There’s gore on floor after scary GTH queries

Halloween is still three days away, but the Saskatchewan Party government has already returned to that rather haunted place known as the legislature.

Like any good, cheesy horror movie, things started out OK.

There were smiles on all faces as the group launched its quest with Wednesday’s speech from the throne. It’s easy to be positive and upbeat when you feel you have control over your destiny.

But then along comes something from your past — a gnarly hand busting through the crypt and clawing through the freshly turned earth of the grave.

Of course, the selfabsorbed characters are oblivious to this unseen force, but eventually they succumb to both it and their own hubris.

One by one, they disappear ... first Bill Boyd ... now Brad Wall ... and after Thursday morning, we now have the (figuratively) pummelled corpse of Jeremy Harrison.

And so we returned to question period to hear the NDP’s scary tales of the nearabandoned inland port.

Scene 1: Tumbleweed blows through the streets, but shadowy figures continue to sweep through the Global Transportation Hub.

As per the script, it started out great for the happy government gang.

The initial question from interim leader Nicole Sarauer on the repeal of Bill 40

(which would have allowed 49 per cent of a Crown corporation to be sold) was met with the witty rejoinder from Wall welcoming her as the seventh NDP Opposition leader he has faced and further congratulations to Trent Wotherspoon for his decisions to “not not run” for the NDP leadership.

(For those keeping score, that’s one Wall shot at Wotherspoon; two glowing compliments from Wall to Ryan Meili for proposing referendums on future Crown corporation ownership decisions.)

Yes, it was a cocky thing for Wall to say, but that’s what you expect from the main protagonist.

Besides, when asked by reporters after question period what it would take after Wall’s Bill 40 announcement to convince the NDP that privatization wasn’t going ahead, Sarauer replied: “Good question. I don’t know.”

However, the plot suddenly twisted Thursday when veteran MLA Cathy Sproule (after making the aforementioned GTH tumbleweed observation) popped out of nowhere and began hacking and slashing away at the defenceless and out-of-cabinet Harrison.

Harrison previously took to his feet no fewer than 110 times in question period to say there was nothing to see at the GTH, Sproule noted. Yet during his short-lived Sask. Party leadership bid in August, he announced he would sell the GTH and that he would likely have fired any minister responsible for overseeing a deal that saw businessmen who donated to the Sask. Party walk away with $6 million and $5 million respectively.

It was brutal.

Sproule was one 1970s Rogie Vachon goalie mask (which, by the way, wouldn’t be allowed in Quebec under Bill 62) short of her own slasher movie franchise. All poor Harrison could do was squirm in his seat.

New GTH Minister Dustin Duncan tried to come to his government’s defence, noting 700 of the GTH’s 1,800 acres had been sold.

But by then, the damage had been done.

(Interestingly, at no point Thursday did Duncan use the phrase “no wrongdoing”— the quote from provincial auditor Judy Ferguson’s June 2016 press release Harrison and Wall frequently repeated. Asked later by reporters about that choice, Duncan simply explained: “I think it has been said enough.”)

The bizarre absence of the police is a common feature of these cheesy horror movies. At least they have a role in the GTH file.

After telling the assembly the file has moved to Manitoba prosecutions, Duncan could only say later that he gleaned that from LeaderPost news reports and had no direct knowledge of where the GTH investigation was at. Justice Minister Don Morgan confirmed “we don’t have any input or direction at a minister’s level.”

And like any good, cheesy horror movie, all we seem to have in the end is a bloody mess.