MLAs to vote on fines for ex-premier, cabinet ministers

Manitoba MLAs will soon vote on the ethics commissioner’s recommendation to fine former premier Heather Stefanson and two of her cabinet ministers for violating conflict rules, Premier Wab Kinew said Thursday.

The fines must be put to a vote by MLAs by Oct. 7, which is within 10 sitting days of the ethics commissioner’s report being presented to the legislative assembly on May 21. Members return to the chamber on Oct. 1 for the fall sitting.

Commissioner Jeffrey Schnoor recommended Stefanson, Cliff Cullen and Jeff Wharton be fined tens of thousands of dollars for pushing to licence a sand mine after the PCs lost the 2023 election and before the NDP government took office.

The watchdog’s 100-page report concluded Stefanson and Cullen were aware the incoming government was opposed to the PCs issuing a licence to the company.

She and Cullen agreed to look for options to have the licence approved anyway, and involved Wharton.

“Their intention was clearly that he act on the option,” Schnoor wrote. The pair broke the caretaker convention that requires outgoing governments to stick to routine matters and refrain from significant decisions, his report said.

Stefanson did not stand to benefit financially if the Sio Silica project was approved, but her efforts to push for a licence “lacked ethical and constitutional legitimacy,” the report said.

Schnoor recommended she be fined $18,000.

He recommended a $12,000 fine for Cullen and a $10,000 fine for Wharton, who was re-elected.

“Heather Stefanson is the first premier to be fined for breaking the conflict of interest law,” Kinew said Thursday at an unrelated event. “Jeff Wharton is the first sitting MLA to be fined under the law,” the premier said.

“Neither of them will be the first to be excused from paying those fines by vote in the legislature.”

Wharton, who was removed from his critic duties by PC Leader Obby Khan, issued an apology before the summer break.

The Tories say it’s time to vote on the matter and turn the page.

“We accept the report of the ethics commissioner, now let’s move forward for Manitobans,” Khan said Thursday.

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The PCs have been calling on the premier to hold a vote on the fines since the report was tabled in the spring, Khan said.

“He refuses to do it because he’s playing political games,” the PC leader said. “It’s unbecoming of the behaviour of a premier.”

If MLAs vote to fine Stefanson, Cullen and Wharton, there is a 30-day deadline for payment set out in the Act. After 30 days, it may be set-off against any “indemnity, allowance or expense” otherwise payable to the member.

Ultimately, no licence was issued for the Sio Silica development in southeast Manitoba.

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.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.