The Buffalo Party of Saskatchewan’s interim leader says lawsuits against himself and another candidate over allegedly unpaid campaign bills are “frivolous and vexatious.”
In legal action filed in Alberta provincial court in Calgary on Oct. 13, the Progressive Group for Independent Business (PGIB) claims it wasn’t paid for creating promotional materials and conducting work on the party’s campaign.
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The two candidates named in court documents are Wade Sira, the interim leader of the party who is running in Martensville-Warman, and Constance Maffenbeier, candidate for Humboldt-Watrous.
PGIB is suing the candidates for $21,250 each, for payments it says were due on Oct. 1.
None of the allegations has been proven in court.
The Buffalo Party, formerly the Wexit Party, plans to contest the allegations. Sira said the party is considering a countersuit for defamation.
“This is a frivolous and vexatious lawsuit (PGIB’s) putting forward to try and discredit the Buffalo Party,” he said in an interview.
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Sira said Craig Chandler, a conservative activist and PGIB’s executive director, was slated to act as campaign chair and write speeches.
Chris Tan, PGIB’s Saskatchewan chair, said in a prepared statement that the group worked on the party’s logo and created a campaign and website to collect data. He said the party promoted that campaign over social media, established a phone number to answer calls, and secured office space. PGIB also produced promotional materials, recruited volunteers, and studied constituencies, Tan said.
Sira said he didn’t receive the promised materials and services, leading the party to pull out of the contract on Oct. 1. He said he also didn’t receive speeches, and he didn’t have an opportunity to review The Big Listen, a campaign PGIB ran and promoted on social media to gather data on potential voters.
Fundraising was supposed to contribute to PGIB’s payment, he said.
Tan said PGIB wasn’t contracted until shortly before the writ dropped. He said it was “a challenge” to produce the work on short turnaround, but that PGIB did produce deliverables.
“Their lack of planning became our emergency,” he said.
With voters heading to polls on Oct. 26, Sira expressed concern that the lawsuit being filed before the election would harm his party’s chances, benefitting Saskatchewan Party candidates in rural ridings.
Tan said he agrees with many of the Buffalo Party’s stances, but believes the legal action is necessary and accepts that it may affect election outcomes.
Sira called it “an ugly piece of politics that is not doing any good for the people of Saskatchewan.”
Tan called some of the concerns the Buffalo Party raised over the legal action “rubbish.”
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