Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to speak on behalf of constituents who are connected with Northstar Counselling and Psychological Services, a local northern Yellowknife business, Mr. Speaker, which, until the first of April of this year, were the providers of the GNWT Employee and Family Assistance Program. They successfully provided this essential service to us for the past seven years with very high employee satisfaction. However, they were unsuccessful when the contract was re-bid earlier this year and lost out to a large multi-national southern contractor Shepell-fgi. I became aware of this weeks ago, Mr. Speaker, with calls from several constituents and friends in the city expressing concern about the impact of the loss of this business on local service, on the reduction of skills and talents available because of the relocation of this service to an outside company. I have even heard that one of these professionals was going to be leaving Yellowknife because it was no longer possible for her to continue living here.

Mr. Speaker, there were several irregularities on the way this RFP was administered, assessed and awarded. For example, the use of assessment formulas that put local higher cost bidders at a substantial disadvantage to bigger outside lower cost bidders. The use of criteria for the size and the scope of this contract, Mr. Speaker, was based on numbers that were developed seven years ago in 2000. The size of the public service, of course, has grown since then substantially. The volume request for this service has skyrocketed 42 percent just in the past year alone, yet the value of the contract was capped at its original seven-year level. Mr. Speaker, there was also the suspect inclusion of local health care professionals as associates on the winning contractor's bid. How this was handled should be cause for concern, not only in this contract, Mr. Speaker, but from the perspective of overall government operations. We should not support a process which is prejudicial to northern business. Based on these allegations, Mr. Speaker...

I would like to seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.