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Jun 20, 2022 at 2:26 pm
City Councillor Mayor School Trustee 73 - TEA1
Kamloops and District Labour Council asks:
How will you promote ethical purchases, including local unionized goods and services, where available?
Candidate Answers
At both the federal and provincial levels of government, there are new procurement policies in place to ensure Indigenous business owners are given the opportunity to bid on work by these levels of government. I will review the City's procurement policy and absolutely make recommendations to ensure local content is represented in the language.
I would also like to understand the contract awarding process and while, again, the decision is not one for City Council, the strategy and direction do come from that level.
An important part of ethical purchasing is understanding where and how a product is made or sourced. When we buy and purchase local products we are best able to understand where and goods and services come from. Therefore a general campaign of supporting local businesses and workers is an important step in my view to promoting ethical purchasing.
At the City, procurement processes should continue to reflect local content in their evaluation process scoring that recognizes local businesses and content. In addition, the City procurement policy should be revisited from time to time to reflect on our values of ethical sources.
This is an operational question but council can play an active role in setting the tone. I believe finally getting a liaison to the labour council was a first step in reminding council and staff unions represent workers and local workers are vital to our economic growth. We need to revisit our procurement policies regularly to determine if they are following the ethical guidelines and that local suppliers are engaged in the process. As a side note, if re-elected plan to promote a social sustainability component in purchasing so there is a focus on leaving some social impact whenever possible.
We try to buy local (within 100km of our home).
I think it's important to promote purchases that come from suppliers operating with high standards.
We have a solid procurement policy in place I’m told. What I would like to see myself, is if a local union bids on a city job, they should get heavier positive marks for being local. It bothers me when local unionized businesses, who support our community in various ways, supporting recreational sports, funding a local event, holding community events for our residents.
That should count for something. Support local wherever possible.
While the decisions are not made by City Council, it's important that elected officials understand how contracts are awarded and inform the process.
It's my understanding that the city of Kamloops now has a liaison to the labour council, which will hopefully be an important step in ensuring that our procurement policies follow the guidelines that result in local suppliers being involved in the procurement of goods and services.
Unions contribute to the health and well-being of our city at a very high level and should be symbiotically respected when there is opportunity for ethical reciprocity.
Having worked in local government for most of my professional career, procurement policies and ethical purchases have been something I been working with for awhile. Though I have been told our School District does have a very principled procurement process, I do wish to have a deeper look at this if elected, and see if we can include using local unionized goods and services above all. This would mean keeping essential work in our local economy.
This is a policy that may be worth exploring by the next Board.
Our council should try and push the direction of our city forward in this regard, definitely to support the local unions, businesses, and suppliers of goods/services when possible. When bidding for contracts, I would like to see local firms getting a type of weighted bonus on their applications as a way to support our local economy. I have mentioned before the trickle down economic benefit of supporting local businesses, so the city needs to actually implement policies to reflect these views instead of simply paying lip service.
Local and ethical procurement practices just make sense. Ethical procurement is a global issue and I think we should do our part to make sure we are doing what we can to avoid supporting human rights violations. Local procurement practices are an essential component in building our local economy and supporting local businesses and enabling them to be competitive with larger companies is important on a community level. Enabling local companies to be competitive with larger companies means everyone in Kamloops needs to support local as much as possible – then these businesses can reduce operating costs, allowing them to be more competitive in bidding processes.
We need to be scoring bids holistically (not just on lowest price) to ensure they're rewarded to companies operating at a high social and environmental standard, including wherever possible unionized workplaces.
Building out the local economy, especially good jobs, is important for everyone. The concept 'velocity of money' describes how often money changes hands and is a measure of economic vibrancy. Having money circulating locally has been shown to do this more than sending money to large multi-nationals or overseas.
By supporting local bids. We can tell who produces it, where it was produced, and how is the business run. Local local local. Local unions, businesses, and suppliers whenever possible.
I have stood up for this in the past and would be happy to do so again.
Simply, this could look like an audit of what we are responsible for as a board of education and engaging our stakeholders on areas of best practices for us moving forward.
I am open to other ideas or approaches on this matter.
I support both Union and Non Union Business's that supply goods and services to our City. Some union Business can not supply the needs or our City, My own Business is one example, we supply Goods And Services as the City requires when they can not source a Union Business to supply the City's Needs. We all Can, and Must work together in order to have a healthy community.