SASKATOON — Cumberland NDP MLA Jordan McPhail is calling for the Provincial Auditor to investigate after a CBC News story pointed to the Sask Party government potentially overspending for firefighting aircraft by $100 million.
The CBC story reported that the government is facing a court challenge from Coulson Aircrane regarding the province’s $187 million contract with Conair Group to purchase four retrofitted Q400 firefighting aircraft.
In the court documents, acquired by CBC, Coulson is claiming the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency had deliberately structured its procurement process to favour Conair. Coulson is also claiming their price for airplanes would have been over $100 million less compared to Conair.
In response to the CBC story, McPhail sent out a statement Thursday night in which he blasted the government.
“Outrage does not begin to express my reaction to this CBC investigation. This looks not just like mismanagement, but a betrayal,” McPhail stated.
“It looks like the government may have wasted $100 million dollars of taxpayers’ money on planes that could have been purchased for far less. How did Tim McLeod and the Sask. Party allow this to happen? People in the North – and all across Saskatchewan – deserve answers and accountability.”
Speaking to reporters in Saskatoon Friday, McPhail confirmed that he has written to the Provincial Auditor asking for an immediate investigation into SPSA's acquisition of the four planes from Conair.
“These are deeply troubling allegations that point to a government willing to bend the rules to reward one company at an enormous cost to taxpayers,” said McPhail.
“The people of Saskatchewan deserve to know whether public safety decisions were compromised and whether their money was spent responsibly … Only the Provincial Auditor can cut through the government's spin and get to the truth. This investigation is not about politics, it's about accountability. Saskatchewan taxpayers deserve answers and to learn what happened here so that we can ensure that this never happens again in the future.”
McPhail has been highly critical of the government and SPSA all summer long over their handling of the wildfire situation in the North, pointing particularly to the extensive losses of homes in Denare Beach and East Trout Lake. He called this latest news regarding the aircraft purchases another government failure.
“We've been talking about this from the very outset. We've seen evacuees that were not supported since the very outset of wildfire season. We've seen failure after failure after failure from the Sask Party on the wildfires and the latest one here is spending $100 million dollars, and through the investigation that we see that there's the allegations that they've spent, like I said, $100 million dollars more and did not follow their own policies and procedures and making sure this is a fair, open and transparent bidding process for all competitors to be able to earn the business of a Saskatchewan government.”
One defence the government has put out to the court filing, as mentioned in the CBC story, was that the Coulson airplanes did not meet size specifications, in particular the size of the tail. The defence is that Coulson’s planes are too big to fit into the government's hangars and would require costly infrastructure modifications to accommodate the planes.
McPhail points to this as another issue.
“That's a great question and for me growing up in La Ronge, I've been there since 1993 when I was born and I've been there long enough to know that there was a fire at that hangar in 2016. And then the minister responsible, Dustin Duncan, invested $14 million into rebuilding that very same hangar that these planes won't fit into. And if we want to talk about another Saskatchewan Party failure, we can point to that as well.
“When you rebuild and retrofit a hangar to meet the needs of an air operation, one thing you would think of is what size are the planes nowadays from all of our competitors so that we can make sure that we're open for business for anyone wanting to earn the business of the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, which was then Northern Air Operations and Modified Management. So I mean the retrofitting of that hangar could have happened at that time. They brought in cranes, they brought in multiple different things to support the air operation which I welcomed that investment many years ago, but to me they had the opportunity then to make sure that they were open for competition.”
The court documents also spoke of a former employee of Conair now employed with the SPSA. When asked whether that individual could have had a role in swinging the contract to Conair — something the province has denied in the CBC story — McPhail replied that he is “not alleging anything” and that is “exactly why” he had written to the Provincial Auditor to investigate this.
McPhail adds that if the Auditor investigates and there is no wrongdoing then “that's the report that the Auditor will have.”
But if there is wrongdoing, then “I think the people of Saskatchewan need to know that the Sask Party has failed them yet again on a wildfire response, and you know Minister Tim McLeod is ultimately responsible for the way that his ministry procures goods and how they battle the blazes in northern Saskatchewan.”
The province has provided this response to the NDP news conference:
"In conducting this procurement process, the government relied on advice from an independent non-profit research and development company. Specifications were designed to ensure the aircrafts would meet SPSA’s operational needs and infrastructure requirements.
"The Government of Saskatchewan remains committed to a robust wildfire response that is in the best interest of Saskatchewan people.
"As the matter is now before the court, we will not be commenting further at this time."
– With files from Jon Perez
