Yellowknife sole-sourced its contract for election ballots to printers in Toronto

The City of Yellowknife says it gave a sole-source contract for its vote-by-mail election ballots to DataFix, a printer in Toronto, instead of local options because the ballots had to be printed on specialized paper.

DataFix mailed the ballots on Oct. 3, and they began appearing in residents' mailboxes Friday, giving residents less than a week to cast their ballots through the mail.

In an email Wednesday, city spokesperson Sarah Sibley said the ballots needed to be printed on paper that's compatible with the machines the city uses to count the results. She said the city is allowed to sole-source contracts if they're less than $20,000, if there's only one source available, or if it's an emergency.

Sean Crowell, the general manager for Yellowknife printing company Canarctic Graphics, said he wonders if his company might have been able to do the job locally — but they were never given the chance to find out.

"We print on specialty papers all the time," Crowell said. "You know, maybe we can't do [ballots] — it could be absolutely true, maybe there's nobody in the North that can do it — but we were never given the opportunity to say whether or not we could do it."

Crowell said it's hard for his company to adjust its prices competitively when it isn't given the chance to bid on contracts. Having that opportunity also helps the company to determine whether it should be investing in equipment to produce products like ballots locally.

"It bugs me that we lose these jobs, but it bugs me even more that we're not even given an opportunity to lose these jobs," he said.

The city has contracted DataFix in the past, Sibley wrote, for its referendum on the aquatic centre as well.

"It is a Canadian company that has been widely used by municipalities and other forms of government across Canada," Sibley wrote.

She added the city has used local businesses for other aspects of the election, including creating enumeration cards and "other various communications supplies."

Canada Post recommended that voters mail ballots no later than 9 a.m. Thursday.

Voters who missed that deadline can still put their ballots in a dropbox at city hall or the multiplex, or vote in-person at the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre or the multiplex on Monday.