Mr. Speaker, on February 16, I asked about the scandal engulfing Saskatchewan's Global Transportation Hub. In responding, the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities deferred to local decision-making. I believe he may not have been fully aware of the gravity of this scandal. The Global Transportation Hub is a provincial crown corporation that operates a logistics facility just west of Regina. It has received millions of dollars in federal funding.
On February 26, 2013, an Alberta businessman, Robert Tappauf, bought two parcels of land that the provincial Ministry of Highways would need to build a bypass near the Global Transportation Hub. He paid $45,000 and $55,000 per acre for the two parcels. Later that same day, Tappauf sold these parcels for $71,000 and $84,000 per acre, turning a profit of $6 million.
Anthony Marquart, the Regina developer who bought the land from Tappauf, sold it one year later to the Global Transportation Hub for $103,00 per acre, turning a profit of $5 million. The next month, the Global Transportation Hub sold most of the land back to the Ministry of Highways for between $50,000 and $65,000 per acre, very close to the price originally paid by Tappauf.
Appraisers, lawyers, and other experts are asking why the Global Transportation Hub bought the land for about twice what it was worth, only to sell it back for half of the price to the Ministry of Highways, which could have expropriated the land in any case. How did Tappauf and Marquart anticipate that Global Transportation Hub would overpay for this land?
It turns out that both of these businessmen donated thousands of dollars to the governing Saskatchewan Party. Tappauf also leases 2,000 acres of farmland to Bill Boyd, the provincial cabinet minister directly responsible for the Global Transportation Hub. Are we to believe that no information was exchanged between Boyd and Tappauf? Are we to believe that all of this was simply coincidental?
This scandal should be of great concern to this House because the federal government has provided millions of dollars to the Global Transportation Hub. Presumably, the goal was to invest this money in improving local infrastructure, not to create a slush fund for Saskatchewan Party cabinet ministers to transfer to their cronies through suspicious land deals. There is more than enough evidence in the public domain to warrant a federal investigation to safeguard federal tax dollars. There is more than enough evidence to warrant an RCMP investigation.
No one blames the Government of Canada for this scandal. However, the people of Saskatchewan, and indeed all Canadians, need specific assurances that the federal government will not turn a blind eye to this situation. We need to know that the federal government takes this scandal seriously and will take action to get to the bottom of it.