A local contractor is taking aim at the territory’s FireSmart program for favouring Outside companies over Yukoners.

Russ Hobbis, owner of Bilsten Creek Tree Service, has worked on FireSmart programs for about 13 years.

“This year is the first year there’s been companies from outside the Yukon doing FireSmart,” Hobbis said in a recent interview.

The FireSmart program, funded by the Yukon government, puts together a series of projects that reduce the threat of wildfires to Yukon communities.

As Community Services Minister Currie Dixon said last year, it “puts local contractors to work reducing the buildup of the brush and deadfall that helps wildfires spread in community greenbelts.”

In 2014, Hobbis recalled bidding on and winning five FireSmart projects – which gave his staff work from the end of September to the end of March.

But last year, things changed.

“There were Outside companies that (took) contracts from Yukon companies,” he said.

The one that hit hardest for Hobbis was in Tagish, which he had been working on for two years.

The winning company was High Light Utilities Inc., a company based out of Nanaimo, B.C. The project was worth $45,000.

The loss caused Hobbis to cut his crew in half, and they finished work by the end of January.

“It was a huge hit,” he said.

The projects are government-funded and regulated, but in the case of the community work, it is the community associations that ultimately choose who will complete the work.

“They’re the ones that actually do the hiring,” Wildland Fire Management director Mike Etches told the Star.

“We work with them to develop their projects (and) give advice. They’re the ones that enter into contracts.”

This was echoed by FireSmart co-ordinator Colin Urquhart in a separate interview.

Urquhart explained that the government will tender each project.

Then, once potential bidders have placed their bids, they are compiled and given to the respective community association.

“The community association will look at the potential bidders and they’ll decide if they want to enter into a contract,” Urquhart explained.

He added that when the bids are collected, they are all taken and submitted to the community association – there is no vetting or weeding out.

“We don’t even open the bids,” he said.

“All we do is provide the funds to the community associations.”

But when calls were placed to the Tagish Community Association to get an explanation of why High Line Utilities Inc. was selected for last year’s FireSmart project, a different answer was given.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the community association at all,” said Patrick Brown, the association’s assistant recreation director.

“The information I have is that the contracting out is done by Wildland Fire Management ... the money is distributed to our communities (and) then the contracting isn’t assigned from someone from Tagish.”

Though the wires seem to have gotten crossed at the association, both Etches and Urquhart insist the contracts are given at the association’s level.

Further calls to the Tagish Community Association went unanswered.

But Hobbis believes the choice to hire High Line Utilities Inc. was financial.

The B.C. company’s bidding price was “ridiculously lower” than what Bilsten Creek Tree Services bid, Hobbis said. It also brought up a pricey self-propelling wood chipper.

“This is a big company. No local companies can compete with that, nor should we have to,” he said.

“This program was designed to create work for Yukoners, not B.C.”

More than $13 million has been invested in 395 FireSmart projects across Yukon over the last 16 years.

FireSmart funding is available to First Nations and municipal governments, registered non-profit organizations, community associations and school councils.

In 2015, 25 projects received funding.