BMO Purchasing Cards + the Sask Party government = a problem.

It's a ton of money and public servants are going to have to either be part of the solution, or sit down & be quiet while the rest of us keep trying to find one.

After writing about the inception of Scott Moe’s provincial armed force, I received an influx of questions on BMO Purchase Cards, or “P-cards”, as they’re known to the public servants who use them.

Keystone Kops: The Saskatchewan (Party's) Marshals, Part 1

As I wrote in that previous post (linked above), a few years ago P-cards were used by rogue Ministry of Highways employees to obtain illegal weapons for Moe’s Saskatchewan Highway Patrol (SHP). Those employees went as far as splitting transactions between P-cards to get around their spending limits.

P-cards are standard operating procedure in most governments in Canada, at multiple levels. Not since the days of Grant Devine have dollar bills been floating around any Legislative building, shoved into government desks. Nobody thinks public servants should buy supplies, or other items needed for the government, via their own pocket and an expense claim.

Let’s be clear, from the outset, that this is not about demonizing or casting suspicion on public servants. The vast majority of Saskatchewan’s government workers are doing an amazing job, often in underfunded, politically-driven and degraded conditions.

Instead, this is about the oversight of the almost half a billion Saskatchewan tax dollars that have vanished into a P-card black hole in only the last five years. Even if only 1%, or $5-million was misappropriated by the Sask Party caucus - that’s STILL a ton of money.

Sorry, what’s that?

Despite the evidence in front of your face for the last decade, you don’t think Sask Party MLAs would do something like that?

Prove.

Me.

Wrong.

The extraordinary lengths gone to in order kill government-transparency mechanisms, combined with efforts like this to conceal spending, coupled with the extensive active business interests of Sask Party MLAs, including (but not limited to) Gary Grewal, Gord Wyant and Don Morgan… means you can’t.

That, my friends, is a big problem for all of us.