Acquiring tenants at the Global Transportation Hub (GTH) has been a slow-moving process for the Saskatchewan government. Don Morgan, the minister responsible for the Global Transportation Hub (GTH), announced July 25 the province will now look at divesting GTH assets and management.
“The GTH is an important project that has created hundreds of jobs and improved market access in Saskatchewan. However, in retrospect it’s probably not a business the government should have been involved in,” Morgan said.
Morgan said the government’s goal is to move forward in preserving the over 1,000 jobs at the inland port and securing the best value for taxpayers. Grocery giant Loblaws is the primary tenant at the GTH.
The minister said that the government can begin to move in this direction now that the RCMP investigation into controversial land deals is complete. That investigation resulted in no criminal charges.
READ MORE: RCMP finds no evidence to support criminal charges GTH land deal
Debt has been growing at the publicly-owned inland port. At the beginning of March, it was revealed that the GTH’s debt was $37.3 million. That’s $11 million higher than the 2017-18 budget projection of $26 million.
At the time, Morgan attributed the growing debt load to slower than expected land sales. He also instructed the GTH management to come up with an aggressive marketing strategy to start selling parcels of land.
At the time, just over half of the available plots of land at the GTH had been sold.
READ MORE: GTH minister says it’s too early to talk about selling the project as debt grows
Morgan said that discussions about the future direction of the project had been going on since Premier Scott Moe took office in early February.
“Having said that, we don’t want to have a fire sale but we think it’s appropriate for us to look for other options for the GTH.”
The Opposition NDP have been highly critical of both the GTH land deals that were investigated by the RCMP and how they’ve been managed.
“If government’s looking at different utilization of this asset that they’ve spent well over $100 million on certainly we need a full public value for money analysis as well,” Regina Rosemont MLA Trent Wotherspoon said.
While Morgan has said there will be no judicial inquiry now that the RCMP investigation is complete, Wotherspoon and the NDP are continuing the call for one. He called the sale talks a distraction.
“Another distraction from a government that just can’t be trusted with public resources, public money and public assets,” he said. “This is a government that mismanaged this project.”
READ MORE: GTH minister says there are no talks to sell Hub to Regina, but synergies exist
The province does not have a sale timeline or potential buyers lined up at the moment for the GTH. Morgan said first they want to do a review to determine the value of the assets and develop a strategy.