Oil sands municipality adopts socially conscious procurement policy

The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo —in northeast Alberta’s  oil sands territory — has adopted a procurement policy to favour social benefits for the community.

The municipality, which includes Fort McMurray, has adopted a Social Procurement Framework, a program run by Buy Social Canada. The latter is an indendent third-party certification program.  Wood Buffalo is the first municipality in Albert to sign on to the program.

The policy means that the municipality will proactively seek social and economically sustainable benefits for the region when awarding major infrastructure projects.  For example, Community Benefit Clauses are being used to secure apprenticeships, local jobs and to improve public infrastructure such as parks and playgrounds.  The framework was also approved in part to help improve small business opportunities and social enterprise gain access to government contracts

Mayor Melissa Blake said: “As we re-build, Council stands behind businesses that are willing to go that extra mile and work with us to ensure regional contracts are being fully leveraged to achieve broad societal benefits to our communities.  We are proud to be the first municipality in Alberta to take this step; the Social Procurement Framework will really help as we work together to strengthen our region from the ground up.”

The Social Procurement Framework  ensures that goods and services are still accessed through a competitive and transparent bidding process, while proactively seeking to achieve community benefits, by taking a much more strategic approach to procurement.

For more information about the Social Procurement Framework, click here.