Sunlight On Shadows: The Devine Legacy and Saskatchewan’s Enduring Corruption
A 43-year trail of fraud, power, and deception. And I believe it's still unraveling.
“What’s the hold up now?” I hear you asking.
I’ve written this book twice. Something’s always bugged me, something elusive, unclear. I had a publisher but backed out—dumb, maybe, but back then tossing political dynamite into Saskatchewan’s wild felt stupid and pointless amid the relentless, negative online and attacks I was enduring for even touching the topic.
Bored, I rewrote the book chronologically; that’s how it’s rolling out now.
Yet after ten years of tinkering, it still felt off, which was maddening. Even as I started publishing here, I felt I’d missed something huge.
Prepping Chapter 4 - Devine’s 1991 loss and the RCMP’s Project Fiddle into the caucus fraud ring - it finally clicked.
Whose idea was this?
Who dreamt up the fraud scheme?
Those answers - along with many others - have remained elusive, buried beneath the overwhelming tsunami of corruption that came to light after Devine’s time in office.
Even with the insights gained from years of criminal trials, my extensive research into media and government records and the interviews I’ve conducted, the Devine fraud scandal remains fraught with unanswered questions.
Almost all second-term PC Party caucus members received cash from the fraud scheme, but intent is what split the charged from the spared; the latter sold the RCMP on their innocent hearts.
But do I buy that no other staff or MLAs in that sealed Legislative bunker—many of whom were there nine long and brutal years—missed the stench?
I do not.
Given what I know today - criminal plots, plus the legal-but-vile financial rot Devine’s staff had to have clocked - voting for him in ’91 would have been unthinkable.
Brad Wall, steeped in Devine’s chaos, saw the ruin: millions vanished, records burned, a province nearly busted.
Like, do you grasp how close Saskatchewan was, at that point, to being relegated back to a federal territory, thanks to Devine deliberately, callously crashing the plane - with a million of us on board - straight into the ground?
Yet, Wall was still so enamoured with the PC Party. after working with Devine and his Cabinet closely, every day, for three years, that he tried to run as a PC Party candidate in 1991. He lost the nomination but still campaigned fervently in Swift Current for a third term for the PC Party, which now included MLA Bill Boyd.
Not only that, but after everything Wall knows and witnessed, even twenty years later his allegiance to Grant Devine didn’t waver.
It’s utterly mind-boggling that Wall appointed Grant Devine to the University of Saskatchewan’s Board of Governors.
Devine’s denials should not have made things better for him. His pleas of ignorance should not have rendered him more eligible, or even palatable for future prestigious appointments. His alleged cluelessness about a massive fraud scheme orchestrated by his own inner circle still reeks today of either gross incompetence or willful denial.
This wasn’t some petty scam; it was a shadowy, systematic rip-off of public funds, run by his trusted allies in a secretive caucus environment he oversaw for nearly a decade.
To then plop Devine into a position of financial oversight at a university facing its own budget woes wasn’t just tone-deaf; it doesn’t make sense.
“Nobody cares—40 years ago, drop it,” they chant.
Conservative and Sask Party voices, me included, have hammered that mantra since 2007. I peddled “forget Devine” weekly. I too was sold on it. The criminal trials were done by then; convictions had sealed the deal closed.
However, there were still serious questions being asked about what happened after the RCMP investigation and subsequent trials had ended.
Like these from an April 1996 story that appeared in the Calgary Herald and Edmonton Sun:
In the excerpt above, RCMP Sgt John Leitch was right about the background not being clear, but wrong about it becoming so by the time the court cases ended.
It is an established fact that Devine’s caucus communications director John Scraba was directed to set up the numbered companies, as well as their operating names, all of which related to broadcast advertising. He created the supporting templates - namely, invoices - for each of the fake advertising companies.
John Scraba did have a background in radio. In the 70s he was working for CHAB in Moose Jaw before moving over to Rawlco Radio, where he was CKOM’s news director until he took the job in the Legislature in 1985.
I’m unclear whether John Scraba worked at CKOM with John Gormley between 1977 and 1982, which is when Gormley hosted a call-in show on CKOM before moving it to CFQC, but it looks that way.
Brad Wall’s own infamous radio career started in 1982; he was 17 years old and in high school.
In 1983, when he was 18-years-old, Wall enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan.
However it is also alleged that between 1984 and 1988, Wall worked for federal Swift Current Conservative MP Geoff Wilson in Ottawa.
I’m not sure why nobody has ever questioned a timeline that suggests Brad Wall had a radio career, a job in the House of Commons in Ottawa and completed a university degree in under five years and by the time he was 22 years old, but ok.
What is a fact, according to Public Accounts anyway, is that allegedly armed with a brand new degree and experience on Parliament Hill, Brad Wall dove headfirst into Devine’s government caucus offices in the Legislature in 1988, where he’d remain immersed for four years.
Scraba maintained throughout his own trial and those of his colleagues that the fraud was not his idea. He was adamant about it. When sentenced in 1995, Scraba continued to insist he was acting on “top-down” directions. He never elaborated on what or who he meant, but the judge appeared to accept it.
Grant Devine was never charged or implicated in the fraud scandal. I’ve written about plausible deniability and my opinion remains that Devine was buffered in order to keep him in the dark on the details.
The notion, however, that there was absolutely nothing that pointed to any potential knowledge Devine may have had of any criminal schemes, is false.
For example, from the March 10, 1997 edition of the Ottawa Citizen:
But this isn’t about Grant Devine. Grant knows who and what he is. I’m more than happy for him to reconcile that with the god he worships.
What we know for sure is the Devine caucus fraud scheme was birthed fully-formed and revolved around broadcast advertising.
Specifically, radio advertising.
Lorne McLaren, PC Party chair during its second term, has been painted by some as “behind” the scheme, which he vehemently denied.
While McLaren sat through several days of a preliminary appearance, his decision to change his plea to Guilty nullified the need for any trial and he was never put on the stand (including during his prelim), to be questioned.
Before getting elected, McLaren worked at a Morris tractor dealership in Yorkton.
Even after he was convicted, McLaren was defended by his family and friends as a pawn. This is a quote that ran in the April 21, 1996 edition of the Edmonton Journal, attributed to Reverend Don Milne of Westview United Church in Yorkton:
“…following the decisions, taking directions from other persons…”
Then there’s curious case of Spencer Bozak and Dome advertising.
Much like the Sask Party today, the Devine government and its associated public service was thoroughly saturated with patronage appointments and contracts. In fact at one point in the 80s, the University of Regina’s journalism school ran a three-part investigative series in both the Saskatoon and Regina newspaper on how bad it was.
Of specific patronage interest to the PC Party was advertising - again, broadcast, not print advertising.
Spence Bozak was a weatherman with CKCK television in Regina, before he ran and lost as a federal conservative candidate in 1980. He was very close to both Mulroney and Devine.
What you need to know is that Mulroney and Devine were like this 🤞.
They traded favours, above and below board, constantly.
When Mulroney’s MPs and their staffers lost their campaigns or ridings, it was fully expected that Grant Devine would find room for them in the provincial government, which he did, repeatedly.
Bozak ran and lost under Brian Mulroney in 1980.
So it wasn’t a huge surprise in 1982 when Bozak, along with business partner Phil Kershaw, started a company called Dome Advertising, which was eventually joined by a second company, Dome Media Buying Services, as “agents of record” for the Devine government.
Allegedly, one Dome company did the creative work, while the other company was used to purchase the Devine government’s advertising - while openly skimming six percent off the top.
Flipping through Public Accounts from that era reveals sick, unbelievable amounts of money paid to those two companies, which also did all of the partisan advertising work for the PC Party.
I found this excerpt in Hansard that says from 1984 to 1987 alone - in just three years - over $32-million flowed through Dome companies under the guise of purchasing broadcast advertising.
I didn’t add it up, but estimated well over $100-million was billed by those two companies in the nine years that Devine was in power.
$100-million is closer to a quarter of a billion today - in nine years of government advertising?
Preposterous.
Literally, unbelievable.
I can’t fathom where that money went.
How anyone would spend $32-million on advertising in Saskatchewan in 2025, nevermind $100-mil during the 1980s, is beyond me - and I buy advertising for a living.
There was even another advertising agency which had a similar deal to Dome’s. Different conservatives, different billing, same commodities - same staggering amounts.
The NDP Opposition was all over it. The amount of money being spent on advertising came up repeatedly throughout the course of their tenure as Opposition, especially under leader Roy Romanow.
In a way, you could say the Dome issue was actually a distraction from the real criminal activity involving advertising behind the scenes. It is openly suggested in Saskatchewan Hansard that kickbacks to the PC Party from Dome were flying - again, involving broadcast advertising.
Why does the “broadcast” aspect of all of this matter so much?
Because in the 80s and 90s, it would have been virtually impossible to audit whether those broadcast ads ever existed. That is why the fraudulent invoices Scraba submitted were almost always for exactly that - fake television or radio ads.
You think private media companies were going to open their books for a Saskatchewan government auditor or anyone else?
From what I can tell, that didn’t even happen during the RCMP investigation.
Whoever dreamt the fraud scheme up knew that broadcast advertising in the 1980s and 1990s was virtually impossible to track and that media companies wouldn’t readily release that information.
Did I mention that using “agents of record” to mask spending amounts is exactly how the Sask Party buys advertising today?
There is an undeniable straight line from that corrupt Devine era to powerful individuals today who have made a shit-ton of money, thanks to the continuity that was preserved by the PC Party’s pivot to becoming the Sask Party.
Since Grant Devine seized power in 1982, his party—or its successors—and his loyalists have controlled Saskatchewan for 28 of the last 43 years.
Take Kevin Doherty and Jason Wall, both seasoned Devine caucus veterans who went on to spend years working or elected high up inside the Sask Party government. Now lobbyists, their livelihoods depend on the Sask Party government staying frozen in time. As rival lobbyists they threw competing post-budget bashes for MLAs this week—one at Memories, the other at Crave—in Regina.
That’s right: Sask Party lobbyists were raising a toast earlier this week to burning through your tax dollars.
You? Not invited, peasant. Obviously.
Reg Downs, Iain Harry, John Gormley, Doug Emsley, Brad Wall, Kevin Doherty, Jason Wall—these are just a few of the bigger names. Plenty more lurk in the shadows. All cut their teeth in Devine’s regime, and every one of them banks on the status quo enduring.
I’d wager there’s an even wider crew - I’m not saying they’re named here, but you better believe they exist - who stand to lose big if the next Sask Party leader rips down the walls hiding their dirty secrets.
That’s why the race to replace Moe is starting to look like a slaughterhouse showdown: smug, bloated Sask Party establishment versus furious and estranged Sask Party faithful, backed by pissed-off voters who want change now.
The masterminds who cooked up the Devine-era fraud scheme - exploiting the murky, untraceable world of ’80s and ’90s broadcasting - knew exactly how to dodge scrutiny. They’re likely still out there, untouched by justice. And that’s a problem for Saskatchewan.
The same players who turned a blind eye to the stench of corruption back then have been pulling the levers in Saskatchewan’s government, their wealth and influence rooted in a seamless handover from the PC Party to the Sask Party.
Today the stakes couldn’t be higher.
From my perspective the truth’s been buried long enough, so I’m going to keep digging harder to find it.
Part of me wonders if the relentless attacks I’ve faced over the years signal some people know I’m closing in on a broader, uglier truth they’ve buried for decades.
I’ll keep publishing this book, chapter by chapter, but I’m looking for the answers that still elude us.
Speak soon, T