Thank you, Mr. Chair. If anybody remembers, this was a big issue that we brought up when the contract was actually being awarded, and it went out for tender and we had two contractors come back with bids, and we had a northern contractor and a southern contractor. There was a lot of mix-up. The northern contractor initially won the bid, then he ended up losing out because of the Business Incentive Policy that the NWT promotes and somehow the southern contractor won this bid.

What we have before us now is that this southern contractor is coming back to this government and asking for an extra $850,000 to do the programs and services that are provided. When we first saw this supp, it raised questions, obviously, right from the start.

I’m not sure if this is the usual practice of government, to start providing supps to contractors after they’ve awarded the bid. It kind of gets me wondering that we might have contractors out there who are lowballing the bid to win the contract and then when they find out the contract is awarded, then they come back to the government and we

find, possibly, excuses to give them the extra funding to run those programs when we have northern contractors up here who provide northern services, understand the northern economy, understand the buying and selling of northern products and yet we went south on this one.

I want to ask the Minister if he could explain to me how this southern contractor won the bid and yet is coming back to us, not even a year later after being awarded this contract, and asking for an extra, I noted this $850,000 for that one specific one with the Billy Moore Group Home. How much money is being put towards the Billy Moore Group Home that they’re asking for extra costs, and how that happens when we had a northern contractor who initially won the bid and possibly had a lower contract number at the same time? Thank you, Mr. Chair.