Former PC minister decries 'unconscionable' attempt to OK silica mining deal after losing Manitoba election
CBC
Another former Progressive Conservative cabinet member is alleging the former provincial government tried to ram through approval of an Alberta mining company's proposal to drill for sand in southeastern Manitoba days after it lost the Oct. 3 provincial election.
Rochelle Squires, who lost her seat in south Winnipeg's Riel constituency when the provincial NDP formed a majority government, called her former party's attempt to push through the approval after losing the election "unconventional and unconscionable" in an interview on Thursday.
Squires's comments come a day after CBC News reported both Premier Wab Kinew and former PC cabinet minister and environment minister Kevin Klein alleged the former government tried to approve the proposal in breach of the caretaker convention, where outgoing governments are supposed to only engage in urgent, routine, reversible or uncontroversial operations during the brief period before the next government is sworn in.
While the NDP won Manitoba's provincial election, the PCs continued to govern until Oct. 18, when Kinew was sworn in as premier.
But Jeff Wharton, a former PC cabinet minister — and current MLA — insists his government respected the caretaker convention and merely briefed the NDP transition team about the status of the file regarding Alberta-based Sio Silica.
The company has proposed drilling as many as 7,200 wells in southeastern Manitoba over the next 24 years in an effort to extract up to 33 million tonnes of ultra-pure silica sand.
Squires said Wharton's claim is not true, alleging she got a call from him on Oct. 12 on her way out to a dinner with her campaign team.
She said Wharton asked her, in her capacity as an acting environment minister, to provide approval for the project via a ministerial directive.
"It just took awhile for me to understand and comprehend why I'm being asked this and why we would even do that. It just didn't make any sense," she said.
"I knew I wasn't going to offer an approval. We were in a caretaker convention mode. We had lost the election. The future of that sand mine rightfully belongs with the incoming government."
Squires said Wharton's assertions that he did not ask Klein to approve the proposal and that no member of his government tried to approve the project during the transition period prompted her to write a column in the Winnipeg Free Press on Thursday "to put my side of the story, my information, out there."
Squires wrote in the column that Wharton told her the Sio Silica project was "of significant importance" to defeated premier Heather Stefanson, "but because of a conflict, she herself couldn't offer that directive."
But spokesperson Matt Preprost disputed that alleged claim, saying in an emailed statement that Stefanson "has no conflict of interest with Sio Silica."
"The former premier respected due process in the transition phase and no license was granted," Preprost said.
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