There is little doubt now that ministers of the former Progressive Conservative government were thinking long and hard about issuing an environmental licence for a controversial sand mine after the PCs lost last October’s general election.
The only remaining questions are why were they so involved in this issue, and whether or not their involvement constitutes a conflict of interest.
The answers to those questions will likely not come until conflict of interest commissioner Jeff Schnoor finishes investigating a complaint against the Tory ministers who sought a licence for the Sio Silica mine near Winnipeg — after the election, but before the NDP could officially take the reins of power. But while we wait for the results of that investigation, the NDP are certainly trying to do their part to deepen the scandal.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Former premier Heather Stefanson
Last week, Premier Wab Kinew released documents that indicate the number of ministers taking an interest in Sio Silica was much larger than previously thought.
When Schnoor opened his investigation, there was evidence former industry and trade minister Jeff Wharton was pressuring two cabinet colleagues — then-Environment Minister Kevin Klein and Families Minister Rochelle Squires — into licensing Sio Silica, despite the fact the legislature had entered what is known as the caretaker convention. (More on that in a moment.)
Klein and Squires declined.
New internal briefing notes confirm that along with Wharton, former premier Heather Stefanson, former finance minister Cliff Cullen and former agriculture minister Derek Johnson all requested information from senior government bureaucrats on how to issue a licence to Sio Silica during the caretaker period following the election.
Why is this newsworthy?
A tradition of parliamentary democracy, the caretaker convention stipulates an outgoing government must act with “restraint” until the incoming government can be legally sworn into office. The convention allows outgoing governments to attend to routine administrative matters, or urgent issues that cannot wait for a new government to be sworn in.
However, an outgoing government cannot make decisions that should otherwise be the prerogative of the government that won the election. The allegation is that the outgoing PC government was indeed contemplating a decision it was not authorized to make.
Premier Wab Kinew hammered the Tory opposition last week in the legislative chamber, positioning the new documentation as evidence of a PC “conspiracy to subvert the will of the people.”
Is that what the documents reveal?
On the one hand, it is troubling verging on alarming that so many senior ministers of the PC government were contemplating issuing a licence to Sio Silica during the caretaker period. The company had been denied licensing prior to the election because it had failed to provide assurances that its plan to extract silica sand from underground deposits was environmentally sound.
It is also alarming that the briefing notes released this week show senior government mandarins, including Kathryn Gerrard, the clerk of executive council and government’s senior-most bureaucrat, had to repeatedly remind the ministers they were barred from issuing a licence during the caretaker convention.
There are strong but unproven suggestions the Tory ministers were willing to violate the caretaker convention because they had some sort of personal stake in the Sio Silica project. Nothing the NDP has produced to date supports that allegation, but there is more than enough evidence to at least ask the question.
At this point, all we can safely conclude is that by contemplating the issuance of a licence to Sio Silica, the Tory ministers acted in a highly inappropriate manner.
There may be no legal consequences for trying, and failing, to do something inappropriate.
But there may very well be electoral consequences if voters decide this is a scandal to remember.
