Trust in Wall, Sask. Party eroding under weight of Boyd, GTH
Normally, it would be nonsense to demand an independent inquiry because a former minister had issues in what should be an unrelated file.
A Southey-area women dropped off letters to Premier Brad Wall’s office this week demanding an independent inquiry into the Yancoal potash mine approval because former economy minister Bill Boyd headed the file. This speaks to serious trust problems with the Saskatchewan Party government.
And if Wall and/or the next Sask. Party premier don’t get serious about addressing the source of this eroding confidence, Boyd and the Global Transportation Hub (GTH) will write a rather unpleasant epilogue for this government.
“In light of his (Boyd’s) recent poor judgment with his business dealings and his connections with business in China, it just calls into question: Was there conflict in interest here?” group spokesperson Thera Nordal told reporters upon delivery of the petition.
“Our community needs to know and deserves to have that looked into, to know that we can trust this process.”
New Democrat environment critic Cathy Sproule chimed in that Boyd’s “questionable dealings with China” (his use of government logos and his past ministerial title to promote his own personal business) mean “there are too many important questions now to not have another look at a process that handed our biggest potash customer — China — access to our natural resources.”
Again, to halt all activity surrounding a major job-creating economic project — one that also has significant community support — strictly on Boyd’s activities elsewhere in government seems ludicrous. But the long tentacles Boyd has had in all areas of government have now become a rather tangled mess.
The government again balked this week at the NDP’s request to have Boyd’s one-time operative and now Economy deputy minister Lawrie Pushor appear before a legislative committee to answer questions on his and Boyd’s roles in the GTH land purchase of 204 acres, for $103,000 an acre. Last week, Wall told reporters Pushor appearing before the committee could clear the air.
In that same Wall scrum, the premier balked at suggestions the now near-daily stories about the GTH and Boyd were a scandal. Whatever Wall prefers to calls it, it is now a tangled mess that’s defining this government.
GTH CEO Bryan Richards also told the legislative committee meeting this week that the GTH is carrying a $24-million debt and hasn’t been able to make a payment on that debt since the 2014-15 fiscal year when it was under Boyd’s direction. We also learned GTH land sales are only three-quarters of projections. And this week we learned from a CBC story that the provincial government suspended an immigration consultant for Brightenview — the China-based megamall developer and one of the GTH’s centrepiece tenants, whose Saskatchewan operations are headed by former NDP MP Lorne Nystrom — for submitting about 100 fake job offers to the province’s immigration program.
Of course, last month we also saw Boyd depart government just ahead of the controversy over his China business trip for his private irrigation company that was condemned by conflict of interest commissioner Ron Barclay’s report. Boyd has also been recently charged with Environment and Wildlife Act violations related to irrigation activities.
And there is no sign these near-daily stories of this “nonscandal” are about to go away any time soon.
For example, Sproule intriguingly told Richards at that committee meeting that the GTH was not interested in a third parcel of land.
Yet that third parcel — less than a quarter section south of the 204 acres — was all part of the deal Boyd took to cabinet in April 2012 from an anonymous seller — a numbered company that turned out to be Robert Tappauf. And while Pushor was negotiating the final 204-acre GTH purchase from Anthony Marquart in December 2013, recently released emails show Pushor, at Boyd’s behest, was still inquiring about that third parcel. It may mean nothing.
But this is all adding to the Sask. Party government mess that, daily, is eroding public trust.