Mr. Speaker, it is not every evening that we are here voting past 10 o'clock. That really puts the late into late show.
The Global Transportation Hub west of Regina is a provincial crown corporation that, after receiving $27 million in federal funding, spent a similar amount buying land from businessmen linked to the governing Saskatchewan Party for more than twice the land's publicly appraised value.
When I raised the issue in the House, the government responded in one of two ways. The President of the Treasury Board told us it is a provincial issue and the Saskatchewan government is handling it. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport assured us that federal money was only used for transportation infrastructure and could not have been used for the associated land purchases.
Since we last debated this matter, several new revelations raised more questions about both of the government's explanations. The Saskatchewan Party government claimed that the land purchases were justified by a private appraisal. On May 9, CBC reported that the Global Transportation Hub is refusing to release the private appraisal because, “Disclosure of this information could be expected to harm the reputation and cause financial loss to the preparer of the appraisal”.
In terms of the documents that the Global Transportation Hub would release, it sent CBC a fee estimate of $112,000. In addition, the provincial ministry of highways sent CBC a fee estimate of $70,000 for another 500 pages of documents, well over $100 per page. These fees are obviously far beyond what would have been needed to cover the cost of preparing the documents. The provincial government is clearly using access to information fees to prevent journalists and the public from accessing the information.
Why would the federal government trust the provincial government to get to the bottom of this matter? With the Government of Saskatchewan stonewalling, the Government of Canada must conduct its own investigation to safeguard federal tax dollars.
On April 6, the Regina Leader-Post reported that the Pinkie Road interchange, completed around the Global Transportation Hub in 2013, will have to be ripped up and rebuilt to connect to the south Regina bypass, which is quickly becoming a significant boondoggle in its own right. The Pinkie Road interchange cost $43 million and was part of the transport infrastructure for which federal funds were supposed to be used. Even if we accept that no federal funds went into land purchases, that means federal funds were spent building an interchange that is now being ripped up.
The Global Transportation Hub scandal is out of control. The people of Saskatchewan and indeed all Canadians need to know what happened to our tax dollars. The federal government must investigate. It is late, but it is not too late for the Government of Canada to start being part of the solution rather than continuing to downplay the problem.