A lucrative contract to build a bridge in Coral Harbour this summer went to a company outside the territory, much to the dismay of Dino Bruce, operations manager for Sudliq Developments Ltd., a local company that built three bridges around the community in the past.

The loss of this contract for a fourth bridge came as a surprise to Bruce, who said he learned only after the fact that the municipality had sole-sourced the entire contract outside the territory.

“With the experience and the manpower we have, when we found out the job was sourced out, you’re wondering what did we do wrong to not be given the opportunity to take on this job,” Bruce said.

On this summer’s bridge project, a company based outside Nunavut had provided the engineering design and ordered the materials.

“We had anticipated that the labour component would be tendered out, but the municipality ended up sole-sourcing to this company for the entire project,” Bruce said.

“It was very strange the way it came out,” he said, although Sudliq did receive a subcontract for the labour portion of the bridge work, he said.

As a subcontract, the job on the latest bridge did provide work to Sudliq’s 15 to 20 seasonal workers.

For them, even one week of missed work can make the difference on whether or not they receive employment insurance, Bruce said.

“It doesn’t just affect the seasonal workers, but their families as well,” he said.

The municipality and others in Nunavut are allowed to sole-source a contract through what Bruce called “a loophole” in the Government of Nunavut’s Nunavummi Nangminiqaqtunik Ikajuuti policy, which is supposed to give priority to Inuit companies when awarding contracts.

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