The Buffalo Party of Saskatchewan and two of its candidates are being sued by a Calgary company for breach of contract..The lawsuits were filed Oct. 13 by a Calgary law firm..In separate suits, the Progressive Group for Independent Business is seeking “the outstanding amount of $21,250 in breach of contract and loss of opportunity plus costs and interest” in each of two separate lawsuits..One is against the party and its leader Wade Sira, while the other is against the party and Humboldt-Watrous candidate Constance Maffenbeier..Western Standard was provided with copies of the statement of claim and samples of literature..PGIB was to provide graphic design, website construction, social media promotion and drafting literature for the candidates. PGIB was paid $5,000 by Maffenbeier on Sept. 21, and $5,000 by Sira on the 22nd.. POLL: Many Albertans say they will ignore Christmas COVID lockdown .Chris Tan, the Saskatchewan Chair of PGIB, said in a statement the company added a slogan to a revamped logo in addition to other work..“We created a campaign called The Big Listen to garner data. We created a website called thebiglisten.ca, which has been receiving data. We promoted The Big Listen throughout social media. We established a phone number for the party and have been answering live calls. We established a call centre, where we started making calls throughout Saskatchewan,” Tan wrote..“We created a piece of literature for each candidate. We did a detailed demographic constituency plan for one of the candidates and the second was almost complete. We made several calls from the Calgary office, recruiting volunteers that would be joining us when we were to campaign full out on October 2, 2020..But Sira told Western Standard that PGIB was too slow..“The election [writ] was dropped on Tuesday the 29th. So it was the 28th when there was supposed be deliverables in our hand and we still haven’t seen anything yet. Nothing had taken place,” Sira said, adding that PGIB president Craig Chandler was late to arrive in person to help with the provincial campaign..“He said he would show up the Wednesday before the election [writ] was supposed to be dropped. And then [he] moved it to Friday, then he moved it to Sunday, then he moved it to Monday, then he moved it to Wednesday, then he moved to Friday [Oct. 2] again. So he kept pushing the date off to start working for us.”.Sira said PGIB was late to prepare a speech. “By the time he delivered the speech, it was five hours after the speech was made.”.Sira says he doubted Chandler’s claim to be western chair for Leslyn Lewis’ federal Conservative leadership campaign after he talked to Lewis’ national campaign manager Steve Outhouse..“And he directly told me that he [Chandler] only ran the call centre for Alberta and Saskatchewan and set up a couple meet and greets for her. And that was it. . . We realized that OK, you’ve lied to us, you failed to show up to work, and you failed to deliver on deliverables. He breached his end of the contract.”.In an interview with Western Standard, Chandler said, “We ran the phone centre from here…167,000 phone calls . . . We provided all the scrutineers from Calgary for Leslyn Lewis. They counted the ballots in Ottawa. If you saw my Facebook, you’d see how my guys were picking up ballots for her all over Ontario. . . On all my outgoing information, it said ‘western chair.’”.Regarding the speech, Chandler said, “I misunderstood. He needed it for 8 in the morning. I thought he needed it for 8 at night.”.Chandler says PGIB works with “small-c conservative parties” but has no partisan loyalties. “There’s no reason why I would ever want conflict with anyone. I have a very good reputation for getting things done. And this is what we do for a living. So I turned down other contracts. And so because of the breach of contract, we’re going for the full amount because now we’re out,” Chandler said..“Gosh, it’s frustrating. It’s very unfortunate, but this is the way it is.”
