As I have indicated, since the RFP went up on May 10th , the staff reviewed the
inquiries. On May 14th they noticed that one major
supplier did not respond. They took it upon themselves to contact this business, so they wanted to make sure that everybody who could supply these supplies were contacted. I don’t
believe there is a situation of a sole-sourced contract. There has been time to respond to that.
I do take the Member’s point that the product description could have been done better and they will do that, but as I’ve indicated already, we do need to provide these supplies in time for the barge order. So we will improve the system, or the Beaufort-Delta knows to improve the system next time. They do need to go ahead with this tendering process.