old, it's most likely outdated. That's something that we have heard from the government itself when it comes to Evergreening. So if we are Evergreening everywhere else, are you going to say we haven't been doing it here?
Mr. Chairman, I am astounded that there hasn't been any real effort -- and it's not just this department by the way, but anywhere in government -- to look at some of these major computer contracts that we let, both on the consulting side, software side and the hardware, that would allow northern companies to demonstrate that they could do the job. I think if we put the right specs out there, we would find that we could. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.