Tory voices decry last-minute attempt to push through silica mining plan

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This article was published 28/12/2023 (669 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two former Manitoba Tory cabinet ministers say they were urged to approve a controversial silica sand mine in the time after their government lost the Oct. 3 election and before the NDP was sworn in.

Former environment minister Kevin Klein and Rochelle Squires, who was acting environment minister, both said this week they received calls Oct. 12 from then-economic development minister Jeff Wharton asking them to approve the proposed Sio Silica Corp. project near Vivian in southeastern Manitoba.

Both said they refused — with Squires writing in a Free Press op/ed Thursday approving the project would violate the convention whereby the exiting government acts as a caretaker during the transition to the new governing party.

“Our time in government was coming to a swift end as Wab Kinew officially became premier on Oct. 18, and the project was no longer subject to our purview,” Squires wrote, after the NDP premier first raised the matter in a Free Press interview published Dec. 22.

Kinew said the exiting Tories tried to issue Calgary-based Sio Silica a mining licence during the transition period after the election.

In an interview Thursday, Klein said he also refused Wharton’s Oct. 12 request to approve the project without more information showing the project is environmentally safe.

Klein said it was the same stance he took when he refused to issue an environmental licence after a Clean Environment Commission report registered concerns in June.

“Obviously, I was opposed to it — I made a commitment that this has to be a decision made by experts,” the former Kirkfield Park MLA said.

Opponents of the project have said drilling hundreds of wells to extract sought-after silica sand may put the local water supply at risk.

The CEC report was unable to state with confidence all potential environmental effects had been fully considered and adequate plans were prepared to prevent or mitigate them.

“The way that they wanted to proceed, or the way that Jeff (Wharton) said he wanted to proceed, I didn’t agree with.”–Kevin Klein

“The way that they wanted to proceed, or the way that Jeff (Wharton) said he wanted to proceed, I didn’t agree with,” Klein said Thursday. “So I strongly declined.”

According to Squires, Wharton told her Oct. 12 the project could proceed with a ministerial directive.

“He then told me it was a project of significant importance to the (defeated) premier (Heather Stefanson), but because of a conflict, she herself couldn’t offer that directive,” Squires wrote.

Neither Stefanson (now Opposition leader) nor Wharton (MLA for Red River North) were made available Thursday to media.

A statement issued on behalf of Stefanson said she has “no conflict of interest with Sio Silica. The former premier respected due process in the transition phase and no licence was granted.”

A statement issued on behalf of Wharton didn’t deny he asked Klein and Squires to break the caretaker convention, but said “no licensing decision was granted during the transition by me, my former colleagues or the former premier. That decision remains with the NDP.”

It added investors “won’t sit on the sidelines forever waiting for the new government to make decisions.”

Neither Sio Silica president and chief executive officer Feisal Somji nor director Mike Pyle responded to a request for comment Thursday.

The proposed mining project has the potential to impact the safety of drinking water for thousands of Manitobans, said Deveryn Ross, who was deputy chief of staff to Stefanson’s predecessor, Brian Pallister.

“If (Stefanson) had a conflict of interest, what was that conflict?” Ross said Thursday. “Who stood to gain by having either Klein or Squires push this through at Wharton’s behest?

“Why was this pressure being exerted when it was being exerted, as opposed to before the election? Why were they trying to sneak it through in the last hours of the life of the government?”

“Why were they trying to sneak it through in the last hours of the life of the government?”–Deveryn Ross

Squires has stated she’s done with politics and, after calling out her party and former cabinet colleagues, there’s likely no turning back, said University of Manitoba political studies Prof. Christopher Adams.

The fallout could impact Wharton if he seeks the PC leadership in 2024, but probably won’t hurt the party in the long run, Adams said. “I think a story like this will fade away as we get closer to the next election.”

Out of respect for democratic norms and voters, Ross said he hopes it doesn’t fade away.

“There’s a convention in Canadian democracy and basically democracies all over the world that outgoing governments don’t do these things because, by losing the election, you’ve lost the moral authority — the public licence — to make decisions that affect the public,” Ross said.

Meantime, the proposed mining project has been “irreversibly tainted” by efforts to avoid accountable, transparent decision making, said Tangi Bell, spokesperson for Vivian-area residents urging the province to reject the plan as “unsafe and unsound.”

“We are disappointed but not surprised to read of efforts to secure political approval for the Sio Silica project through the back door rather than through evidence-driven analysis.”–Tangi Bell

“We are disappointed but not surprised to read of efforts to secure political approval for the Sio Silica project through the back door rather than through evidence-driven analysis,” Bell said Thursday.

In the Free Press interview published Dec. 22, Kinew said, although the proposed mining plan may have been at “the finish line” as the NDP came into office, “We’re backing up a few steps.”

“How do we ensure that the environmental standards are there to guarantee the water supply, to guarantee the long-term environmental concerns are mitigated?”–Wab Kinew

“How do we ensure that the environmental standards are there to guarantee the water supply, to guarantee the long-term environmental concerns are mitigated?” the premier said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

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