In this episode we go back to the beginning - the very beginning.

From Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s vision for the project to Tommy Douglas’s enthusiastic cheerleading to Ralph Goodale refusing to let it go, this is one mega project that has been quite the multi-partisan affair over the last 70 years or so.

Because everything old is new again, in this episode we reference a few old newspaper articles which are highly relevant today. I’ve included them here.

Enjoy, T

From a July 1967 edition of the Toronto Star covering the grand opening:

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We recorded this one just on Monday so it’s pretty fresh.

After a quick recap of Sunday’s brilliant (in my opinion, not so much Dechene’s) Superbowl halftime performance, we get into the GOP lobbyist who Saskatchewan residents have been paying $33,000 USD per month for an eye-watering 16 years.

In the episode I reference a few documents that I’ll link to here.

Click here for a copy of Nelson Mullins (via David Wilkins) current contract with the Government of Saskatchewan, or here for a copy of same with our Crown Investments Corporation.

This is the most recent detailed 6-month report from Nelson Mullins, which lists its lobby activities for Saskatchewan.

I published a written piece on this today:

What I published out today contains more detail than I had when we recorded on Monday, so we’ll also be talking more about this in an upcoming recording.

Stay warm, T

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In which Dechene torments me with clips of Scott Moe in a news event earlier today, and I tell stories about what I learned when I spent a year living in the middle of a drug-running corridor from South America to Mexico.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t learn that the Sinaloa cartel is hot for the Saskatchewan to North Dakota opioid trade.

There are no leaders in Saskatchewan right now.

We need them, desperately.

For example, it floors me that nobody is coming out, bare-knuckled and ready to get bloody for Saskatchewan’s agriculture industry, which is more at risk right now than any other in the province.

Put simply, Premier Scott Moe cannot simultaneously serve both the needs of Donald Trump and the people of Saskatchewan, yet that is precisely what he’s trying to do.

Talk soon, T

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A Saskatchewan Survivor’s Guide podcast.

Whew!

That’s a whole bunch of words to tell you we’re doing a spinoff devoted to Ty Thiessen’s extraordinary knowledge of the Sask Party government’s Westside Irrigation Rehabilitation Project (WIRP).

Specifically, why this project is a smoking dumpster fire of red flags.

Slated to cost the Saskatchewan taxpayer, conservatively, $1.15bil, the WIRP is only the first phase of an ambitious, if not illogical plan to connect Lake Diefenbaker to an irrigation corridor that extends as far north as Battleford (like what?)

I’ll let Ty tell you the rest, because as you’re about to hear, he knows the WIRP better than anyone. You can read what he’s already written about it for Postmedia here and here (as well as a banger on Saskatchewan’s flawed potash royalty structure here).

We’re calling this a “limited series”, in that we are limited by the material. We’ll talk about the history and questions swirling around the project for as long as it takes - right now we’re thinking about six episodes. Then we’ll update as new information becomes available, or changes are made to the project.

That said, we’re not limited by the Sask Party’s fiscal stupidity - under current leadership, it truly appears to know no bounds. Ty is well on his way to a bright future in fiscal leadership, so let’s let him cook now. Meanwhile, the Mom in me is really looking forward to watching him grow in his broadcasting skills and ability to communicate his research and knowledge.

Oh one last thing - I’m having Ty set up a Patreon account for this podcast. Beyond a token towards minimal production costs, all of what you donate there will go to Ty. He hasn’t set it up yet though, so I don’t have a link - get on it young man! 😏

Talk soon, T

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We recorded this episode on Jan 20th so I think we talked about the world ending. You know, this whole Trump thing - it’s not great.

I’m in a rush this morning but wanted to get this posted. Enjoy!! T

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We talked the Westside Diefenbaker Irrigation project with special guest and agriculture economist wunderkind Ty Thiessen.

Throughout the episode we reference a KPMG report, which can be found here.

This monolithic boondoggle is worthy of its own show, as is the extraordinary detail to which Ty has researched this project to date.

So, we’re going to do one.

Watch for a spinoff of this podcast coming in the next few weeks featuring Ty, hosted by myself. It doesn’t have a name yet; we’re letting Ty lead on all fronts so we’ll see what comes together. You’ll know the first episode when you get it, don’t worry.

That’s what has impressed me most about this kid (at 19, he’s very much a kid): his ability to communicate his knowledge is already vastly superior to the majority of the talking heads and politicians we’re forced to hear every day. We’re not the only ones who’ve taken notice; Ty has written multiple op-eds in the Star Phoenix and Leader Post over the last year (though strangely, only one seems to be featured on his writer’s page 🧐.)

We’re going to go in-depth, combining Ty’s extraordinary knowledge of the industry, the economy and the project with my understanding of the history and politics behind Saskatchewan megaprojects like this one.

It’ll be a limited series, in that we’ll go until the we’ve run out of information to share or the project is cancelled, whichever comes first. Further, Mama Tammy (this all makes me feel real old lol) says Ty’s university education is what really comes first and foremost, so we’ll be recording around his workload and school schedule.

I truly see no sane world where the Westside Diefenbaker Irrigation project can go ahead. I’m looking forward to hopefully making any of it make sense.

That said, after just a few hours of President Donald Trump 2: Bigger Better Dumber, I don’t see much of a sane world anywhere.

Enjoy and talk soon, T

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Dechene and I get into my experience living both ends of the conservative rage hoe, then I rage some more about the fact the Sask NDP caucus has been muzzled from speaking out on the massive issues impacting our world right now.

What was the point of growing the Saskatchewan NDP Opposition caucus they’re just going to be marginalized and suppressed by their own party?

Oh, I also tell a story about that time I had to do perhaps one of the worst things you could possibly ever have to do with Justin Trudeau in western Canada.

Talk soon, T

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We decided to record this last minute Monday night, at which point Scott Moe had not yet commented. He has now, apparently. I haven’t looked. My expectations are non-existent.

Talk soon, T

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We looked at both Scott Moe and Carla Beck’s year-end interviews with Saskatchewan reporters and surprise! We roast both of them.

In respect to Carla Beck, we discussed the bombshell she dropped that she and Scott Moe made some kind of pre-election pact?

While Beck made it sound par for the course, I can assure you that it is not. That kind of pre-election meeting, supposedly to define boundaries for civil discourse between Saskatchewan’s political parties, is not some kind of tradition. What Beck claims to have agreed to with Scott Moe is ridiculous.

I don’t appreciate any two Saskatchewan residents - which is all she and Scott Moe are - taking it upon themselves to decide what we should or shouldn’t know during a writ period.

Then we talked about the pulsating red flags you can see from space all over Scott Moe, Stephen Harper and their relationship with India, which seems to have been expressly set up to undermine Canada’s foreign policy and relationship with that country.

I want to be abundantly clear: I love the idea of safely, humanely, ethically and with dignity, bringing people into this vast, empty province in the middle of nowhere - we’ve got the room.

Giving them the tools and support they need to achieve even simple dreams of making the one life we’re all given, better. Those dreams are often predicated on simple s**t you and I have taken for granted every day since we were born.

Saskatchewan could be a beautiful new home to so many people.

What I hate is the exploitation of new, vulnerable people in Canada, who’ve fled oppression so they can come work in some Sask Party-supporting a*****e’s collection of rural Tim Hortons franchises while getting hauled en masse to rig vote in Sask party nomination races (absolutely true story).

We need to be able to talk about what’s happening with the Sask Party, one of the most corrupt and disturbing government’s Saskatchewan has ever had, and the exploitation of immigrants and foreign affairs.

So we will.

There is something very, very wrong with Scott Moe’s relationship with India and we must get to the bottom of it. There will be more on this.

Talk soon, T

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We talk to former senior aide to United States congressman Seth Moulton, Saskatoon's Matt Chilliak, on his front row experience of the US election campaign & its aftermath on the US Dems.

Chilliak played an unexpected role in a political reckoning that began almost the day after Trump won, again. You might have read about it in the NY Times, or what he wrote aboutit in a piece for The Hill.

Chilliak is someone who I (Tammy R) should likely not have the privilege of calling a friend. He’s someone who has disagreed vehemently with me over the years. We’ve sat across from each other at some nasty and contentious campaign tables. He’s roasted me legitimately (I’m well aware I often deserve it) without insulting my weight or any aspect of my body or personality lol.

I mean seriously, in the political world I’ve lived in for the last twenty years, that’s a big deal.

That kind of maturity, neverminding surviving a public spotlight like he just did, is one reason I suspect Chilliak leaving Saskatchewan politics behind was the smartest thing he ever did and he will undoubtedly continue to do amazing things in the American political system.

I hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed the conversation. T

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