Mr. Speaker, I haven’t
personally spoken to any of the associations. ITI has talked to a couple of organizations. The Premier has also, I believe, had some feedback from organizations and businesses. It was mentioned in the previous address, and it’s something we feel we need to do. We need to visit, at this point, the way we’re conducting business. It’s really providing a lot of challenges. In our infrastructure committee we have provided, I think, 14 recommendations. This one’s getting a lot of attention.
Having said that, we have to recognize that just about 80 per cent of our tenders that go out are receiving less than two companies bidding on them. In fact, about 15 to 16 per cent of our tenders that went out received nobody bidding on them. We have to really look at how we’re doing business. We’re making a number of recommendations. Some things have to be further explored. ITI has been directed to go out and come back with some options on how we can revisit the BIP. The FMB and we as a committee will be talking further on looking at how we can change the capital-approval system within our own government — giving us time to have the tenders go out earlier, providing that information to potential contractors earlier — so that we have better timing meeting all the delivery schedules and everything else that’s required.