Conflict of interest commissioner investigating GTH lease deal

With questions swirling around the Global Transportation Hub once again, Saskatchewan’s conflict of interest commissioner has launched an investigation.

Ron Barclay is looking into a lease deal for office space at the GTH. It was signed in October, according to a statement from the provincial government.

The GTH sublet office space which had been used by the GTH administrative team to a company called sMedia, which is partly owned by Regan Hinchcliffe — the son of provincial cabinet minister Christine Tell.

The space had cost the GTH $15,000 a month in rent, utilities and general office expenses, according to the province, and the signed lease with sMedia will result in a loss of $278,000 over the next 10 years. The government’s statement said that if the space was left vacant, the loss would be about $1.7 million more.

There aren’t any other tenants subleasing from the GTH.

The government noted that the real estate market in Regina has changed significantly since the original lease was signed in 2014.

The deal was negotiated by the acting GTH CEO, Colliers International, and sMedia and was approved by the GTH’s board of directors. The government said cabinet didn’t review or approve the sublease with sMedia.

Barclay said he launched the investigation after getting a letter and request to do so from the NDP’s Cathy Sproule, though he did note that Tell had asked him for an opinion on the matter before that.

He already has started the investigation, interviewing both Tell and her son. Tell told Barclay she didn’t know anything about the lease until after it was signed.

Barclay said he’ll also be speaking to people at the GTH and Colliers who looked after the transaction, and he’ll have to figure out whether terms of the lease are comparable to fair market value. He expects the investigation will be done in about a month.

The Opposition NDP has several questions about how the deal came about.

“We need to know how this company was identified as a possibility to lease the space, and who approved cutting the cost for the space by 30 per cent,” Sproule said in a news release.

She said the people of Saskatchewan deserve transparency and should have a full judicial inquiry into the land deals at the GTH.

“The Sask. Party has resisted changing our province’s outdated conflict of interest and lobbying legislation, and they’ve shut down every attempt to investigate the sketchy land deals at the GTH,” said Sproule.