Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Housing Corporation recognizes the importance of having as many local people doing the contracts as possible. That’s why we ventured into some negotiated contracts with local contractors to help them build up the capacity so they can compete in an open market. We see that in the case of some of the ones that we’ve negotiated contracts with in the past. They are competing in the open market.

The Member says that there was $800,000 in negotiated contracts. Some of the numbers I have put that number a little higher. I mean, the one particular contractor, almost $1 million since 2004-05 in negotiated contracts. They also won some publicly tendered contracts which were quite high. In another community where there was about $1.6 million in negotiated contracts from 2007-08, and they’ve also won publicly tendered contracts. So that indicates to us that helping to build the capacity to compete in an open market is obviously working. Thank you.