Moe accuses NDP of ‘smear campaign’ over tire recycling contract

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The NDP has raised questions over whether Scott Moe assured a Saskatoon-based tire recycler it would continue to have the supply it needed to keep the lights on.

Opposition Leader Carla Beck singled out the premier during question period on Wednesday, asking whether in his former role as environment minister he guaranteed Shercom Industries continued business.

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The question comes as the Sask. Party continues to take heat over a recycling contract awarded by Tire Stewardship Saskatchewan (TSS) to an American company through a process Shercom says pushed them out. But Moe struck back, accusing the NDP of engaging in a “smear campaign” maligning Saskatchewan businessmen.

“There was no government interference with that whatsoever and I don’t know where that came from,” said Moe.

Beck addressed the room again.

“He’s worked himself into quite a lather over there,” she said before asking her question again.

Moe said it was not a minister’s role to make such a promise. He asked Beck if she would offer an apology to Saskatchewan businessmen and if she would stand by the comments she and members of her party have made, this time in the rotunda after question period.

Beck then accused Moe and Minister of Environment Christine Tell of hiding “behind the TSS,” a non-profit corporation that serves as the operator of the province’s scrap tire recycling program.

Beck questioned TSS’s impartiality and brought up the role Richard “Porky” Porter had in creating the government agency.

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“This is someone who donated $1,000 to the premier’s leadership campaign, and $6,000 to the Sask. Party itself,” she said of the man Moe once referred to as a “true friend.”

Moe again said the NDP was smearing “Saskatchewan residents,” which prompted Speaker of the House Randy Weekes to caution the premier for his language.

“It’s getting pretty close to the line,” Weekes said.

NDP ethics and democracy critic Meara Conway also questioned the impartiality of the TSS, asking how Tell can claim the organization is “totally independent” when “one of the architects of this government’s tire policy program has donated thousands” to the party.

Moe did not answer the question, and repeated an invite to Beck to stand in the rotunda and repeat the charges she had made on the floor of the assembly.

“I would invite the premier to answer any of these questions,” Conway shot back.

The arm’s-length nature of TSS has been the rationale offered for why certain summaries and reports have not been released. Conway asked if the government would provide a summary of the business case to increase the number of tire recycling operations in the province from one to two.

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“We don’t want state secrets, we just want a basic summary” she said.

Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce CEO Jason Aebig wrote to the province raising concerns over how the TSS went about procuring the new vendor — U.S. company Crumb Rubber Manufacturing (CRM) — in 2022 to open a southern facility in Moose Jaw.

“Questions continue to surface around the short-sighted decisions taken by TSS to regulate a once ‘free market’ for tire processing in Saskatchewan and undermine the operation of Saskatoon-based processor Shercom Industries,” Aebig wrote.

Tell has said the government will consider the comments made in the letter.

“Government should never shy away from making regulatory, statutory, legislative changes when they are necessary,” said Tell on Tuesday.

Shercom president Shane Olsen told media that same day that what has happened to Shercom over the past three years has been “an ambush.”

When he heard the province say the American provider would offer higher value products, he insisted “none of that is true,” and also noted British Columbia and Manitoba have only one processor each.

Olsen said the changes will lead to bankruptcy.

alsalloum@postmedia.com

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