Thank you, Madam Chair.
As Mr. Fraser alluded, I do support the intent of this but I think with this bill just moving forward it has to mature. We don't want it to end up being arbitrary, or we don't want it to end up not capturing the full intent of the different disciplines in which we're trying to add value to the overall community.
Going back to the comments by Mr. Clarke earlier, coming from the municipal side, I've recognized, going through many tenders, that in fact the SMEs are already doing it. This is already happening. When they're putting their bids in they're actually adding value to their bids other than the bottom-line price that they're bidding at. Therefore, you do find municipalities not necessarily giving the contract, or the ultimate bid, to the lowest bidder because they recognize under that triple bottom-line factor—environment, economic, and social—that this value is being added based on those three components. Sometimes even culture adds a fourth to that, so it's already happening. This will encourage that. It will in fact give the opportunity for that added value to be articulated within the tender documents as they're coming forward.
I want to say two last things. It's also a discipline. It's a discipline by procurement to ensure they're getting full value for their dollar, but it's also a discipline to ensure that when the money is being flowed to municipalities, this discipline is also there for the province. Therefore, as we're moving forward, we ensure that this discipline is there as well for the federal government in terms of its intentions for its own investments when flowing down to the provincial level.
Going back to NDP-3, I do like the intent. I just think we have to mature to that point in time, and we hopefully will get there. That was the premise of my questions earlier, and hopefully we'll get there sooner rather than later.
Thank you, Madam Chair.