Facing Legal Battles and Uncovering Truth in Saskatchewan
Launching the GoFundMe we all knew was coming one day.
Note: this piece has been updated to remove duplication, aka the sections that I rewrote, then forgot to delete. I’m sorry, I’m tired.
I didn’t want to send this out so soon, but this is going to be expensive and I’m facing an urgent legal deadline.
Like I said in my previous post, I knew this was coming. I could feel it.
First, a quick recap on me.
After challenging years writing about Saskatchewan, I moved to the Caribbean, met new people, and secured communication contracts with successful American businesspeople, investors, eventually landing in Nashville. It was a remarkable chapter until unsafe cross-border travel between Canada and the US ended it for good.
Today, writing about any government is more dangerous and weaponized than ever.
Despite loving my time away, I knew I wasn’t gone forever. My kids, including one still in school, aging parents, family, friends, property, and pets are all in Saskatchewan. Unfinished battles await me here too.
Plus, I love Saskatchewan. I deserve to be here.
I wrapped up my communications consultancy before I left. Accepting I was trapped back here, I recently took a minimum-wage job to escape the house, which was the best decision I’ve made in years. I’ll work a few hours a week at that job until I die, surrounded by coworkers I adore: immigrants, seniors (including two women in their 80s), teenagers, and students. Their perspectives, like a personal focus group, shape my recent work. It’s invaluable.
Want to meet real Saskies and stay humble? Get a menial job.
Anyway, the name “Tammy Robert” is no longer mine; the casual slander and brazen defamation are staggering. The hysteria and fear tied to my name are convoluted and unrelated to who I am. With a Sask Party leadership race heating up and campaigns approaching me, I knew I would be punished. I dreaded the fallout.
Last week, Kevin Doherty’s lawsuit landed at my door. Oddly, I felt relief—waiting for the axe to fall is worse than the blow itself, a testament to the PTSD that defines me today.
This lawsuit isn’t just from Doherty—it’s a strike by everyone in this province with stakes in the status quo, as Scott Moe and their publicly funded fortunes face collapse. The Sask Party is in an existential crisis, and the next six months promise a political bloodbath.
So without further ado, here it is folks - the first and last GoFundMe I’m ever going to run.
This past week has been a whirlwind of stress. I have secured literally the best lawyer you could even imagine for me - but he’s senior and expensive. $10K just to get in the door. He is terrifying, which is awesome - he’s everything I’ve ever wanted and desperately needed in a Saskatchewan lawyer. If I can move forward with him as a guard rail, I will keep doing what I do. If I can’t secure the support, I won’t.
I refuse to start doing things like dipping into my kids university education funds or my home equity to defend this work. This has impacted my kids’ lives more than enough. However, I know in my heart it is valid, good and important work and if it’s not sustainable in Saskatchewan anymore, so be it.
I believe my work today will continue to expose not just Sask Party mismanagement but international white-collar crime in Saskatchewan. The criminality I’m convinced riddles the Sask Party’s Legislature today is unsustainable. Like it did for the Devine years, it will probably take ten years or more to fully come to light, when it finally comes to light.
It will.
They know it. I know it.
They know I know it. Lol.
I’ve got so many “brown envelopes” in my inbox right now, I can’t get to it all. Who else are you going to send them to, Geoff Leo? He doesn’t do anything with them anymore and folks are desperate to be heard. To have a voice.
If I had staff and researchers, I could be running an entire goddamn media company right now, frankly. If you’re waiting for me to get back to you, I apologize. I’m trying.
So yeah, I need a lawyer. I needed one years ago. I cannot get over the number of Saskatchewan lawyers in recent months who’ve asked me why I have never sued - because your firms wouldn’t call me back, hello.
Of course, my foes have jumped on counter campaigns raging against this fundraiser. There’s one on Twitter right now claiming I’m anti-trans, which isn’t credible, but still has the desired chilling effect. It’s connected to a Prince Albert woman, a CPC operative, who goes by @jennifer_elle on the platform.
She was literally running around the Legislature recently, telling lies to people’s faces and smearing me as anti-trans.
If I get enough legal funds together, I’m going to sue her ass too.
Because casually, openly defaming “Tammy Robert” is a sport to some across the political spectrum. Left to right. I’m a caricature, not even a real person in their minds.
Except I am and I’ve had enough.
That said, I genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen here.
I’m not Nate Pike, fresh faced and crusading against just one side, bless his warrior heart. I’ve been doing this for a long time. My refusal to excuse or overlook what I’ve considered to be horrendous behaviour inside the Saskatchewan NDP has rendered me unpopular in circles that know full well they can hate me and still benefit from my work.
I’m okay with it.
Since 2007, I’ve taken every step of my political career in Saskatchewan in public, transparently. In more recent years, I haven’t always been nice about it. There’s no excuse, but it is what it is. I’m allowed to have opinions.
Partisanship is not in my DNA, nor is staying silent about injustice, bullying, unfairness and wrongdoing. I am as proud today of the work I did writing about Jeremy Mackenzie as what I wrote about Ryan Meili.
I’ve needed a lawyer for years; firms wouldn’t call me back. Now, with the right one, I can fight.
I am one of the only few things standing between the Sask Party and total and complete obstruction of public information.
Absolute power, which is what they want.
I believe strongly that freedom of speech, sharing information and ideas, is integral to democracy. I believe the Sask Party’s ongoing refusal to be held accountable for its actions is wildly destructive and will get worse before it gets better.
I do not believe the answer to anything is silencing anybody’s legal free speech, even if I don’t agree with what they’re saying.
Silencing someone you don’t agree with yesterday means I can be silenced today. It’ll be you tomorrow.
I’m sorry this is happening, but it’s where we were always headed. Whatever happens next, I love you good folks and have appreciated your generosity and support over the years more than you can imagine.
You are the reason I have kept going.
You are the reason that if I can, I will keep going.