SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A travel company is shutting down its Yellowknife office after losing a contract to provide medical travel services for patients across the territory, sparking concerns about the effects of the territory's increasing reliance on southern service providers.

Three full-time employees at MKI/Key West Travel will lose their jobs when the branch closes at the end of February, company representatives announced Jan. 12.

The Ottawa-based company, which has branches in Yellowknife and Montreal, said it could no longer afford to keep up Northern operations after it was out-bid for Stanton Territorial Hospital's medical travel contract by Toronto company YYZ Travel.

MKI/Key West had won the multi-million-dollar contract to arrange out-of-territory patient visits for the past three years, but missed out this time around after its bid was undercut by roughly $20,000.

The Stanton Territorial Health Authority has told the company it was simply selecting the lowest bidder and the decision wasn't based on company performance.

Chris Greenwood, MKI's vice-president of operations, was in Yellowknife last week to give staff the bad news. He said the company did everything it could to keep the contract, even lowering its bid by $100,000 from the previous contract, because the medical travel deal accounted for more than half of its business in the North.

"It was a big disappointment to the staff. They knew how aggressively we were bidding that contact," he said. "Despite all those efforts, we still came up short. That's unfortunate, but you know, that's business."

While Greenwood said he understands the Health Authority is facing a hefty deficit and is under increasing pressure to cut costs wherever possible, he fears "there won't be any more private enterprise in the North," if the trend continues toward doing business with cheaper, southern-based companies.

So too says Sahtu MLA Norman Yakeleya, who recently had to travel south to an Alberta hospital for care after a minor heart attack. He worries such a move will set "scary precedents."

"I'm really appalled that a southern firm is now going to make travel arrangements for Northern people on such important issues as medical travel," Yakeleya said.

Although government contract bids from Northern-based companies are already adjusted for the higher cost of living in the territory, Yakeleya said he felt in this case the GNWT should have used its discretion and given the lowest-bidding NWT company priority.

"The government is turning its back on its people," he said. "The bottom line is that they're taking food off the Northern table and putting it on the southern table."

YYZ Travel picks up the North's medical travel arrangements starting Jan. 17, and the Department of Health and Social Services said patients should have a "seamless transition" since all trips will continue to be booked by the Health Authority's medical travel co-ordinators.

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