How a Fort Smith travel agency lost a GNWT medical travel deal

Fort Smith company Wintergreen Travel says it spent months preparing to take on a high-volume medical travel services contract with the GNWT, hiring employees and investing in new systems – but the agreement ended after just three months.

Wintergreen was founded in 2022 with the aim of offering northerners an “easier and less stressful” medical travel experience.

Co-owners Mildred Martin and Rashmi Patel say they were contacted by the territorial government in November 2025, after a bidding process, and asked to provide medical travel services. By that point, they already had some experienced offering travel agency services to the GNWT.

Patel said Wintergreen was keen to take on the new contract – medical travel was “our strongest area of expertise,” she said – but it meant bringing in a larger team, more equipment and new software.

According to Patel, the contract included strict performance targets like maintaining an error rate of less than one percent – a target she said Wintergreen met. The deal also required Wintergreen to pay up front for flights and hotels, alongside other terms that she said collectively created financial challenges and made it difficult to secure loans.

“It was very difficult for us, to be honest, because we didn’t have that stability. We didn’t have a ramp-up period,” she said.

But the contract was also something the company had worked toward for years.

“We decided to sign the contract,” Patel said, describing that moment as “take it or leave it.”

Patel said the company had to verify every travel request after finding frequent errors in the information it received, including incorrect appointment dates and misspelled names. Though Wintergreen had to call every customer to cross-check booking details, she added the company completed most bookings in less than a day and received positive feedback from clients.

“We had worked so hard to get to that point. Now, basically we did our best during that time period. We were not flawless. We were not perfect,” she said.

“Essentially, after three months, the GNWT deemed that we weren’t able to fulfill the terms of the contract so they had ended it … There was very little room for collaboration, to meet with us to try to make this work.”

‘We want to be treated fairly’

Martin said the company – which now operates with just the two owners and one casual employee – had hired 10 employees for the GNWT contract but had to lay them all off after it ended.

She called the initial three-month contract “one-sided.”

“We did our best to work and we did meet the KPIs [key performance indicators]. We were meeting the KPIs. We can provide the stats for that,” she said.

“They took the contract away from us after three months … The contract terms that they outlined were in my opinion very unreasonable. It created barriers for business. We are a small business.”

Patel said that the contract terms were challenging because the company needed to hire and train a large team to manage the workload. She said it was not practical to make that investment for only a three-month contract, which was why the company had requested a two-year agreement instead.

Despite its experience of the contract, Wintergreen said it is open to working with the GNWT again if the opportunity arises. The company is also working on software to help improve travel booking in the North.

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Martin. “The booking platform that we’re working on … we’re positive that it’s going to be a good thing for the North.”

Martin said the NWT government’s development of an Indigenous procurement policy is a positive step that could support Indigenous-owned and locally operated businesses.

She noted Wintergreen had previously participated in an interview to provide input for the policy, but it has not yet been fully implemented.

“We want to be treated fairly. We are not asking for handouts and there would be no need for an Indigenous procurement policy if barriers were not put up against us,” she said.

GNWT ‘committed to meaningful participation’

Patel said Wintergreen contacted Thebacha MLA and cabinet member Jay Macdonald, submitted a request to a standing committee of regular MLAs and filed a vendor complaint through the GNWT’s procurement system.

She said none of those steps had resulted in a favourable outcome to date.

A spokesperson for the NWT’s Department of Finance declined a request to interview procurement director Ben Singer. In a written response last week, the department said it could not disclose the specific reasons the contract ended because of the confidential nature of contract administration matters.

The spokesperson said a separate agency – YYZ Travel North, which describes itself as an NWT-based entity managed by a larger Toronto-based group – has been providing travel agency services for employee medical travel under a contract that began on June 1, and has experience providing similar services.

The department said it would not comment on discussions that may have taken place with the contractor under the terms of their contract. However, it confirmed a vendor complaint was reported, a review was completed, and the findings were provided to the contractor.

“While we are unable to comment on the specifics of any individual contract, the GNWT’s general practice is to communicate performance-related concerns directly to the contractor when they arise,” the spokesperson said via email.

The spokesperson said KPIs in contracts are intended to provide objective and measurable criteria for assessing performance, promoting transparency and reducing subjectivity in contract administration. Those KPIs vary depending on “the nature, complexity, and risks associated with the services being provided,” the department asserted.

In some cases, the spokesperson said, “enhanced performance measures” may be used to monitor critical requirements, manage risks, or address previous concerns.

Asked about Wintergreen’s view that locally owned and Indigenous businesses face barriers when competing for government travel contracts, the department said the GNWT encourages those businesses to participate in procurement and recognizes the important role they play.

“The GNWT is committed to fostering meaningful participation by NWT and Indigenous businesses and values their contributions to economic development and employment throughout the Northwest Territories,” the statement concluded.