I was just going to call it quits until the Premier mentioned one thing, which was “if there was a savings.”

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that when you have an RFP — a request for proposal; that is, you request a proposal for a contract tender, and you get a comparison dollar figure on a product, and hopefully it’s the same kind of product they’re offering when it goes out to bid…. But when you do a negotiated contract, you have nothing to compare it to. You just sort of go in and say, “What’s the best price?” And then, “Can we live with it in our budget?”

Mr. Speaker, would the Premier initiate a process that reviews the situation of negotiating contracts and ensures that we stop it in sort of market-style

communities? I’m not suggesting that in little, tiny, small communities we don’t consider the negotiated process; I’m saying in large market communities such as Yellowknife, Inuvik, Fort Smith, Hay River and even Simpson. Those types of places are large enough that they have a real economy.