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“Our community needs to know and deserves to have that looked into, to know that we can trust this process.”

New Democrat environment critic Cathy Sproule chimed in that Boyd’s “questionable dealings with China” (his use of government logos and his past ministerial title to promote his own personal business) mean “there are too many important questions now to not have another look at a process that handed our biggest potash customer — China — access to our natural resources.”

Again, to halt all activity surrounding a major job-creating economic project — one that also has significant community support — strictly on Boyd’s activities elsewhere in government seems ludicrous. But the long tentacles Boyd has had in all areas of government have now become a rather tangled mess.

The government again balked this week at the NDP’s request to have Boyd’s one-time operative and now Economy deputy minister Lawrie Pushor appear before a legislative committee to answer questions on his and Boyd’s roles in the GTH land purchase of 204 acres, for $103,000 an acre. Last week, Wall told reporters Pushor appearing before the committee could clear the air.

In that same Wall scrum, the premier balked at suggestions the now near-daily stories about the GTH and Boyd were a scandal. Whatever Wall prefers to calls it, it is now a tangled mess that’s defining this government.

GTH CEO Bryan Richards also told the legislative committee meeting this week that the GTH is carrying a $24-million debt and hasn’t been able to make a payment on that debt since the 2014-15 fiscal year when it was under Boyd’s direction. We also learned GTH land sales are only three-quarters of projections. And this week we learned from a CBC story that the provincial government suspended an immigration consultant for Brightenview — the China-based megamall developer and one of the GTH’s centrepiece tenants, whose Saskatchewan operations are headed by former NDP MP Lorne Nystrom — for submitting about 100 fake job offers to the province’s immigration program.