This post is the byproduct of reviewing and cross-referencing leaked government documents, letters and emails, news releases, Hansard and other publicly-available materials.
It also stems from extensive conversations I’ve enjoyed with good people who are, or have been recently, inside the Saskatchewan Research Council. Given Saskatchewan is a place where the government stalks and destroy people who make the wrong sound, I am protecting their identities. As a salute to their bravery for speaking out, nevermind having to endure what they did, I’m not paywalling this post.
I believe it’s reasonable to suggest that not that long ago, this story would have been front page, top of the newshour. Had it come to light at a time when the Saskatchewan Legislative press gallery was chock full of journalists, it would have been dissected in the headlines for weeks, deservedly.
The least I can do is make it free for everyone.
So please, feel free to forward this piece.
After a couple years on the job, folks at the Saskatchewan Research Council had reached the consensus that President and CEO Mike Crabtree’s performance was good, but not necessarily great.
Under Crabtree’s watch, the SRC had experienced a massive IT breach. It was then slow to recover services due, in part, to Crabtree’s trimming of in-house IT services. Internally, management was growing concerned that the organization’s public service commitments were not being fully appreciated.
Since Crabtree’s appointment as CEO, morale inside the iconic provincial institution has been at an all-time low. At least four vice-presidents have been fired or pushed out, along with other senior key employees. The SRC board, once guided by some of the best scientists in the country, has devolved into a hot mess of Jeremy Harrison’s patronage appointments, firings, reappointments and resignations.
Mike Crabtree was hired as the SRC’s vice-president of energy in 2013. He’s got a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s degree in petroleum engineering. Crabtree has also enjoyed significant success in the private oilfield industry.
Just ask him.
According to his biography posted on the SRC’s website,
“Mike chairs several Canadian and US companies and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from government and private investors for successful new technology ventures. Prior to SRC, he was an executive board member at Carbon Engineering Inc, focusing on direct air capture of carbon dioxide. Mike also founded and led Oilflow Solutions Inc, an oilfield services company, and held numerous senior executive roles at Schlumberger Inc…”
Impressive, but “chairs”?
As in present tense?
Chairing “several” international companies while he’s earning over $600K to run an organization for the Saskatchewan government?
What? The hell?
See, Crabtree’s private sector interests did not wane with his appointment to a critical role in Saskatchewan’s public service. Instead, the same year he was made a VP at the SRC, Crabtree was appointed as director of a different corporation, a Saskatoon-based private company called QuickThree Solutions, in which he also held a decent amount of shares.
A couple years before Crabtree was added as a director and shareholder, QuickThree had been established in 2011 by four locals. The company revolved around the invention of Alvin Herman and his son Erin. Alvin seems like such a cool old dude, nevermind a creative genius. The other two directors and shareholders were Mike Meekins and Dan Kemmer, founders of Saskatoon-based Westbridge Capital, which lent QuickThree $7.64-million in startup funding.
In 2018 Quickthree Solutions was sold to an American company for $42-million USD.
Let’s be clear: that is awesome.
Massive kudos to anyone, including Crabtree, who can build a private company from the ground up, then sell it for a 400% lift, all in under a decade. It’s an undeniable benchmark of corporate and personal success and everyone involved should be applauded.
They should also stay TF out of the public service.
There is no crossover between the purposes of the public service and private sector industries, nor should there be. Once upon a time, public servants in Saskatchewan recognized and respected this tenet.
In 2019, a year after he cashed out of Quickthree, Mike Crabtree was appointed President and CEO of the SRC, replacing outgoing Laurier Schramm.
One of Crabtree’s first orders of business as CEO was gutting the SRC’s board of directors.
A few months later, after working with Jeremy Harrison’s chief of staff, Richard Davis, on new board member nominations, Crabtree welcomed his business partners, Erin Herman and Mike Meekins, to the SRC’s board of directors.
When they were appointed, Crabtree did not disclose his business connections to Herman and Meekins to the SRC’s executive management team or its board of directors. Further, neither Herman nor Meekins disclosed their connections to each other, or to Crabtree.
To recap: the entire time Mike Crabtree was vice-president of energy for the SRC, he was also deeply embedded in his own private sector interests in the oil industry with Erin Herman and Mike Meekins. Based on publicly-available information, the three men took home a combined $15-million from the 2018 sale of their company.
All of that should have been disclosed to the SRC executive and board of directors, but it wasn’t.
This represents an incredibly serious conflict of interest for any organization, corporation or agency, whether government or private.
One thing you’re going to learn today is that this is just one of Jeremy Harrison’s total lies:
There’s no process. Harrison and the Sask Party politically appoint all government agency board members.
Harrison lies prolifically, yet he’s shockingly bad at it. The efforts Harrison has made since 2022 to appear disconnected from the SRC board, while also running the board, are positively comical:
Board? What board?
If Jeremy Harrison is to be believed, he’s been the Minister responsible for the SRC for almost ten years, but hardly knew its board of directors even existed. He definitely doesn’t know who is on it, or why they’re on it, so there’s no point in asking him. Next question.
Nothing to see here.
Until 2017, when the SRC needed new blood on its board, it hired an agency, which would advertise the role province-wide, soliciting and vetting applications. Then the SRC’s CEO and existing board members would conduct interviews, sometimes lasting up to two hours, with those independently-nominated (on their merit) candidates. Once that process was complete, the SRC’s final nominations were put forward for the Sask Party cabinet to rubber-stamp.
Not long after winning another landslide (can we stop that please?) provincial election in 2016, Harrison put an end to all that pesky due diligence. He would be in charge of board appointments going forward, thank you very much.
In fact, in 2017 Harrison even chastised SRC leadership for ‘wasting’ resources by conducting its own independent board member search and rooting it in best practise. Harrison claimed that it was all unnecessary because the Sask Party had an office in the Legislature with a drawer of “pre-approved" board candidates for government agencies.
Two years later, Jeremy Harrison would end up appointing his longtime friend, staunch supporter and mayor of St Walburg, Saskatchewan, George Prudat, to the SRC’s board. Today Prudat chairs the SRC board and has spent much time boasting internally about his personal friendship with Harrison, because he believes political patronage strengthens government boards.
That’s right: the chair of the board of the billion-dollar government agency leading the Government of Saskatchewan’s rare earth and incoming nuclear programs isn’t a scientist, researcher or engineer.
It’s just some guy, a retired Sask Party supporter.
In fact, there is nobody on today’s SRC board with a background in science, physics, or engineering.
Here’s how Harrison described SRC board chair Prudat (while simultaneously insisting he’s never heard of the SRC’s board of directors).
“… a Saskatchewan gentleman.”
Think I just threw up in my mouth a bit.
Contrary to Harrison’s assertion, the fact this “Saskatchewan gentleman” was once in the Navy does not make him an engineer.
But it doesn’t matter who is appointed to any government or public service board in Saskatchewan anymore. They’re not being appointed for possessing the skills, education and/or experience that would qualify them as a fiduciary guardian of a multi-million, if not billion dollar public asset.
They’ve been “pre-approved” solely for their allegiance to Scott Moe and his corrupted Sask Party.
Even if it drives that agency or service into the ground.
In the collective mind of the Sask Party government, a public agency or service destroyed is better than one that succeeds without their MLAs, friends, family or party donors making money.
This amateur, backwater bullshit does not equate to the behaviour of real leaders or even successful business people. Simply put, this kind of red-necked corrupt clownery just destroys good ideas and good people.
Good provinces.
You think this is bad?
Hang on, it gets better.
In March 2021, Crabtree sent this email to the SRC’s board chair Dennis Fitzpatrick and for some reason, just one board member, who happens to be Harrison’s buddy:
“…very excited”!
In the above email, Crabtree is advising Fitzpatrick and Prudat that he just sold Minister Harrison on the idea of Westbridge Capital investing in the SRC, by loaning it $100-million to build a rare earth elements processing facility.
Notice what’s missing?
How about reference to the fact that Mike Meekins, who by this point had been on the board for a year and a half, owns Westbridge Capital?
Or to the fact that Mike Crabtree had been a director and shareholder of the Westbridge Capital Partners Income Trust Fund since January 2017?
Crabtree is an “Independent Trustee” of the fund…. but also owns shares in it, according to the fine print.
Unaware of the multiple conflicts of interest in play and hearing that Harrison “was very excited” about the idea, the rest of the SRC’s management and leadership teams could only agree with it.
Three weeks later, on March 25, 2021, Meekins sends an email disclosing his connection to Westbridge Capital.
Instead of resigning, he requests “guidance” for his conundrum.
Okay, what? Is this guy for real?
Let’s be real clear.
In a first world country, which I think Canada still is, venture capitalists who want to finance a government project don’t also sit on the board of that government project.
There is not enough “COI” guidance in the world to square that circle. I’m trying to conjure up the audacity one would need to even ask for what Meekins did, but I can’t.
Oh, and he still does not disclose his previous relationship with Crabtree and Herman. Crabtree was copied on the email, and he still does not disclose his relationships to Herman and Meekins.
Mike (who is still on the board today), let me make this easy for you —
You’re a private sector, venture capitalist superstar. Good on you! You can go ahead and walk away from influencing the investment of public dollars now, mmmkay? Go back to making money in the private sector. Unlike most Sask Party supporters, you’ve proven, overwhelmingly, you don’t need access to Saskatchewan people’s tax dollars or public assets to make money. So go. - T
Good gracious, this is insanity.
And, I still haven’t even gotten to the worst of it yet. You think your jaw is on the floor now? Just wait til you hear what happened next. It’s way worse.
And it’s so wrong.
This is more than enough information for now, however, so I’m going to let you digest it. We’re going to leave this sordid tale here, then I’ll tell you how it ends in the next post.
Have a great weekend,
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