Right now contracts are administered by not just Public Works and Services, they’re administered by every department to some degree. Within Public Works and Services, the contracts awarded in ’12-13, by way of summary, to date, the Public Works and Services has only done 59 sole-source contracts, which is about 2.2 percent of all the contracts; 82.2 have gone out for request of proposal, and in 2013-13 none have been negotiated and we’ve got 199, or 14.3 percent, tendered. So very, very few within Public Works and Services are actually sole-source.

There are criteria for sole-source contracts. The goods and services or construction that are urgently required, and delay would cause injury or be against the public interest, only one party is available or capable of performing the contract, the

contract is a consulting service, the contract will not exceed $25,000 in value or is another type of contract that will not exceed $5,000 in value.

I think what the Member is talking about, and the Member can correct me if I’m wrong, I mean, clearly there isn’t total consistency across the Government of the Northwest Territories, which is just another reason why the shared procurement model is valuable and that we need to continue to do the work on the shared procurement.

With respect to the review, the comptroller general is working with the Procurement Procedures Committee to look at these challenges that are coming out of the woodwork, and talk to vendors, talk to the individuals that we’re attempting to contract with, regardless of the method that we’re contracting, to figure out what’s working well and what’s not working well. I have had a number of examples brought to me by Members over the last year and we are sharing those with the comptroller general and the Procurement Procedures Working Group, and we hope to see some improvements on how some of these things are administered.

It’s interesting. As I indicated in my opening comments under standing offer agreements, in some areas we’re finding they’re working really, really well. In other areas we’re having challenges. It’s important for us to identify why we’re challenged in some areas and why we’re working well in other areas. That’s the type of work that’s being done right now in anticipation of moving forward with shared procurement.