Council votes to adopt social procurement criteria

More than 16 months after a report was first requested from city staff, Prince George city council voted to implement social criteria in its procurement process at its Monday, July 20 meeting. During council’s March 10, 2025 meeting, there was a discussion over how the City of Prince George could and should respond to the then-fresh trade war launched against Canada by U.S. President Donald Trump. During that discussion, Coun. Kyle Sampson put forward a successful motion to have staff investigate adding social criteria to its procurement process. Currently, city staff do not consider whether a contractor or bidder aligns with Prince George’s social or strategic goals when assigning scores to offers for supplies or services. The motion asked staff to see how it might work to include those criteria as part of the scoring process. After more than a year of work, director of finance and IT services Kris Dalio returned with a report outlining four social procurement options on July 20. The first options would include social criteria on all requests for proposal (RFP), with up to five per cent of the score assigned to each bid considering elements like philanthropy offered by bidders, employment practices, whether employees of bidders make a living wage for Prince George, training and apprenticeship opportunities for staff, climate change measures, energy efficiency, reducing use of toxic or hazardous materials and how they work with social enterprises, non-profits or First Nations. Option two was largely the same but would see most invitations to tender (ITT) converted to RFP and then apply social criteria to all bids. Dalio’s report said this would be a much more substantial change as it would require a broader review of the city’s procurement processes. “It is recommended that the city would seek legal advice to ensure our amended bylaws, policies and solicitation templates do not expose the city to unnecessary claims,” Dalio wrote. “Also, administration would recommend working with the Northern Regional Construction Association (NRCA), independent contractors and businesses association to ensure that we have adequately consulted with our local construction association as this would have a large effect on their members. It is anticipated that option two would take approximately 12 to 18 months to implement.” The third options would instead have Prince George the British Columbia Social Procurement Initiative, which Dalio said “concentrates on supporting local governments in implementing social procurement best practices to build community well-being and resilience.” By going this route, Dalio said the intent would be to fully integrate all aspects of procurement with the initiative and would require the city to pay a membership fee. This organization, he said, has a relatively small membership. The fourth and final option was to maintain the status quo, which Dalio recommended. “Social procurement practices are still not common practice in local government and will come at a cost,” he said. Summarizing the options during the meeting, Dalio categorized the first as the city dipping its toes into the water, the second as the city getting waist-deep and the third as a full swim. He said once council provided him with direction, he would seek legal advice for the city’s options in implementing the social criteria. Sampson said he supported the first option, as he felt it preserved a fair, open and competitive procurement process while still giving a nod towards local benefits provided by proponents. He moved for administration to implement that option, using measurable community benefits like workforce development, local economic resilience, community investment, support for local supply chains, Indigenous partnership, environmental stewardship, accessibility and other tangible benefits to Prince George as the social criteria. Coun. Cori Ramsay said she had only heard about social procurement from a few residents and didn’t think it was of much interest to more residents. On top of that, she said there would likely be a financial cost to upholding those principles and council had to decide whether it wanted to bear those. In her personal life, she said should would, but council is dealing with taxpayers’ money. Coun. Brian Skakun said there would need to be written criteria to define what the “measurable community benefits would be” and that could be onerous on staff to come up with. He suggested considered of this item be postponed until council’s meeting on Monday, December 14, after this fall’s local elections on Saturday, Oct. 17. The motion to postpone consideration was defeated after a tie vote — Coun. Trudy Klassen connected to the meeting remotely for the first portion of the meeting but disconnected by the time this item came up for discussion. Going back to discuss Sampson’s proposal, Mayor Simon Yu said he’s heard from local suppliers who lost out in bidding for projects that they wished factors like them being local taxpayers were considered by the city. He said he supported the motion as it would help emphasized local economic resilience. Coun. Garth Frizzell said he viewed the proposal as a way for the city to reject low-cost bids submitted by bad actors, referencing an anti-human trafficking event held in the city the previous week. He asked whether the city had any criteria that would prevent the spending of public money in a way that benefitted people participating in things like trafficking. City manager Walter Babicz said that as trafficking is an obviously illegal activity, that could be used as a condition to terminate a contract if that were to be discovered. Vote summary Motion: Council directs administration to implement social criteria in its scoring for bids under requests for proposal. Result: Approved 7 to 1, with Coun. Trudy Klassen absent In favour: Polillo, Scott, Skakun, Yu, Frizzell, Bennett and Sampson Against: Ramsay