Blown Out: How the Sask Party’s Tire Stewardship Debacle Failed Everyone

Saskatchewan's self-inflicted dysfunction and the wrecking of a homegrown success story

Got this email the other day:

Had to laugh.

Why yes, I have caught wind that there is something wrong with Saskatchewan’s tire stewardship program:

Shercom’s Betrayal: How Scott Moe's Sask Party Crushed a Local Titan

TLDR: Shercom Industries was Saskatchewan’s only tire recycler since the 1990s and remains one of the province’s leading sustainability success stories.

Yet in 2022 the Tire Stewardship of Saskatchewan (TSS), allegedly for no reason at all, decided Saskatchewan needed two tire recyclers.

We can’t even get one IKEA, but sure.

The TSS proceeded to split tire recycling into northern and southern regional contracts. In 2022 the south half went to U.S.-based Crumb Rubber Manufacturers (CRM), leaving Shercom to compete for just the northern district - slashing its tire supply, workforce and thus, its viability.

More bizarrely, by 2024 the TSS had awarded both the north and south contracts to CRM, stripping credibility from any lame excuse about more than one tire recycler in Saskatchewan.

Then that solution fell apart when CRM pulled out of the northern contract. We don’t seem to know why. Therefore earlier this year - this time without any RFP process at all - TSS awarded that contract to Emterra, which doesn’t even have tire recycling facilities in Saskatchewan.

You may remember Emterra from that time they saved the Sask Party from total failure on the Global Transportation Hub.

But I digress.

Meanwhile the Saskatchewan taxpayer is facing the bill for a slam dunk of a $10-million lawsuit, Shercom is locked out of the industry it built and is forced to import raw materials from other provinces.

And none of us have any place at all to recycle tires.