Buffalo Party Leader Wade Sira and candidate Constance Maffenbeier are being sued for breach of contract by the Calgary based Progressive Group for Independent Business (PGIB). The breach of contract is specifically related to the management of the campaigns of Wade Sira and Constance Maffenbeier.
Contracts signed by both Wade Sira and Constance Maffenbeier on September 21 were in breach once they cancelled their contracts on October 1, despite thousands of dollars of work done before the arranged arrival of additional PGIB support staff from Calgary joined Chris Tan and the Saskatchewan contingent in Saskatoon for the writ period.
“These people and this party are unethical. We were asked to create a new logo and slogan and we did. Then we were told that we had to revert back to the older logo, but were then permitted to add some wording we adapted,” said Chris Tan, the Saskatchewan Chair of the Progress Group of Independent Business (PGIB).
“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 of 306-985-0685 for the party and have been answering live calls. We established a call centre, where we started making calls throughout Saskatchewan. We searched for office space and secured donated office space at Unit 108, 208-19th Street West. 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,” Tan said.
“Our executive director communicated with the party leader many times daily. We have many emails signed contracts and call logs to back all that we claim,” Tan said in continuation.
The PGIB in their lawsuit filed in Calgary, stated they wanted the full amount of the signed contracts, as monies have already been dispersed and contracts were signed in order for the PGIB to complete their obligations.
Also, PGIB had lost revenue, as they had turned away other contracts during the autumn of 2020 to accommodate the Buffalo Party.
“These people and this party do not believe in the rule of law and have clearly breached their contracts. This type of behaviour during an election is indicative of how these people would operate if they were government. The organization is out thousands and has trusted verbal communications, texts and even signed contracts. If a signed contract is not honoured by these people, how can we trust their word when they will be in office?” Tan concluded.
