Okay. I guess, while there has been lots of talk about reviewing the whole BIP program and possibly revising it to suit northern businesses, I think there is a lot of talk about supporting our northern businesses, there are lots of stories about Southerners coming up and taking work from northern people. Even way up in the Beaufort-Delta, we are getting Southerners coming up there and taking work from Northerners.
In my previous life as a project officer, I have dealt with some contracts. I have seen that the Northerners lost big time to some southern contractors because they were able to underbid them, in some instances, by about half of the value. That was kind of shocking. They're going to keep coming up because they know they are taking work away from us. They're the ones getting the money, and the northern people don't because we have to deal with northern prices for materials and to get them shipped up, too. If we're talking about the Northern Manufactured Products Policy, you would want to buy from the northern-based companies. You can't compete with somebody that's going into Alberta because the southern companies, when they put their bids in they are using their product prices from the South, which is not fair to us. Because we're talking about because we've got to support northern companies, how do we put an even keel to the northern contractor because we keep losing out? We want the money to stay in the North.
We also have a BIP monitoring office in Hay River. I don't know what their relationship is with the whole program and whether you receive any type of reports on what has been used for northern labour, northern materials, a breakdown of those specific types of products, the procurement of northern products. Something like that may be able to help with the review when you see those types of itemized items because the Southerners will buy from the South. We note that if there are any Northerners, where do they buy from?
There are also instances when I've seen on BIP forms, I don't know if I'm allowed to disclose this type of information, but I've seen where Northern, local companies in the small communities, their business names were used on forms to get BIP points. What I've done in my position back then was I actually went and phoned the companies, the northern local companies, businesses, and they were just shocked, and they had never, ever heard. Nobody phoned them to tell them that they could use their name. If there are those types of things happening there, we never had anybody to really monitor anything or had a complaint mechanism type of thing in place where anything could have been investigated. I don't think anything has ever been, to my knowledge. I think we need to improve on a lot of these areas here, to really help the northern contractors. I know there is more to it than just meets the eye. We also have to confer with northern businesses, too. I'm wondering what your take for your staff on the whole BIP policy review and everything as the Members on this side of the House have been crying for ever since we've got into this Assembly. Mahsi.