Shercom’s Betrayal: How Scott Moe's Sask Party Crushed a Local Titan
Shane Olson’s 30-year fight to build a tire-recycling empire faces collapse under Scott Moe’s corrupt favoritism, which continues to threaten jobs, innovation, and really, Saskatchewan's future.
I’ve never met Shane Olson, but I hope to one day. His story resonates - a gritty, innovative, yet frustrating Saskatchewan tale marked by ongoing government gaslighting, obstruction and outright betrayal by the Sask Party.
Olson’s journey is a mix of resilience, heartbreak, and occasional triumph, rooted in his fight for survival. How he keeps going is remarkable, but I get it; you fight back fiercely when it’s about survival.
For thirty years, the Sask Party has pushed Shercom Industries and Olson to the brink, today nearly forcing them to close and leave Saskatchewan.
We must confront why this is happening to stop what will be the exodus of external investment from our province… except from those tied to the Sask Party and corrupt enough to believe that reason alone means they should profit.
I’ve done the deep dive. I promise you there’s no good reason for what’s happened to Shercom beyond:
a) Good ol’ Sask Party corruption, rewarding Scott Moe’s loyalists and destroying anyone or anything else it pleases.
b) there isn’t another, the first option is the only option.
Saskatchewan’s economy today is far from a free market.
It’s time to stop pretending we have a fair, business and investment-friendly conservative government.
Scott Moe’s selective favoritism—deciding personally who profits and who fails—echoes the destructive tactics of 20th-century dictators.
Shercom Industries began in 1993 when Olson saw value in Saskatchewan’s growing piles of scrap tires, essential in a province where everyone relies on them. Yet tires were often ignored until a massive, abandoned pile on the prairie became a fire hazard that demanded action.
“The average farmer has over 50 tires they can’t dispose of,” an RM councillor noted at a Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) convention in 2017.
Back in ’93 it was worse. Absolutely nobody in Saskatchewan cared about tire recycling.
There was no technology, no steady tire supply—just Olson working nights as a welder to feed his family, designing and handbuilding industrial machines to grind rubber by day, creating the “crumbs” or raw material he used to design the rubber products we all know well in Saskatchewan.
In just three years, by 1996, Olson’s E-Z Riser rubber ramp had snagged an ABEX award and landed in Canadian Tire stores nationwide.
In ’98, Shercom paved its first rubber driveway.
However, without enough scrap tire, Shercom was struggling to keep up with the demand for its recycled products.
Then a turning point that same year - the introduction of the first Saskatchewan environmental levy on new tire sales, a policy designed to fund and encourage tire recycling efforts across Saskatchewan.
In 1996, tire retailers in the province had recognized the environmental concerns associated with scrap tires and initiated a voluntary program to manage them. However, due to financial challenges and limited participation (only around 250 out of 1320 retailers joined), the voluntary system proved unsustainable.
In 1998, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment intervened, mandating participation for all sellers of new tires through legislation under the Environmental Management and Protection Act.
Put simply, the consumer paid a levy on brand new tires (including on new vehicles), which was used to organize and fund the collection and delivery of your old tires, piled behind the mechanic’s shop, to Shercom.
For Shercom, the new regulations and the tire levy created a steady, reliable supply of used tires from around the province, solving the critical raw rubber-material sourcing problem the company had faced since its inception. However, this influx of material simultaneously presented a new challenge - processing whole tires required different and more specialized equipment than handling tire waste.
As this technology was still not available commercially, the levy meant further innovation from Olson and investment from Shercom was required to develop its shredding and crumbing capabilities.
That’s not just hustle; that’s seeing the future.
Y2K dawned and Shercom levelled up, installing a shredder to chew through their new supply of whole scrap tires. A new “crumb line” in 2003 meant Shercom could grind down and make their own rubber crumbs for paving. By 2011, they were processing 80,000 tires a month—removing 18 million pounds of garbage from Saskatchewan that year.
By 2013, that number soared to 25 million pounds per year.
Plans for 2014 included two new state-of-the-art lines and a 7,200 sq. ft. facility expansion. Olson built a dealer network across Canada, rolled out the SHER-WAY® paving system, and diversified into playground surfaces, speed bumps, rubber mulch, and mats.
Sustainability was Shercom’s brand, including LEED-certified products, a “Tire Neutral” campaign shouting “Black is the new green,” and a push to make Saskatchewan tire-waste-free. With 400 retail partners and twelve awards, including a 2020 SABEX Business of the Year, Shercom wasn’t just a company; it was a Saskatchewan titan.
But a storm was brewing.
Scott Moe was Brad Wall’s Minister of the Environment from 2016 until Moe won the leadership in 2018 and became premier.
Also in 2016, a fire gutted Shercom’s plant north of Saskatoon.
It was a make-or-break moment: would Shercom relocate or rebuild? Or should Olson take the insurance money and call it a day?
Olson chose Saskatchewan, sinking over $10 million into another new state-of-the-art facility.
At least partially, that decision was made after receiving guarantees from the province, including then-Environment Minister Moe, that Shercom would continue to receive a stable supply of scrap tires, a long-term contract, and would finally be given a formal voice in an industry it pioneered in Saskatchewan, if not Canada, totally on its own.
But you know, something tells me that through this process, Scott Moe discovered that there was money to be made… but it wasn’t being made by his friends and people trying to keep his ass in power.
Sure, Shane Olson had poured his blood, equity, sweat and tears into building the tire-recycling economy in Saskatchewan and any half-decent political party or so-called free market government would fully respect that fact and supported him to continue.
We’ve already established there’s no free market in Saskatchewan, it’s the Sask Party’s market.
I suspect we also agree Scott Moe isn’t even half-decent.
For whatever reason in 2016, around the time Shercom experienced its fire (which was determined to be an accident, unrelated to negligence or tires) Sask Party bureaucrats decided the needs of the tire industry had evolved, and public expectations for accountability and transparency had increased.
Allegedly to address these changes, The Scrap Tire Management Regulations, 2017 were introduced.
In June 2017 the Tire Stewardship of Saskatchewan Inc. (TSS) was formed by the Retail Council of Canada (RCC) and the Western Canada Tire Dealers (WCTD), with the approval of the Sask Party government.
The TSS took on the role of the scrap tire recycling program operator in Saskatchewan and officially began operating under a Ministry of Environment-approved Product Stewardship Program on January 1, 2018.
The levy you still paid on those new tires was split, between payment to the trucking company doing the pickups and payment to Shercom for handling the scrap tire once its delivered to their facility.
“But but but… they’re using those tires to make products sell!” perhaps you’re thinking.
That doesn’t matter.
What matters is Shercom is eliminating an environmental burden that has cost Saskatchewan taxpayers millions of dollars to deal with to-date and isn’t going anywhere, in fact is likely increasing, as we put more and more vehicles on the road.
All that matters is you paid a few bucks so you can use those tires and then rest easy knowing they weren’t going to pollute the planet for… ever.
Like can we be grownups in Saskatchewan for once in our lives?
As long as millions of tons of garbage-ass tires are not piled in Saskatchewan fields or worse, landfills, what Shercom does with the output - again, garbage to you and me - isn’t relevant once they’ve fulfilled their duty to get rid of those tires without use of a publicly-funded landfill.
Moe’s godfather, Richard “Porky” Porter, has sat on the TSS board since its inception.
Don’t try to tell me Scott Moe doesn’t know what’s been going on.
Trust in the Sask Party government is what kept Shercom rooted here.
And for a while it was the right decision. The company roared back, processing 50 million pounds in 2019 and landing an exclusive Canadian Nike Grind deal, blending recycled shoe scraps into fun playground surfaces.
Awards kept coming—SABEX Growth and Expansion in 2020.
Resilient? Hell yeah.
Until the betrayal and Shercom’s world imploded.
In December 2022 the TSS announced a “second processor” in Saskatchewan, an American company called Crumb Rubber Manufacturers (CRM), which is repped by former Sask Party Minister of Finance, today lobbyist-extraordinaire, Kevin Doherty.
Ostensibly this would have split Saskatchewan’s tire supply in half, which wouldn’t have been enough for Shercom to meet sales demand.
In April 2023, the TSS allowed Shercom’s tire-processing contract to expire after a round of brutal negotiations.
TSS’s CEO, Stevyn Arnt (who recently “resigned), had barely set foot in Shercom’s plant. His new contract proposition included a 30 percent cut in the fee Shercom received for processing tires. The proposed cut was unthinkable, especially given rising inflation since the last time it had been raised in 2012.
TSS also tried to push out a new payment model, distributing revenue only after Shercom sold the processed product.
Shercom has called this “extortion”, because it was.
On May 1, 2023, Shercom’s multi-million-dollar plant went silent.
No more tire collection or processing.
Their workforce, peaking at 140 in 2022, went down to 75.
Thanks to the Sask Party government, long-term employees, some with decades at Shercom, were unemployed.
By April 2024, TSS had handed the province’s entire tire supply to Kevin Doherty’s CRM.
We’re soon going to have a nice long chat about Kevin Doherty’s history with Grant Devine’s PC Party, the Sask Party, the Government of Saskatchewan and now his little firm. We’re going to look at what paying Kevin Doherty actually means to the corporations which do so, as well as the impact of his lobby efforts on your public dollars, your province (thought he seems to believe it’s his lol) and its future.
We’re going to look at why a man who built his career and made his fortune in Saskatchewan continues to do so, yet has registered his company in the cheaper tax jurisdiction of Alberta.
That one alone disgusts me and they all do it.
But I digress.
Shercom has been locked out of receiving a single Saskatchewan scrap tire ever again.
TSS claims the process was fair.
The fallout was brutal.
More layoffs resulted in a “skeleton staff” of 20 after more layoffs in late 2024.
To keep manufacturing, Shercom now imports into Saskatchewan over a million pounds of rubber tire crumbs monthly from Alberta, BC, Manitoba, and Ontario, jacking up their costs and completely eliminating any environmental benefits to Saskatchewan, the province in which it provides this service.
Without a fair contract for tires to shred, Shercom’s done in Saskatchewan.
Relocation is on the table - one final kick in the nuts from Scott Moe for a company that’s been a local cornerstone for three decades, despite being kicked in those nuts over and over and over again.
Unsurprisingly, Shercom isn’t rolling over. In November 2024, Shercom filed a $10 million lawsuit against the Saskatchewan government, TSS, and Arnt, alleging breach of contract and “injurious falsehoods.”
The suit claims those 2017 promises made by Scott Moe, of a stable supply, long-term deal, industry voice, were broken, costing them big after the rebuild they didn’t need to do.
They accuse TSS of trashing their rep with lies about their products and rigging the RFP for CRM, who Shercom says isn’t even recycling properly—just shredding tires and shipping them out for burial elsewhere, likely Alberta, undoing decades of end-of-life recycling progress.
In fact, the facility CRM built in Moose Jaw to “serve” Saskatchewan’s tire-recycling needs isn’t even listed on the company’s website.
This mess has some, but not enough, fired up.
The Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce is livid, calling Shercom a “made-in-Saskatoon success story” and blasting TSS for favoring an American company. They’re demanding a TSS board overhaul, a management review, and public release of the RFP and feasibility studies.
The NDP’s been on it in the legislature, accusing Moe of reneging on 2017 promises and letting a foreign monopoly kill local jobs. A 2023 independent review by former Deputy Minister Cam Swan backed CRM’s role and TSS’s payment model but urged better procurement and communication.
The full report? Still under wraps, despite calls for transparency.
I call Cam Swan “The Cleaner”. The Sask Party gives him ten grand and he gives them a secret report we’re not allowed to see but are to believe blindly reveals everything Scott Moe does is correct.
Cam is not doing himself and his legacy a ton of favours. If his dignity, credibility and self-respect isn’t worth $10,000, the man has much bigger problems.
Let’s zoom back out.
Shercom’s economic impact was massive—140 jobs at its peak, millions in wages, and a $10 million rebuild that screamed faith in Saskatchewan.
Environmentally, they diverted 39 million tires from Saskatchewan landfills, turning hazards into products that helped buildings go green. Imagine lying tires in rows to cover an entire football field, then start stacking them. If you did that with 39-million tires, the tower would be 50-storeys high.
All of that rubber diverted from Saskatchewan landfills.
Yes, they’ve experienced work place injuries and even a tragic death. Do you know how many people die in Saskatchewan every year at their workplace?
Too many and there’s no excuse for even one, however we don’t immediately close down those businesses. I mean, if we did Sask Power would have been shuttered in the 80s. I’m not minimizing the death, but I’m not weighing it as a factor in whether Shercom should continue to operate in Saskatchewan.
Their Shercom Cares program built playgrounds, and they sponsored newcomers. This was a company woven into our fabric—until TSS and Scott Moe decided it needed to pull Kevin Doherty’s thread.
Shercom sees a betrayal—promises broken, a local pioneer ambushed by a foreign player. TSS and the government claim they’re chasing “best practices,” aligning with other provinces for efficiency and accountability, citing a past processor’s $3 million cleanup mess (which is completely irrelevant to Shercom, but whatever).
There’s also been repeated, full-blown character assassination attempts on Shane Olson.
In 2018ish I was interested in this story. My gut knew something was wrong. I spoke about looking into it to a Saskatoon City Councillor who boasted, constantly, his friendship with then-Justice Minister Gord Wyant. This City Councillor told me to “stay away” from Shercom, because according to his sources, Olson was a bad person.
Eventually I kicked that friendship to the curb over his love-in with Wyant, who I personally detest for reasons that most of you already know, however I’m embarrassed that at the time I listened.
I’m ashamed because that’s what people did to me in Saskatchewan, for years.
“Stay away from Tammy Robert, she’s wicked, wretched and wrong”.
They had absolutely zero knowledge or evidence of anything bad or good about me, beyond fraudulent, ad hominem attacks from an AM radio show, but it didn’t matter.
Today, I see and hear these types of attacks on other Saskatchewan residents every time I sit down in a boardroom in this province.
If a name comes up, everyone in the meeting seems to feel the need to declare their opinion of that person, especially if it’s a negative opinion.
Literally every meeting. It’s jarring.
After being away from Saskatchewan and working with real businesspeople from places like Asia, Miami and South America, it’s bizarre and unsettling to hear other Saskatchewan resident’s personal details, personalities and opinions constantly being dragged into professional settings.
Especially because that individual is never in the room to defend themselves.
Stop doing this, Saskatchewan. Our tiny population makes those kind of social machinations some of the most dangerous to our best interests. This place is way too small for that, making it toxic AF. It’s nothing more than gossipy and destroys productivity and in some cases, entire businesses and even economies.
Stop degrading your fellow Saskatchewanians because of your politics, or because you heard something from someone about someone else, or because you think it’s cool.
It’s not.
It’s unsophisticated, unprofessional, immature, oppressive and weirdly incestuous - and honestly, it really doesn’t happen anywhere besides this remote, unpopulated backwater.
Certainly not to the same extent.
But again, I digress.
Look, is Kevin Doherty’s CRM really recycling in-province?
Why the secrecy around the Swan report?
Maybe a better question is are there any adults in the room, anywhere in Saskatchewan?
Certainly not in the Legislature.
Shercom is at a crossroads. The lawsuit’s their last shot, and the company has indicated repeatedly it is eyeing growth elsewhere if Saskatchewan won’t play fair. Losing it would be a body blow—a company that built an industry from nothing, employed hundreds, and kept millions of tires out of landfills.
Saskatchewan, this is our story.
Are we okay letting a homegrown hero get pushed out by an American rival?
Right now?
There’s no logical reason for what’s happened to Shercom, beyond the fact that somebody, somewhere inside the Sask Party government decided it shouldn’t exist.
Because somebody, somewhere, paid the right Sask Party crony, which is just so… ignorant and again, gives serious authoritarian vibes.
Aren’t you tired of not being in control of this province or its future?
Like it’s real future, not the one cobbled together by Kevin Doherty and what’s best for him and his clients?
(Try sending me a letter, Kevin, for telling the truth. I dare you.)
Seriously, why has Doherty’s bestie, Premier Scott Moe, not announced his departure yet?
Nobody wants either of them around anymore.
Time to get loud, demand answers, and fight for what’s ours, which is Saskatchewan.
Not theirs.
Ours.
Mine, yours and the next person’s.
That fact is the entire point of what I do.
Meanwhile, Shercom’s still swinging—let’s have its back.
