Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for Mr. Dent, the Minister responsible for Human Resources. It concerns the awarding of the employee and family assistance contract earlier this year. Mr. Speaker, given the high quality of service demonstrated by Northstar over the seven years that it had this contract, and given the tremendous increase in the size of the civil service and the growth in the number of requests over these years, and given the intrinsic value of nurturing, protecting and enabling northern grown businesses to stay in business here to keep resident professionals in the NWT, what were the reasons that the government awarded the employee assistance contract to the outside company Shepell-fgi, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There were three respondents to the public call for request for proposals and all were evaluated on four criteria: the capability of the proponents, the methodology or approach proposed by the proponents, the level of service, and cost. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, does the successful bidder, Shepell-fgi, have an office here in the NWT and resident full-time staff? Is it fully compliant with the conditions of the business incentive policy that is in place to, in fact, enable northern businesses to be sustained here?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Shepell-fgi does not, to the best of my knowledge, have a resident or an office in the Northwest Territories. They did, however, list a number of subcontractors who are registered with the BIP. So BIP would have been allocated for those subcontractors in their proposal.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, to what extent is cost a factor in evaluating this kind of service? Do we have any sense of just how much of the value of this contract is going to be staying here in the North as opposed to being in the hands of a southern firm, Mr. Speaker? We know, for instance, from the Northstar folks, because virtually all of their services are supplied by resident contractors, but 92 per cent of the value of the contract stayed in the North. How much are Shepell-fgi's going to, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the first question, the costs of the proposal was one of the four important aspects that was evaluated, one of the four areas. The proposal was put out with a fixed cost in it. The proposal was advertised as having a budget set at a certain amount, and proponents were asked to respond to tell us what could be provided within that budget.

The issue of how much of the expenditures will be remaining in the North, again, there will be some variety, I guess. We will have to watch and see how much stays in the North. We have a responsibility, now that the contract has been awarded, to monitor that the expenditures are as they were set out in the proposal and ensure that subcontractors who are resident northerners are used to the extent that were proposed in the proposal. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Final supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, given the irregularities in the way the contract was administered and awarded, the principals of Northstar have requested that the RFP be re-bid, re-assessed and a new award considered under an objective and impartial process. I support that request. Will the Minister take this and indeed reopen this RFP, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When Northstar came to me and identified their concerns, I asked the BIP monitoring office in ITI to review the process. I have subsequently asked the Department of Justice to review the process, as well as the Department of Public Works and Services to review the process. All three have come back to me and advised that there is not enough that was wrong with the process to warrant overturning it. As Public Works has said, there were a number of procedural issues with the RFP, but while they may lend themselves to an error of public uncertainty about the process, they did not constitute any error in the issuance of the final RFP or in the resultant contract. So that is the advice that I have been given. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to ask questions to the Minister of Human Resources with regards to the tendering of the contract on the EAP program to a southern company. Mr. Speaker, in answering questions to the Member of Great Slave, the Minister just told that his staff has advised that the fact that the winning bid used the principal operator of the competing contract which now has been replaced by this new contract, the fact that that name was used as one of the subcontractors and that the new contractor has apologized for including that name into that proposal, the Minister is saying that is not a problem. To me, that is a real big problem. There is something very wrong with somebody outbidding an existing contract by using that same person. It is like McDonald's bidding for a fast food contract saying Wendy's is going to do the burgers. Mr. Speaker, could I ask the Minister to answer how it is that he doesn't see a problem with that? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The issue is not one of whether or not an individual had more merit to provide the services or not, because the individuals whose names were submitted as subcontractors were not assessed by the department as to their qualifications as long as they met the standards that were required. So whether one individual was removed from consideration in one of the RFPs, it didn't affect the outcome in any material way. Even after removal of that person from one RFP, the BIP office confirmed that it would not have changed the outcome in the application. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Ms. Lee.

Mr. Speaker, there are lots of problems with this contract, but let me just focus on this name that was added. Mr. Speaker, just to put it simply, because it is quite complicated, this could be akin to McDonald's bidding for a contract to supply Winter Games 2010 and they use a competitor as a subcontractor that they will replace wrongly in a real intentional fraudulent manner, I may add. Mr. Speaker, if the subcontractor is not important, then why did the contract ask for names of

subcontractors? What was the reason for asking for that subcontractor's name? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am advised that there is a difference between a tender document and an RFP. The expectation of the tender is that the proponents who are bidding on the tender will have contracts in place with the subcontractors. An RFP is an identification of those who will be used. There isn't the requirement to have those contracts in place. In this case, as long as the successful proponent meets the set level of northern contractors to make sure that they were appropriately awarded the contract, the advice I am given is that we don't have grounds to redo the competition. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Final supplementary, Ms. Lee.