July 21, 2000
SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT — The company that won a controversial contract to build three public housing duplexes in Kugluktuk won because it submitted the lowest bid.
But one Kugluktuk hotel owner, Kerry Horn, has complained that the bidding process was tainted by a "racist" government policy that requires 40 per cent of the goods and services used by the contractor to be provided by Inuit.
But the Nunavut Construction Corporation, the construction company that won the bid, tendered a price that was almost $3,000 cheaper than the only other company to bid on the project.
NCC bid $610,922, while another company, Mulco, bid $613,800.
"We have a track record. We’re dealing with a high unemployment rate and we have made a commitment as a company that we will do anything to hire local. Local doesn’t mean Inuit," said Tagak Curley, NCC’s president.
He said 70 per cent of NCC’s work force over the last three years had been local hires. He also said NCC would try to hire as many Inuit as possible because unemployment among Inuit in Canada is very high.
"That has nothing to do with NNI policy. That was a personal voluntary initiative," said Curley.
Ron Gannet, an NCC employee, said he doesn’t understand what the controversy was about. He said NCC is sub-contracting the rival company, Mulco Ltd., for piling and gravel work.
While Curley said that NCC has an excellent track record of training and employing Inuit, Horn and Mulco Ltd.’s president, Randy Mulder say they doubt whether the company could meet the targets specified in the contract requirements.
"Our community happens to be dominated by white-owned businesses" said Mulder. "If they can do it, then I’ve been doing something wrong for a lot of years."
Horn said that the requirement effectively ruled his business out as a place where construction staff might be housed, because it is not Inuit owned.
He says having a race-based requirement for sub-contracted services gave an unfair advantage to the Enokhok Inn.
"That 40 per cent figure is an arbitrary number they’ve arrived at," said Horn. "To have that rammed down your throat but from someone in Iqaluit, is another sore point. The people doing the ramming haven’t even been to Coppermine."
Horn said he’s not going to pay his property taxes as a form of protest over the policy, and he says other business people may follow his lead.
His protest got the attention of his local MLA, Donald Havioyak, and Finance Minister Kelvin Ng, who also represents Cambridge Bay.
Although Havioyak could not be reached in time for comment, he told CBC news that people had to be trained before the policy gets enforced. Ng also told CBC that the controversy showed there were some problems with the policy.
But Curley said the NNI, the territorial government’s new contracting policy does not prevent NCC from sub-contracting with Horn’s firm.
He said that contractors are free to look at any sub-contractor they want and that price, not race, is the governing factor. However, Curley also said that NCC might have less need of a hotel to house staff because it would employ local workers.
"Everything we do has to be done on a cost-effective basis," he said. "When we carry majority local employment this whole hotel business is in a sense not necessary," said Curley
Mulder, on the other hand, was unimpressed by the prospects for local employment.
"The government policy is similar to the BIP policy," said Curley, referring to the NWT government’s old business incentive policy, which has been replaced by the NNI in Nunavut.
"Inuit content is still the minority, whether you total everything. The cost is the most important factor in these bids," said Curly.
Mulder himself said that the bonuses his company would have received for being a local business probably would have equaled any bonuses NCC got for being an Inuit-owned business.
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