Government to ask private realtors to sell off GTH piece by piece

The government of Saskatchewan has acknowledged it's unable to offload the Global Transportation Hub as a package deal. Instead, it's planning to hire a private manager and realtor to run the project and sell the land piece by piece.

In the meanwhile, the property for the government-owned transportation logistics facility will remain in public hands.

"There isn't a new owner that's going to come forward and buy 700 acres that is not yet marketed," said Don Morgan, the minister responsible for the GTH.

All that's doing is throwing a tarp over accountability and transparency when it comes to freedom of information requests.- Cathy Sproule- NDP critic

Instead, he said, the board has concluded that private realtors would do a better job of selling GTH land than government employees.

"We think that rather than have our own staff in Regina doing it we think if we had a national firm doing it we would have exposure to a greater number of potential purchasers," he said, addingonce the land is all soldthe government will figure out what to do with the existing infrastructure.

Morgan said the government is planning to bring in a private sector company to manage the day-to-day operations of the GTH. He also announced that CEO Bryan Richards is out, being replaced on a temporary basis by the GTH's current vice president of finance.

Morgan said this new approach will save taxpayers money by reducing administrative costs and paying realtors exclusively by commission. However, when asked, Morgan didn't provide any numbers or documentation to back up that claim.

He said as a first step, the province will hire a private consultant to advise on precisely how to make this transition. He said while making these changes, the government will work hard to keep existing GTH tenants including Loblaw and CP happy.

'Throwing a tarp' over transparency

The NDP's Cathy Sproule noted that in its news release, the government is still trying to present this move as a "divestiture"of the GTH. But she said that's disingenuous.

"Divestiture is 'to-get-rid-of' and they're not getting rid of anything. They're hiring private people to do a job that the GTH is supposed to be doing," Sproulesaid.

She said by moving the sale of land from the public to the private sector, the government will make the already secretive GTH even more opaque.

Sproulesaid that emails between the new private realtor and prospective customers would not be accessible through freedom of information legislation, which would mean the public would be less informed about what's happening with its assets being sold by a private business.

"There'd be nothing available in terms of their day to day work. All we would have access to is their communications with the government," Sproulesaid. "All that's doing is throwing a tarp over accountability and transparency when it comes to freedom-of-information requests."

When asked, the provincial government acknowledged a private realtor's emails would only be accessible to freedom of information requests if those emails were in possession or under the control of the government.

Morgan hopes GTH will be profitable

Morgan said he hopes this new approach will spur sales and move the GTH into the black. The organization is wallowing in ever-deepening debt and hasn't sold any land in the past couple of years.

• GTH digs into debt to pay City of Regina $3M for services

"We have a lot of taxpayers dollars that are there and we want to make sure that we review carefully with good outside advice from CIC (Crown Investments Corporation) from consultants to make sure that we're doing the best we can to ensure a return on taxpayers dollars," he said.

To date, the government has not provided the public with a detailed cost/benefit analysis of the GTH. Sproule said if it did that work the picture would not be pretty.

"All the coststhe wide roads, everything that goes into that place those costs I don't think will ever be recoverable," Sproule said. "If [Morgan is] honest with the people of Saskatchewan and honestly put the revenues and expenses beside each other it's pretty clear that Saskatchewan taxpayers will lose millions of dollars on this."