Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Deline (Apr 17/00) - The Deline Dene Band Chief Leroy Andre is angry over the GNWT's recent handling of contracts he feels should have been awarded to local contractors through an economic measures clause in the Sahtu agreement.

Andre said the band was passed over recently in the awarding of two major contracts -- a renovation of five housing units and a contract to supply school computers.

Andre met with government officials in Yellowknife to air the bands' concern over losing the tenders.

"They (GNWT) have no perception of what we are trying to do here and they don't even try to understand, so we end up with things like this," Andre said. "We take this stuff very seriously and when you can't even get one little contract for your community, with all this backing for self-government and a claim, obviously somebody is not listening."

The housing contract involved a complete retrofit of houses, a project Andre says is waste of money.

"These units had a major interior upgrade about four years ago," Andre said. "They are probably million- dollar units by now."

The chief said the houses have sat empty because he and his people can't afford the high rent.

Chief negotiator Danny Gaudet said the Deline Land and Financial Corp. could have built new houses with the money being spent on the retrofit.

Gaudet says the selected bidder -- Whiponic Wellputer Ltd. of Norman Wells -- is overdue on the project completion and he estimates the project cost to be running at least what the land corp. bid.

"I'm sure they are over $600,000 by now and we could have built five units for that price." Gaudet said. "There's always talk about housing shortages and housing problems, well we've offered solutions and never once have they listened."

John Tutcho, president of the Deline Land and Financial Corporation, says the company that was awarded the contract wouldn't even give business to the local truck rental company.

"We have a local business which rents out trucks, but instead of going to the local, they flew in their own truck with a Herc.," Tutcho said. "Who pays for that? We don't know."

Public affairs co-ordinator for the NWT Housing Corporation, Doug Johnson, said despite giving the band every opportunity, the band never submitted a tender.

"The process began with a local tender. This was restricted to Deline only," Johnson said. "That local was originally slated to end on the 30th of July and no bids were received.

"The band asked us to extend the bid, which we did. We extended it to Aug. 3rd 1999," he said. "When we received no bids we had to go to a full public tender that was advertised in the Aug. 16 edition of News\North."

Johnson said the first public tender closed Sept. 3, 1999, and the Housing Corp. had received two bids -- but still nothing from Deline.

"Both bids were disqualified. One did not meet the terms of the tender and the other was over budget," Johnson said.

The tender then went to a second full public tender, but Johnson said the Deline group still hadn't bid on the project.

"The winning bid was $385,903, and again, no bids were received from Deline," he said.

Although the project is late, Johnson said that is because of the tendering and retendering of the project, which delayed completion by three months.

The band also lost out on a contract for supply of computers and an on-going service contract on a new system for the school.

The chief said in preparation for self-government, the band had started North of 58 -- a corporation offering network systems, power engineers and governance consultant.

North of 58 had 10 days to put together a bid and fell short by $15,000, again to an outside company, Gaudet said.

"We put in a bid and we were a little bit higher than the next bid, but that isn't the point," Gaudet said. "All the technical services would have been right here in the community and service would be ongoing."

Gaudet said the band has invested more than $1.5 million into North of 58 and now, in losing this contract to outsiders, the community will lose again as the band gains self-determination.

"Now they've gone with other contractors and they are always going to be flying people in," Gaudet said.

Chief Andre said the band's bid included name- brand machines with solid warranties and a qualified Microsoft service contract.

"The saddest part of all this is Deline has a 50 per cent unemployment rate -- one of the highest in the country. Norman Wells is about nine per cent -- one of the lowest in the country," Andre added.

Sahtu Divisional Education Council director, Seamus Quigg, said although North of 58 was his first choice for the contract, the Deline bid simply came in too high.

"There's no question whatsoever," Quigg said. "It should not have gone to them as policy currently stands.

"North of 58 came to us wondering if we would sole-source the whole thing to them," he said.

Quigg advised the band they would need special consideration from Sahtu MLA Stephen Kakfwi to go outside policy to sole-source the contract. With no instruction from Kakfwi, Quigg opened the project for public tender.

Quigg said even with subtracting the 20 per cent Business Incentive Policy (BIP) -- 15 per cent for Northern business plus an additional five per cent for local business -- the bid from North of 58 still placed highest of the seven bids received. The winning bid went to Fort Providence-based SSI Micro.