Premier claims former PC government tried to ram through silica mining approval days after Manitoba election

Premier Wab Kinew claims the former Progressive Conservative government tried to approve an Alberta mining company's proposal to drill for sand in southeastern Manitoba days after the Tories lost the provincial election in October.

Former PC cabinet minister Kevin Klein corroborates Kinew's allegation of an attempted breach of the caretaker convention, where outgoing governments are supposed to only engage in urgent, routine, reversible or uncontroversial operations during the brief period before the next government is sworn in.

But a fellow former PC cabinet minister, Jeff Wharton, denies Kinew and Klein's claims. He insists his government respected the caretaker convention and merely briefed the NDP transition team about the status of the file regarding Alberta-based Sio Silica.

The NDP won Manitoba's provincial election on Oct. 3. The PCs continued to govern until Oct. 17, when Kinew was sworn in as premier.

Kinew's office said the PCs attempted on Oct. 6 — three days into the post-election transition period — to approve Sio Silica's proposal to drill as many as 7,200 wells in southeastern Manitoba over the next 24 years in an effort to extract up to 33 million tonnes of ultra-pure silica sand.

The Clean Environment Commission, Manitoba's environmental regulator, recommended in June against any immediate decision about the project until more is known about the effects of removing that much sand from the Winnipeg sandstone aquifer, a source of drinking water for thousands. A second technical review of the project was underway.

Kinew said the PCs nonetheless tried to "ram this through" and paint the approval of Sio Silica as an administrative, not political matter.

"I was surprised on a Friday afternoon to understand that one of the first actions of our new government could potentially be the approval of this mine. They made the argument that it wasn't up to us as an incoming government. We said we're going to put a stop to that," Kinew said in an interview last week.

"We said we're an incoming government. We think that our future minister, who is not sworn in yet or even been announced publicly, should be the one to have a say, at least in this decision."

Former Kirkfield Park MLA Klein, who served as environment and climate minister in the former PC government, said there was indeed an effort by the PCs to breach the caretaker convention.

But Klein said it was him, not the incoming NDP government, who put the brakes on approving the mining proposal.

Klein said Wharton, who served as the PC minister responsible for economic development and mining, asked Klein to sign off on the approval.

"I received a request to approve the project following the election. I strongly declined for three reasons," Klein said last week in an interview.

"First, because we lost the election and it would have been inappropriate to approve something like this in the transitional period between governments. Second, because I had serious concerns with this project [and] third, I gave my word to residents that the decision would be made by experts.