Update
Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo and City of Calgary pass social procurement unanimously
Sep 27th, 2021
Community engagement, shared learning and iteration key to program development and policy success.
The week of September 13th, the City of Calgary and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, two leaders in municipal social procurement, passed new programs and policy unanimously at Council. These communities have been actively engaged in shaping and iterating their procurement programs to help achieve their strategic community goals.
Buy Social Canada supported the City of Calgary from the initial exploration report, the three year implantation plan, and now the City-wide roll out of the Public Value through Procurement Policy which includes Benefit Driven Procurement. This would not have been possible without the leadership from City staff and the engagement across stakeholders with the Advisory Task Force. The Benefit Driven Procurement Leadership Questionnaire has been included on over 60 pilots and will now be included on all RFPs. We look forward to continuing to support this great work.
Further north in Alberta, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo is a pioneer in social procurement, with a framework established in 2016. Many drastic events have occurred in the community since that time, so Buy Social Canada was contracted to update the framework and bring social procurement to policy and implementation stages. Again, we saw a deep commitment from community to support the program in creating local impact. With a tight timeline from council, Municipality staff, Fort McMurray Construction Association, Northeastern Alberta Aboriginal Business Association, Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce, FUSE Social and others all came together to contribute to the final policy and Social Procurement Program which was passed unanimously. The next phase in Wood Buffalo will be putting this program into action as well as developing an Indigenous Procurement Policy.
We’d like to congratulate Wood Buffalo and Calgary on the progress they have made to advance social procurement as a tool to shape healthy, vibrant communities.
