Bellringer, O'Learygate and Crocus: The NDP's Hallowe'en House of Horrors

Transcripts of meetings of Legislature committees are generally pretty dull reading. So why, we asked ourselves, were we getting a chill up our collective spines.

Suddenly, it was clear. Without knowing it, we had entered----
the NDP's Hallowe'en House of Horrors.

Page after page of last week's regularly scheduled Public Affairs Committee meeting were filled with demonic scenarios, ghosts of scandals past, and disgraces risen from the dead to scare us once again.

Continue reading at your own risk. There are no treats here.

Audits that go bump in the night or, Don't Call Me Quasimodo

Carol Bellringer knows how fishy it looks for her to be auditing her friends and colleagues at Manitoba Hydro.

But she's determined to plow ahead, the public's concern for ethics be damned.

"I don't actually believe that I do have a conflict, but we do acknowledge and accept the fact that there could be that perception with the public," Bellringer, Manitoba's Auditor General, told the Public Affairs Committee.

The committee got an in-camera briefing from Bellringer on plans for a speeded up special audit ordered by new Finance Minister Rosann Wowchuk to address a whistleblower complaint into mismanagement at Manitoba Hydro. Afterward, Bellringer made a brief statement in the public session.

"I was indeed a member of the board of directors of Manitoba Hydro prior to my appointment as Auditor General. I was on the board from September 15th, 2004, until my appointment in July of 2006. I was chairing the audit committee, and I was on the board. I therefore signed off on the financial statements for the '05 and '06 fiscal years. There has been a reference to my signing off on the '03-04 drought year, which was not the case."

So there, you haters. Just because she was a trusted member of the same management team that's currently under scrutiny, doesn't mean she can't (ha ha ha) be scrupulously fair in judging their work, and, if need be, her own audits and knowledge of Hydro affairs.

Isn't that obvious?

And if it isn't, she told the committee, "the office has implemented a number of safeguards that we believe will--certainly we're hoping that-- they will alleviate any concerns."

Bellringer then proceeded to bamboozle the MLA's with ways she's devised to keep control of the investigation in her own hands while making it appear the opposite.

She's "had discussions" with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Manitoba.

Translation: I'm looking for loopholes to get around rules against conflict of interest. If I can convince the Institute of CA's to give me the okay, I'll be invincible against allegations that I'm breaching ethics, or ... whatever. Bite me.

And, she added, she's looking for a former auditor general from out-of-province to "oversee the entire process."

Translation: Bellringer's hand-picked consultants will conduct the audit, the hired auditor will "oversee" their work, and Bellringer will "oversee" him, writing the final report and submitting it to the Legislature.

The real issue is control, and Bellringer isn't giving it up to anyone else.

The government is counting on her.

* She sat on the whistleblower complaint for four months and did nothing with it.

* Then, once it became known in August that the Public Utilities Board had a copy of the complaint and was examining it, she tried to snatch control of the issue away from them.

* She announced with great fanfare that she intended all along to do a major study of Hydro's risk assessment practices and policies, which would incorporate the whistleblower's complaints, and which would take at least another year and a half.

Then, last week, as the various news media began running stories about the whistleblower complaint, the NDP moved to get ahead of the storm by ordering a special emergency audit from Bellringer, with results expected in about three months.

Bellringer, who has now had the file on her desk for nine months during which she's done nothing, says she can complete the job in the required time -- provided you overlook her cozy personal and professional relationships with Hydro board and staff.

Hey, Bob, call me.

Oh, and she's signalled to Hydro and the government that if she, and she alone, decides there's nothing to the whistleblower's complaint, she's going to deep-six the risk assessment study.

Starting an 18-month audit in the spring of 2010 would mean you finish it just about the time of the 2011 provincial election.

And who wants that, right Greg Selinger?

Do you want to know how frightening the idea is of this Auditor General throwing ethics to the curb so she can control the investigation of her boardroom pals?

The next chapter of the Public Affairs committee has the gory details. Read it and you'll know why Carol Bellringer must have no role in auditing Manitoba Hydro.

The Ghost of O'Learygate Walks Again or Tories: Dumber Than Carved Pumpkins

The second item on the agenda of the Public Affairs Committee was the special audit Carol Bellringer conducted in 2007 into "Property Transactions in the Seven Oaks School Division."

Do these elements sound familiar?
- Financial mismanagement by a board of directors connected closely to the NDP,
- huge losses,
- a whistleblower,
- a hasty coverup,
- a bogus audit, and
- two layers of whitewash from Carol Bellringer.

The Black Rod exposed this scandal, named O'Learygate after the man at the centre, Brian O'Leary, the NDP's former campaign manager. He most recently made the rogue's gallery again with the revelation of the NDP's 1999 election fraud on his watch, another horror Premier Selinger wants to forget.

Longtime readers of The Black Rod know the details of O'Learygate, so we won't belabor the point. New readers can catch up at

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2005/05/olearygate-land-development-ndp-style.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2005/06/black-rod-exclusive-seven-oaks-land.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2005/06/flagging-olearygate-3-stages-of-cover.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2005/09/education-minister-glued-to-olearygate.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2007/08/auditor-gives-olearygate-makeover.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2007/08/olearygate-follow-money.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2007/09/auditor-approves-enron-math-to-mask.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2007/09/olearygate-provincial-auditors.html

In a nutshell, the Seven Oaks School Board secretly used taxpayers' money to buy land, develop it and sell it off as residential lots. The board had been denied permission to build a new school, so they planned to create the demand for the school through the new subdivision they would create, plus the profits would pay for the land needed for the school.

They ran into two problems. They lost their shirts on the land development. And they got caught by a whistleblower.

When the whistleblower started asking questions, Education Minister Peter Bjornson lied to him and said everything had been done properly.

Tipped off that the jig was up, the Seven Oaks board worked frantically to get their land development approved retroactively, breaking every rule set up to catch and prevent such mismanagement.

The Doer government was eventually shamed into ordering a special audit which Bellringer conducted, shamefully. The Seven Oaks School Division produced two sets of accounts.

One showed that they lost more than $300,000 on the land deal, but the other miraculously turned the loss into a profit. How? By declaring that they valued the land they didn't sell at $819,000 if they sold it to themselves for a new school. Therefore, if they eventually wrote themselves an imaginary cheque for $819,000, they would erase the actual loss they paid to others, and "make" an imaginary profit of $500,000.

Makes sense to me, said Bellringer, without breathing a word about
- the lies told to the whistleblower,
- the lies told to the Public Schools Finance Board which was never notified about the land development,
- the outbreak of amnesia by the people who made the deals, or
- the panicky meeting where the paperwork was retroactively approved despite the rules that should have prevented it.

At the Public Affairs committee, Gerald Farthing, Deputy Minister of Education, was asked if his department ever independently verified the value of the land that Seven Oaks claimed was worth $819,000. Nope, he said.

Bellringer admitted she took the school division's word for it. In other words, Seven Oaks was allowed to audit themselves and the Auditor General rubber stamped it.

Is it any wonder that Bob Brennan, Hydro's CEO, welcome the special audit with a great big smile?

Hey, Carol. Call me.

Oh, and don't forget about the pumpkins. The Conservative members on the Public Affairs Committee, particularly Rick Borotsik and Heather Stefanson, were so totally unprepared they didn't know or understand a single thing about the very issue they were supposed to be examining. They hadn't spend even a minute researching O'Learygate as demonstrated by the appalling ignorance of their questions.

Bellringer showed her contempt for them by failing to bring, or professing she hadn't at hand, information the Tories wondered about but hadn't taken the time to learn themselves.

It was a scary performance by a bunch who claim they're ready to be a government. Now there's a nightmare.

Crocus The Undead Rises From the Grave

You can't kill it. No matter how many times the Crocus Scandal has been proclaimed dead, it rises to walk the land to scare investors (and Greg Selinger) all over again.

The Public Affairs Committee of October 2009 was examining the "Auditor General's Report - Examination of the Crocus Investment Fund, May 2005". Yep, it's taken four years for the legislators to get around to the Crocus audit. If that doesn't scare you, what will?

The MLA's by this time were acting like the undead themselves, showing little interest in the topic, when unexpectedly Larry Maguire (PC-Arthur-Virden) began asking pointed questions.

"He's alive. He's alive," we shouted.

Well, almost.

Maguire was questioning Hugh Eliasson, Deputy Minister of Competitiveness, Training and Trade, and a former member of the Crocus board. He asked in the most convoluted, mind-numbing way about what Greg Selinger knew as Finance minister at the time the Crocus Fund had turned into a de facto Ponzi scheme.

"Also, at times, I think he's even indicated that they knew about the fact that people were still investing, being encouraged to invest in Crocus at that time, when, in fact, the funds that were coming in were hardly offsetting the amount that some of the previous shareholders, earlier, were taking out."

I wonder if you can just elaborate on any of those occurrences, in fact, confirm that, in fact, sometimes the funds coming in and being collected and still encouraged to be collected in that '04 period, some of the latter parts of it were, in fact, hardly covering what was going out."

Eliasson ducked the question.

But despite the deputy minister's zombie-like mindless adherence to regurgitating the party line, he did reveal two new pieces of information regarding the Crocus debacle.

Eliasson sat on the board as a government representative from April 2000 to April 2001. He said he eventually resigned when he couldn't reconcile "the conflicting duties that a director had and a deputy minister had."

"…I began to seek legal advice as to what remedies could be taken, and there are several remedies that members of a board can take when they're presented with a conflict, but none of them seemed sufficient to me to give me sufficient comfort to carry out both those duties simultaneously, which is why I resigned from the board in April of 2001."

Mr. Maguire: And so you pulled yourself out because of the conflict of interest you felt because you were directly involved in the department in policy making? Am I correct there?
Mr. Eliasson: I wouldn't characterize it as a conflict of interest. I would characterize it as two duties that were in conflict or potentially in conflict.

And Eliasson finally answered the question everyone has been asking since the day the investment fund imploded five years ago. The government appointed a director to the Crocus Board to look after the interests of the public taxpayer. What was that representative telling the Finance Minister as the fund crashed and burned?

Eliasson took 102 words to answer the question. We can summarize his answer in one: nothing.

How can that be? Liberal MLA Kevin Lamoureux asked.

Mr. Lamoureux: You indicated the Province's appointment to the board was more for the shareholders' interests as opposed to the Province's interests. Was there any obligation at all in terms of that representative reporting to the Minister of Finance?

Mr. Eliasson: The director did not have an obligation to report to the Minister of Finance. The director owed his duty-his or her duty-to the shareholders of the corporation, and the actions of the director should have been in the best interests of the shareholders.

In other words, according to the NDP, they appointed a director to the Crocus board of directors to represent the taxpayer, but once appointed, he couldn't tell the government anything.

If that reasoning doesn't send shivers up your spine, you're dead.

EXCLUSIVE: HYDRO WHISTLEBLOWER SAYS BRENNAN LIED TO FREE PRESS

"It was Brennan who specifically asked me not to substantiate the findings."

With those 12 words, the woman who has become known as the Manitoba Hydro whistleblower has assured the need for a full-blown investigation of Hydro---and specifically its President and CEO, Bob Brennan.

"Brennan's comments need to be refuted as completely false and incorrect," she told The Black Rod in an exclusive correct-the-record expose on Monday.

Miss Whistle, as we'll call her, has gone to war over Brennan's sly campaign of attacking her credibility in light of the decision by the Public Utilities Board to look into her whistleblower complaint of gross mismanagement at Hydro. She had been a risk consultant for Hydro up to the day she gave Brennan an advance copy of a report she had prepared warning of huge and avoidable financial losses and the possibility of power blackouts.

His latest salvo against her came in the Winnipeg Free Press http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/hydro-warned-of-bankruptcy-64901057.html

Brennan insisted he had been unable to substantiate the allegations in Miss Whistle's report; he blamed her for refusing to waive the confidentiality clause in her contract so that Hydro could have another consultant examine her findings; and he sniffed that she was paid $500,000 ("a fortune") for next to nothing in results.

She wasn't about to let those attacks go unchallenged. She told us:

"There is no request of any information from the CEO to ask for any substantiation (which was very surprising to me) and in fact the opposite occurred, he deliberately asked me to put nothing more in evidence that could prove the serious and alarming facts that were brought to his attention."

" (I) was never asked to send information to another consultant until media reports started running, and over one year later, after the fact."

" Brennan's claim that none of the findings were substantiated are factually dishonest. Multiple explanations were provided to the CFO (Chief Financial Officer...ed) over numerous lengthy phone calls and hundreds of pages of reports and the CFO agreed with me. Any facts that were asked of me, by any executive were provided promptly."

"Therefore Brennan's statements are not true. It was, in fact, me, that pleaded with Brennan (as can be proven in emails) to substantiate the facts, and it was the CEO himself, who wanted no explanations documented in writing, leaving the "advance copy" of the report incomplete."

She even addressed Brennan directly.

"Your comment that work of no value was provided is incorrect. My reporting line was directly to the CFO, and emails show both the CEO and CFO, saying that I was adding immense value to the company even up until August."

To back up her point, she provided us with emails sent by, guess who--- Bob Brennan, himself---commending her for the work she had done for Hydro.

August 2008
" I appreciate the considerable time and effort you put into completing this report by the deadline date of July 31. Thank you again for the assistance you have provided to Manitoba Hydro."

July 2008 from the CEO
"I certainly appreciate your efforts in assisting Manitoba Hydro with identifying risks and opportunities in this important area of our business.
Thank you again for your consulting assistance and advice provided to Manitoba Hydro."

She notes that nowhere does Brennan ask for any further information to substantiate the elements of her report.

"He asked me for not one question!"

Miss Whistle also wanted to correct errors in the latest Winnipeg Free Press story.

The $500,000 paid to her firm was for 4-5 years of work (!). By contrast, she said, another consultant was paid $400,000 by Hydro for 3 months work.

Furthermore,

"I never said that about the Drought in FY0304. (That's insider-speak for Fiscal Year 2003-2004...ed.) What CBC said was correct and should be taken from their website."

Winnipeg Free Press error
"Mismanagement may also have cost Hydro more than $1-billion in the last several years, including the $436-million lost in 2003-2004 during a drought, the reports claimed."

CBC Winnipeg
"Bellringer was on Hydro's board of directors and chaired its audit committee in 2004 and 2005, examining data immediately after the period when the whistleblower report alleges that mismanagement, combined with a drought, led to the loss of more than $400 million."

*************

The battle lines have been drawn. If Bob Brennan thought he could intimidate Hydro's whistleblower it's obvious he's sorely mistaken.

It's also obvious that a full and immediate investigation of her complaint is necessary, both to address the concerns in her reporting to Hydro and to serve as an example to Hydro and to every other public utility and government service that whistleblowers will be taken seriously and no intimidation will be tolerated -- no matter how disingenuously its couched.

Do you hear that, Bob Brennan?

It's additionally obvious that the NDP government and their lap dog Auditor General must have nothing to do with any investigation of Hydro or the whistleblower's complaint.

Newly imposed Premier Greg Selinger used to be the Minister in charge of Hydro. Auditor Carol Bellringer sat on the board of Manitoba Hydro at the very time of the alleged mismanagement, yet claims to be blind to any perception of a conflict of interest.

It's no wonder that Bob Brennan, upon learning the complaint had wound up in Bellringer's lap, said he welcomed her investigation.

By contrast, he's dead set against having the Public Utilities Board look at the whistleblower's evidence.

He's managed to deflect for more than a year demands from the PUB for Hydro's risk assessments on its grandiose plan for $18 billion in new dam construction over the next 15 years. The government has supported his stall, proceeding with construction of the dams and refusing to order Hydro to turn over the information demanded by the alleged watchdog of the public interest.

*****
Miss Whistle cannot discuss the details of her whistleblower complaint without breaching a confidentiality agreement she signed as a consultant. The best summary of her concerns that we could find was in Saturday's Globe and Mail.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/secret-complaint-could-bankrupt-manitoba-hydro/article1327802/

Secret complaint could bankrupt Manitoba Hydro
Whistleblower's report subject of intense speculation
Patrick White
Winnipeg - From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009

"Feeling that Hydro had given the consultant's report short shrift, the whistleblower filed a 70-page complaint with the Manitoba Ombudsman last December outlining the consultant's concerns:

* The company's $436-million loss in 2004 due to drought was largely avoidable.

* Manitoba Hydro had so badly miscalculated its energy supply that the province's lights could go off.

* Annual report filings regarding drought were incorrect.

* Power export forecasts were overly optimistic.

* The utility had lost more than a billion dollars because of mismanagement."

Editors note: Since many of the issues we raised over a year ago in the Black Rod overlap with the concerns of Miss Whistle, here are links to our previous research and commentaries.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2008/09/who-will-go-broke-first-manitoba-hydro_08.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2008/09/manitoba-hydro-series-part-two.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2008/09/manitoba-hydro-series-part-3.html

Winnipeg's First Family of millionaire moochers have outdone themselves

Last week it was announced that "Penny" Lenny, "Brother Can You Spare A Dime" David, and Gigglin' Gail Asper had managed to ride their daddy's Canwest Global empire into the toilet.

It's been an open secret for more than a year that these business sharpies were headed for bankruptcy court. It was last October that Canwest shares officially became a penny stock. In 2000 the stock traded at $18.55 a share; it had collapsed to 93 cents in the fall (pun intended) of 2008. It hit bottom at 12 1/2 cents before bouncing up to a whopping 20 cents a share in September.

And now we learn that the Aspers' plan for restructuring includes stiffing their employees for their vacation pay.

When it comes to their own pet projects, they've got their hands out; when it comes to their employees, it's "talk to the hand."

Among their victims are local favourites Meera Bahadoosingh and Andrea Slobodian who left Global TV Winnipeg last month for new jobs with Shaw TV (Andrea in Calgary, Meera in Murda City).

It turns out the former Global employees had been working to subsidize the millionaire owners of the TV station. They've been cheated out of thousands of dollars as the Aspers play Big Shot for their Winnipeg sycophants.

With more than a year to prepare, you would think that Penny Lenny Asper, Canwest Global president and CEO, would have set aside the cash to pay the money owed to employees leaving the company.

He prepared alright.

When filing for bankruptcy protection last week, Canwest requested the court to set aside $9.8 million in bonus payments for "key employees" to keep them on the job during the restructuring instead of bolting for the exit doors to find new jobs.

And just in case...the executives have strapped on their golden parachutes.

As of last September, Canwest Mediaworks president and CEO Dennis Skulsky was being paid $750,000 a year in base salary and bonuses. If he loses his job, he's guaranteed two years base salary and the average annual bonus collected over the previous three-year period

In an email to staff last week, Canwest chief executive Leonard Asper, who last year collected a $900,000 salary and a bonus of $153,780, cried crocodile tears over the 60 or so employees he's cheating out of the money they earned. "We sincerely regret the impact to them," he sniffed.

Meanwhile, Canwest spokesman John Douglas said that any ex-employee screwed out of money can take a number and line up with the other creditors. They could, he said pompously, " be part of the claims process."

Such callous treatment of the "little people" should be a huge red flag to the local governments who have been treating the Aspers like royalty instead of the panhandlers they've become.

...because stiffing the help is a pattern with the Aspers, not the rich man's burden they pretend.

In 2008, back when David Asper was still considered a "playa", he spent like a drunken sailor to win CRTC approval for his planned takeover of the license granted to radio station 107.9 FM. The license was for a campus radio station, but the owners had done an end-around the CRTC, dispensing with actually enrolling students, and running it as a commercial hip-hop station under the name 'Flava'.

Phat David bought up the private owner of 'Flava' and set up a company called YO Management to run the station. He promised the CRTC everything under the sun to let him keep the license, including taking over all the debts to former staff owed by 'Flava'.

Enter Duvol Dryden, a DJ and Flava radio host who was owed $10,000.

Dryden, taking Asper at his word, tried to collect his money after winning a federal Labour Board order, only to get the royal Asper runaround at every turn. He finally wrote to the CRTC during the hearing process to plead his case.

Frank Magazine found Dryden's letter in the CRTC files, from which we quote:

"I was supposedly a student representative on the board. For the record, I was never a student in any affiliated school course," he wrote in his intervention. "I was never invited to a board meeting, I never saw or approved minutes of a board meeting, and I was never invited to an Annual General Meeting."

"I see that the new supposed management of Harmony Broadcasting includes David Asper. Mr. Asper is behind a museum of human rights that going to cost a few million dollars. Human Rights? Here I am being treated like a black slave, being cheated out of my wages by someone Mr. Asper wants to reward with a high-paying guaranteed job, and he's sitting there saying 'Nothing personal, boy. Just business.'"

Nothing personal. Sound familiar?

Local governments fawned over the Aspers when they were known as the billionaire family owners of a media empire, promising them tens of millions of dollars for their pet projects. In return, the Aspers played their roles as rich benefactors, although the recipients of their largesse were usually themselves (the Canadian Museum for Human Rights) or their millionaire friends (The Friends of Upper Fort Garry).

Now that they've been exposed as the better-off brethren of the begging bums on Portage Avenue, it's time governments got off their knees and sounded the forbidden words: NOT ANOTHER PENNY.

C'mon. Does anybody believe David Asper can pull $100 million out of his hindquarters and buy the Blue Bombers, build a new stadium and finance a high-end mall for the luxury set? This year? Next year? The year after? The year after the year after?

Haven't we heard that chorus before? Little sister Gail has been singing it for years with her pet project, the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. You know, the one she's never been able to raise the money for despite years of begging.

Her last publicity stunt fundraiser was a grape-stomping event a local restaurant where she raised $25,000, which barely covers six months of globetrotting by the museum's Chief Operating Officer Patrick O'Reilly.

The museum hasn't been built yet and it's already on the verge of going belly up. $45 to $50 million in the hole. Not a hope of ever seeing that money without digging into the taxpayers' pockets.

The tradesmen better start asking for certified cheques in advance.

Just ask Andrea Slobodian and Meera Bahadoosingh what the Aspers' word is worth.

* H/t to The Great Canadian Talk Show

********
Professional Reporters at Work

Mary Agnes Welch, Winnipeg Free Press, Oct. 10, 2009, "Museum globetrotters"

"The museum is asking Ottawa to cover a $5.2-million budget shortfall this year by advancing money ear-marked for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. Museum communications director Angela Cassie says the original star-tup estimates first submitted to Ot-tawa have since been revised to allow more of the work to be done this year.
The museum will still be at least $5 million short of annual operating funds when it opens, thanks to main-tenance costs and property taxes not originally factored into the price of running the facility. The museum plans to fundraise to cover some of those costs, but warned in its annual report released Friday that future operating budgets presented to government could include requests for more money."

James Adams, Globe and Mail, Oct. 14, 2009, "Human-rights museum dodges financial crisis"

"The Canadian Museum for Human Rights, still an estimated three years from opening its doors in Winnipeg, has dodged a financial crisis, thanks to an accounting sleight of hand.

In its 2008-09 annual report tabled late last week in the House of Commons, the museum announced that the government has approved a request for an advance of $5.2-million to meet its operating budget for the current fiscal year. The money is being "reprofiled" from the $21.7-million the Conservative government previously had benchmarked for the Crown corporation's operations in 2011-12.

Previously, the CMHR, the construction of which began this year, had been budgeted to receive $3.4-million to operate during the 2009-2010 fiscal year ending March 31. The $3.4-million was part of a $6.1-million operating package Ottawa provided for 2008-09 and 2009-2010."

Why Manitoba Hydro is keeping secrets from the PUB

Manitoba Hydro is waging an under-the-radar power struggle with the Public Utilities Board.

For over a year Hydro has been playing cat-and-mouse with the PUB, promising to deliver information the board wants, then reneging, promising, then reneging again. At issue is the utility's risk analyses for its plans to spend $18 billion over the next 15 years to build new dams in northern Manitoba.

The PUB wants to know how Hydro can justify the huge expense and what alternatives they have if Hydro's profit projections evaporate into thin air. The fear is that the entire cost of the new dams will fall on the shoulders of Manitoba electricity users, not to mention the very real possibility that we will be forced to buy electricity at an unknown price in order to fulfill our obligations to provide it to American customers at a fixed price----in other words, to subsidize the U.S. buyers.

Last September, The Black Rod examined PUB documentation to produce a three-part expose of Manitoba Hydro's dam construction plans.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2008/09/who-will-go-broke-first-manitoba-hydro_08.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2008/09/manitoba-hydro-series-part-two.html

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2008/09/manitoba-hydro-series-part-3.html

The bottom line:

"Manitoba Hydro's house of cards is built on the premise that the exchange rate will drop to 86 cents U.S., that a carbon tax in the U.S. prices coal out of the market, and interest rates stay the same for the next decade or so. Not one of these factors --- all of them have to come true for Hydro to make any money."

It's no wonder that the Public Utilities Board is becoming more and more worried, and Manitoba Hydro is doing its best to hide the facts.

It turns out that a month after The Black Rod's series, Hydro responded to the PUB's demand for their risk studies. The PUB amended its order by eliminating deadlines for Hydro to provide the information it wants. The main reason is that Hydro said it has always had the risk analyses, but has been keeping them from the PUB. Here's how the PUB reported that bombshell:

Board Findings
In Order 116/08 the Board indicated that a risk analysis should be undertaken incorporating all of the major risks faced by MH. The Board directed MH to undertake:
"a thorough and quantified Risk Analysis, including probabilities of all identified operational and business risks. This report should consider the implications of planned capital spending taking into account revenue growth, variable interest rates, drought, inflation experience and risk, and potential currency fluctuation" [Directive 12]
MH has indicated that it will be filing its Corporate Risk Management Report on January 15, 2009. That report may address the major risks of the Corporation however, the Corporate Risk Management Report has, in the past, not provided the information sought in Directive 12.
That said, in its October 8, 2008 reply MH candidly acknowledges that its prior filings of the Corporate Risk Management Report excluded the appendices to the Report.
The appendices apparently detail and quantify MH's business and operational risks.
MH now proposes to file the appendices, from the new Report, in confidence with the Board.

-snip-

To date, the Board has not been provided with specific analyses of the risks related to pending long-term export contracts, pending major capital construction for generation and transmission facilities, and the 'sticker shock' impacts on the longterm profitability of such ventures.
However, MH now asserts, in its October 8, 2008 reply, that its Corporate Risk Management Report will identify and quantify all major operational and business risks and provide an explanation of all risk mitigation measures undertaken or planned by the Corporation. Additionally, the expanded IFFs to be filed will include a projection of MH's capital structure showing the impact of capital expansion now planned or contemplated, with risks quantified.

To allow the Board the opportunity to determine whether MH's new filings by January 15, 2009 address the Board's concerns, the Board will vary this Directive by removing the deadline date. Should the Board require additional information after its review of MH's January 15, 2009 filings, the Board will consider further revisions to this Directive.

Well, guess what? January, 2009, came and went and Manitoba Hydro failed to give the PUB the information it wanted.

A new deadline was set---Sept. 30, 2009. Once again, nada from Hydro.

Hydro CEO Bob Brennan now says they need to provide the proper "context" for their risk studies and they'll provide the information when they feel like it and not before.

By stalling for a year, Hydro has managed to make a start on the money-losing Wuskwatim hydro project, and to ask for a waiver on environmental regulations to build a work camp preparatory to starting on the Keeyask dam. They know the PUB is powerless to stop them from plowing ahead with their plans.

Now you can see why the PUB has seized on a whistleblower's complaint about Hydro mismanagement, even though they technically have no authority to do so.

The hot-potato complaint has been circulating through the bureaucracy for well over 6 months. It landed in the hands of the Auditor General in April, six months ago. Carol Bellringer said she would get around to it sometime. But before she could apply the usual NDP whitewash, the complaint, with accompanying documents, was slipped through the transom at the offices of the Public Utilities Board.

They're examining the figures, and trying to determine how much to make public.

If they have a hard time, The Black Rod won't.

The. Most. Controversial. Black Rod. Ever.

For the first time ever, we need to issue a content warning. If you are easily upset by obscenity or descriptions of explicit sex acts, don't read on.

The witchhunt has started.

The first to be dragged to the stake is Stuart Murray, the newly announced Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. His crime? He's not pure enough for the homosexual lobby.

Detractors of the CMHR said from the beginning it was going to be a publicly funded tool to promote left-wing feminist/homosexual social engineering. Not so, insisted the museum's backers.

When reporting to the federal Heritage minister in 2008, Arni Thorsteinson, then-chairman of the federal advisory committee on the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, wrote: (All emphasis herein is ours)

“There was a concern among respondents in the web-based consultations and focus groups testing that the CMHR could be influenced by political activities, or special interest groups in a manner that could affect, or be perceived to affect, the integrity and balance of its exhibitions and programs.”

“The Board will need to not only ensure that it remains autonomous and free from influence, but also to be seen to be autonomous and free from influence.”

Well, here's the real-life litmus test on interference by special interest groups, and the response from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is----dead silence.

The refusal to defend Stu Murray tells all you need to know about the influence certain special interests have with the board.

In January, Helen Kennedy, executive director the homosexual lobby group Egale Canada, sent an open letter to Patrick Riley, Chief Operating Officer of the CMHR, which began:

Dear Mr. Patrick O’Reilly,
As one of the initial supporters of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights...Egale Canada is gravely concerned about the stark omission of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) and our allies’ history, achievements, and voices on your website and fact sheets and in your newsletters and other publications.

Obviously they didn't get the response they wanted. So when the appointment of Stu Murray was announced by the federal government, Egale decided to flex its muscle. They want Murray to crawl. And they're sending a message to Riley, Thorsteinson, Gail Asper and Stephen Harper---we call the shots, policy or no policy.

Already the museum executive has begun to kowtow to the homosexual lobby, as we'll explain later. In the meantime, they're leaving it to their surrogates like former Liberal MP John Harvard and former NDP attorney general Roland Penner to attack Murray, and anyone who comes out in support of him, in the editorial pages of the Winnipeg Free Press.

The attack on Murray appears to centre on his vote as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in Manitoba against extending adoption rights to same-sex couples.

Since it's obvious you'll never see the other side of the argument in the CMHR or, we bet, in the Winnipeg Free Press (although we grant them permission to reprint this article in full) we decided to research it ourselves.

Proponents of the legislation said it was a natural extension of laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation, the newspeak term for, as former NDP cabinet minister Sidney Green put it in his own editorial page article, sexual gratification.

The Gay Report, published in 1979, was an 881 page compendium of pre-AIDS lesbian and gay male sexual attitudes and practices. 5,400 lesbians and gay men filled out a 16-page questionaire making it one of the largest surveys ever conducted of homosexual sex practices.

Among its findings:

99% engaged in oral sex;
91% had anal intercourse;
83% engaged in rimming; (licking the anus)
22% had done fisting;
23% admitted to participating in golden showers (peeing on another or being peed on);
76% admitted to public or group sex;
73% admitted having sex with boys (nineteen years old or younger)]
38% had partaken of sadomasochistic practices at least once
4% admitted to eating feces.
35% admitted to having had 100 or more different sexual partners

Debunking the Gay Report has become almost a cottage industry on the internet. Among the valid criticisms is that it was a survey similar to those that appear in magazines, and not a scientific poll; only about 1 percent of the surveys that were distributed were returned; and the bulk of respondents came from readers of Blueboy, a gay softporn magazine, which likely skewed the results towards the more extreme sex practices.

Since the AIDS epidemic, sex surveys of homosexuals have become commonplace among AIDS researchers.

There was a research study conducted between 2004 and 2007 by a team from the University of Windsor and the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT).

In one survey, data was collected from 922 "randomly recruited men" during Toronto Pride 2005. They completed a 73-item questionnaire about their sexual behavior and sexual activites in the previous six months.

54.7 percent reported having sex with a regular partner
26 percent said they were monogamous with their partner, although that's a flexible term because...
62 percent reported having a casual male partner and "significant numbers" of men reported having sex with casual and regular partners.
13.9 percent said they had sex without condoms (participating in the bareback scene)

"They reported having UAI (unprotected anal intercourse...ed) both with and without coming. BB men were significantly overrepresented in a specific set of social venues and they were more likely to have: (1) been sexually adventurous (e.g. fisting, SM, "party and play,"etc); (2) had five or more sexual partners in the previous six months."

Researchers conducted a separate survey of 34 men who reported having unprotected sex most or all of the time. The findings were hair-raising.

"SERO-SORTING
The men expressed concern about HIV transmission, despite their sexual practices. To manage their HIV many tried to sero-sort by dropping or looking for hints and cues, without directly asking about or disclosing HIV status. This was primarily because raising the topic of HIV status (positive or negative) with a potential sexual partner provoked strong feelings of anxiety, and caused concern about receiving a hostile response and possibly derailing an opportunity to have sex. This was especially the case for the HIV-positive men."

"HIV-positive men tended to presume that when a sexual partner did not bring up sero-status or did not introduce a condom, he was implying consent because he was HIV-positive or he accepted the risk being taken. These presumptions were especially attributed to quick-sex settings, such as baths, where a partner’s HIV status was often inferred based on his willingness to go along with unprotected sex. Men in the bareback circuit tended to share these presumptions."

"HIV-negative men were more likely to presume that when a sexual partner did not bring up sero-status or introduce a condom, he was HIV-negative."

"The men were also asked about the 1998 Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the Cuerrier case that stated people living with HIV have an obligation to disclose their sero-status to sexual partners..."

"Most felt that disclosure could be indirect, situational, or qualified and were concerned about the legal complications that could arise from ambiguous and subjective definitions of disclosure, and whether disclosure could actually heighten one’s vulnerability to legal problems. Some men rejected the obligation of HIV-positive people to disclose, on the grounds that sex is a shared responsibility in which both partners should take selfprotective measures. This latter perspective has been promoted by many AIDS service organizations (ASOs) for several decades and was also found to be consistent with the ideology of men in the bareback circuit."

The Ontario Men’s Survey in 2004 was a community project funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and GlaxoSmithKline Positive Action Program.

"AIDS service organizations and the people who organize and run community groups helped formulate the questions; gay dances, bars and bathhouses provided places where men could answer them. The goal was to find 5,000 men who would complete the questionnaire. That goal was met and surpassed" (with 5,080 men participating). Almost half (2428) of the participants were from Toronto.

SEXUAL ACTIVITIES WITH CASUAL MALE PARTNER(S) IN PAST 3 MONTHS
%
Deep kissing 77.8
Jerking off 77.6
Rimming 40.3
Sucking - condom 17.0
Sucking - no condom 80.3
Getting sucked - condom 14.4
Getting sucked - no condom 73.2
Fucking - condom 46.5
Fucking - no condom 21.0
Getting fucked - condom 34.5
Getting fucked - no condom 16.0

Number of casual sex partners in the
past 3 months
one 18%
2-4 46%
5-9 16%
10 or more 20%
Potentially risky activities with casual sex
partners without condoms
fucking 21%
getting fucked 16%

"The question: “In the past three months, when you have had sex with male casual partners, how often have you told each other of your HIV status?”
The answer: Not that often. Here’s how it breaks down:"
always disclosed status: 25%
sometimes disclosed status: 30%
never disclosed status: 45%

The ARGUS study was a 2005 Montreal gay sex survey conducted under the Canada, Quebec, and Montreal public health departments in which 1957 men filled out a self-administered questionnaire about their sex behaviours in the previous six months.

Among its findings:

9.2 percent practised fisting (defined as inserting all the fingers, a fist, or a forearm in the anus)
27.2 percent engaged in group sex
81 percent had one-night stands, including 34 percent who had six or more.
29.8 percent had unprotected anal intercourse with a partner without knowing if the person had HIV or not.
11.5 percent "intentionally" had unprotected anal sex with a casual male partner

But surveys are just unscientific snapshots. A better insight into the beliefs and behaviour of the homosexual community comes from their own official statements and policy stances.

Egale and other homosexual groups including Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario (CLGRO) opposed raising the age of consent to 16 from 14.

In a brief to the Justice Committee. CLGRO stated:
"There is a widespread belief that older, predatory persons lure young people into homosexuality. This is coupled with a refusal to accept that younger persons are capable of seeking and do seek out consensual same-sex relationships with older persons and, in fact, may be the initiators of such relationships. In addition, contrary to popular belief, a relationship with an older person may not in fact be damaging for a young person."

Hilary Cook, who served as chair of Egale's legal committee for five years before taking a seat on the board of directors, said it was unrealistic to expect teens to have sex only with those their own age.

"That's not the queer youth reality."

Egale's biggest bugaboo is the law against having anal sex with children aged 16 and 17. But given the lackadaisical attitude (above) to unprotected anal sex by the highest risk group for AIDS in the country, it appears a very reasonable restriction to protect children.

The biggest insight into the homosexual culture came in the legal battle between Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium, a gay and lesbian bookstore in Vancouver. Canada Customs was continually seizing books the story was trying to import from the U.S. The bookstore owners went to court to prove Customs was discriminating against them on the basis of their sexual orientation.

The case wound up in the Supreme Court where during the lengthy trial (1999-2000) the bookstore owners and their supporters argued that homosexuals should get special treatment under the laws against pornography.

EGALE Canada in their argument to the court said that
"sexually explicit lesbian, gay and bisexual materials challenge the dominant cultural discourse. They resist the enforced invisibility of our marginalized communities and thereby reassure us that we are not alone in the world, despite the apparent hegemony of heterosexuality. They reduce our sense of isolation. They provide affirmation and validation of our sexual identities by normalizing and celebrating homo-and bi-sexual practices, which mainstream culture either ignores or condemns. In short, they help us feel good about ourselves in an otherwise hostile society."

LEAF argued in its intervenor documents that

"the equality rights of heterosexual women are also affected by the targeting of LGBT materials. These materials benefit heterosexual women because they may challenge sexism, compulsory heterosexuality and the dominant, heterosexist sexual representations which often portray 'normal' heterosexuality as men dominating women and women enjoying pain and degradation."

Here are just a few excerpts of the court's majority decision which further outline the sexual orientation argument:

Reasons for Judgment, BCSC, para. 128. AR Vol. I, p. 131.
Court File No: 26858

"First the appellants argue that the “harm-based” interpretation given to s. 163 of the Criminal Code in Butler, supra, does not apply to gay and lesbian erotica in the same way as it does to heterosexual erotica, or perhaps at all."

***
"The appellants, supported by the interveners LEAF and EGALE, contend that homosexual erotica plays an important role in providing a positive self-image to gays and lesbians, who may feel isolated and rejected in the heterosexual mainstream. Erotica provides a positive celebration of what it means to be gay or lesbian. As such, it is argued that sexual speech in the context of gay and lesbian culture is a core value and Butler cannot legitimately be applied to locate it at the fringes of s. 2(b) expression. Erotica, they contend, plays a different role in a gay and lesbian community than it does in a heterosexual community, and the Butler approach based, they say, on heterosexual norms, is oblivious to this fact. Gays and lesbians are defined by their sexuality and are therefore disproportionately vulnerable to sexual censorship."

****
" The intervener LEAF took the position that sado-masochism performs an emancipatory role in gay and lesbian culture and should therefore be judged by a different standard from that applicable to heterosexual culture."

(Lead counsel for LEAF in its intervention in Little Sisters was Karen Busby who teaches your children in the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba -- ed.)

****

"On the more specific issues, the appellants, and the interveners in their support, argue that in the context of the Customs legislation a “harm-based” approach which utilizes a single community standard across all regions and groups within society is insufficiently “contextual” or sensitive to specific circumstances to give effect to the equality rights of gays and lesbians."

****

"Portrayal of a dominatrix engaged in the non-violent degradation of an ostensibly willing sex slave is no less dehumanizing if the victim happens to be of the same sex, and no less (and no more) harmful in its reassurance to the viewer that the victim finds such conduct both normal and pleasurable. Parliament’s concern was with behavioural changes in the voyeur that are potentially harmful in ways or to an extent that the community is not prepared to tolerate. There is no reason to restrict that concern to the heterosexual community."

In short, the argument was that

- homosexual pornography is a core value of gay culture,

- laws against degrading pornography shouldn't apply to homosexual porn and

- sadomasochistic porn in a homosexual setting is positive and uplifting.

The Supreme Court didn't bite, and on that argument Little Sisters lost.

But back to the point. What does all this have to do with adoption by same sex couples?

We see that 30 years of sex surveys consistently record repugnant sex practices (rimming, fisting, peeing on partners as a sex act), widespread promiscuity, and a detestible attitude among a sizeable portion of the community (euphemistically called "sex adventurists") to having unprotected anal sex despite known risks of spreading HIV.

We see that they are upset at losing access to young teens (ages 14 and 15), and eager to gain access to older teens (ages 16 and 17 for anal sex) while insisting that children are old enough to make up their own minds about having sex with adults.

And we see them proclaim that sadomasochistic pornography showing homosexual men and women in pain and degradation is a core value of their culture.

This would be disturbing in the context of any family with children of their own.

But consider the idea of sending somebody else's children into this culture, and you see there is a valid argument for opposing adoption by same sex couples.

At the same time you can be certain you will never see this argument discussed within the walls of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights despite their pious claims to canvass all sides of controversial issues.

The CMHR has a 16-member content advisory committee. Three of those members are directly connected with LEAF, the pro-homo-porn intervenor in the Little Sisters case.

* Mary Eberts, a co-founder of LEAF;
* Natasha Bakkht, described as a member of the legal arm of the feminist movement, the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF); and
* Diana Majury, an active feminist for the past 30 years who has been involved in both the feminist National Association of Women and the Law and LEAF.

In his report to Ottawa, Arni Thorsteinson said the Content Advisory Committee "would work closely with CMHR staff for the purpose of ensuring that the Board and CMHR have the capacity and authority to acknowledge conflict, provide a balanced perspective and acknowledge and manage controversy. The members of the CAC should be chosen to play the role of advisors rather than advocates for special interest groups."

Oops. Somebody forgot to tell CAC member Jennifer Breakspear whose mini-bio says she "is a human rights activist working on human rights, and lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual rights (LGTB)."

Right after the attack on Stu Murray was launched in mid-month, Breakspear was quoted in xtra.ca ("Canada's online source for gay and lesbian news, features, editorials, reviews, events, and business listings").

"His voting record concerns me," says Jennifer Breakspear, the executive director of Vancouver's queer resource centre, Qmunity. She is also a member of the museum's content advisory committee, which is conducting public roundtables across Canada. "I look forward to meeting him and asking him about his record and where he stands now."

Is that a fact?

How, exactly does that jibe with the principle that "members of the CAC should be chosen to play the role of advisors rather than advocates for special interest groups"?

Oh, wait. When you have FVC (favoured victim status) you don't need to play be the rules, thank you very much.

After all, who's going to read her the rules? Stu Murray?

Or maybe COO Patrick O'Reilly?

You know, the same Patrick O'Reilly who was to be the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for the Vancouver resource centre run by Breakspear the same weekend she was threatening Stuart Murray?

Is kowtow/kow-tow one word, or two?

The irony of it all is that Stuart Murray wasn't hired for any experience in the field of "human rights." He has a much greater role to play with the CMHR, which is why Gail Asper and Arni Thorsteinson are shivering at the thought of losing him.

The day of his appointment, CBC television news carried 3 slightly different stories about his joining the museum. The most important one was the middle story, which ran at 5:30 p.m.

That was the story that explained Murray was brought on board to achieve one goal---to raise the $45 million the museum needs to fill its budget hole. He was hired for his expertise in fundraising, demonstrated by his stint working with the St. Boniface General Hospital.

What Stu Murray brings to the job is his connections to people with deep pockets--- to business, to industry, and to governments in Manitoba and elsewhere.

Human Rights activists are a dime a dozen.

The NDP's gangfighters roll out their plans

Manitoba Premier Gary Doer sat stonefaced in the Legislature, staring at the raving man who stood beside him.

The man was bellowing at the top of his lungs, his arms flailing, spit flying from his mouth.

It was three days ago.

Doer watched as the madman ranted on and on, and the lame-duck premier counted the minutes until he could walk away from this madhouse to the sanity of a diplomatic posting in Washington.

But we don't have that option. For that lunatic in the Legislature was none other than Manitoba Attorney General Dave Chomiak.

What set off his bout of carpet-chewing was a demand from the Opposition for him to table his promised new gang strategy or resign.

Thursday, he rolled out his gang strategy.

He should have resigned instead.

His much touted NEW gang strategy turned out to be a cut-and-paste job of every "new" gang strategy the NDP has trotted out in the past decade.
The cornerstone of Chomiak's new strategy dates back seventy years --- a list of Public Enemies consisting of up to 50 adult gang leaders.

Dave Chomiak is channeling J. Edgar Hoover. John Dillinger better watch out.

A new strategy calls for new resources, right?

Chomiak the gangfighter thinks four more people should be enough.

He's adding three new hires to the provincial Criminal Organization and High Risk Offenders Unit to assist police to conduct an in-your-face program of applying constant pressure on active gang members on that list. Gee, you mean like the Criminal Organization High Risk Probation Unit that was part of the street gang containment initiative the NDP announced in 2000?

Does anybody remember 2005? July 15, 2005, to be exact. That's when the Winnipeg police made this announcement:

Project House Call Ringing in Results
Project House Call has been ensuring offenders in the community on court ordered conditions are living up their obligations or facing the consequences.
The task force was first run in May. Officers from the Winnipeg Police Service's Division 11 Community Support Unit (CSU) and Manitoba Justice's Probation Services Criminal Organization and High Risk Offenders Unit (COHROU) partnered together, identifying a list of offenders and doing proactive sweeps to check for compliance with curfews and other conditions."

"The average compliance rate has been 73%. Results on individual nights have ranged from as low as 59% to as high as 80%. The proposal for the project came from the front line staff of Manitoba Justice and the Winnipeg Police Service.
It's expected that Project House Call will continue to be run regularly throughout the summer."

Sound familiar?

Well, since nobody remembers what the NDP promised nine years ago or four years ago, a better analogy is the Winnipeg Auto Theft Suppression Strategy which has police officers babysitting the city's worst car thieves.

Hasn't it cut car theft by more than two-thirds in only two years? It's been a big success, other than the fact that while the street crimes police were making sure car thieves were comfortably tucked into bed each night, the gangs have grown larger, more aggressive, and have branched out into new fields.

* Muggings are up 35 percent this year alone (75 percent in District 3).
* House break-ins---up 18 percent citywide.

* Police district 4 (North Kildonan, East Kildonan, Transcona, and "Elmwood" area) is a real "success" story with auto theft down 38 percent while residential break-ins are up 28 percent, garage break-ins up 21 percent, robberies up 20 percent, and muggings up 39 percent.

The lesson here is that when you change priorities without adding more police, the old priorities suffer. And so does the public. Duh.

Chomiak also promised a new civilian analyst to create a new gang database for police. You mean something like the previously announced Manitoba Integrated Organized Crime Task Force which "brings together police resources to focus on intelligence-led enforcement to seriously disrupt organized crime at the leadership level." Or the previously announced Corrections Intelligence Unit which "co-ordinates intelligence on gang members who are on supervised probation or in adult and youth institutions."

Or just maybe, maybe, it will be like the old gang database?

It was such a useful tool in investigations and prosecutions that as far back as 2000 Winnipeg police were getting calls from police forces across the country for tips on how to set up their own.

Why do we detect the NDP's fingerprints in eliminating the Winnipeg gang database?

Was it because the police were collecting too much information on street gangs whose members were, ahem, aboriginal in appearance at a time the NDP had adopted a hands-off policy on those gangs?

As luck would have it, the NDP is in the midst of a race for a new leader, and all three candidates went on CJOB this week to reveal their gang fighting strategies.

The first shocker was that the NDP has expunged the word "holistic" from their dictionary. When they took office in 1999 they declared that henceforth the government would be taking a "holistic" approach to gangs in contrast with the Conservative government's prosecutions approach. They intended to eliminate gangs by building floor hockey facilities and hiring more social workers. Group hug, anyone?

The Tories had put the Manitoba Warriors street gang out of business and sent their leaders, including the brother of NDP cabinet minister Robinson, to prison. The NDP's holistic approach has let the Manitoba Warriors regroup and new violent gangs to spring up.

You can see why they need to change the lexicon. The new buzzword is apparently "community."

Andrew Swan wants to "build and strengthen our communities." He wants to "get communities involved" in fighting crime. How? By organizing citizens patrols.

He's "very interested in what police have to say" about fighting crime.

He wants more crown attorneys dedicated to fighting gangs.

And he wants "those at the top" to be targeted.

Oh, and if people don't feel safe in their communities, the NDP has a program for safety audits on their homes and free deadbolts for low-income people.

In other words, more of the same.

The Winnipeg Police Association thinks more-of-the-same is terrific strategy. They've endorsed Andrew Swan.

Greg Selinger knows who's to blame for the gang problem after 10 years of NDP rule---Gary Filmon.

The more social services a government provides, the greater the sense of security among the citizenry, he told CJOB. When Selinger was a social worker in the Nineties, he delivered social and recreational programs to communities like Gilbert Park. But throughout the 90's, he said, there was an "underinvestment" in social services.

So, blame Gary Filmon.

Selinger said the NDP has "done a lot" in 10 years of power, but, he conceded, obviously "not enough." So blame Gary Doer a little bit too.

His solution?

People need to be the "eyes and ears" of the police in the community. Police, for their part, need to get into the community through community policing and bike patrols.

And ("I am answering your question," he snapped at host Richard Cloutier), anyone committing a "violent crime against another citizen" should "pay the consequences."

But if we have to send them to jail, we have to provide them with training and education so they can enter the job market, he said.

In short, once a social worker, always a social worker.

Steve Ashton, still running against his own Party after 10 years of supporting it, said he would do things differently.

He wants to connect citizens to the police using the Point Douglas model in which community residents act as "eyes on the street" and call a special hotline to the police if they see any suspicious activity.

That's right. The way to fight gangs is to make a phone call and become No. 201 on the list of the calls in the queue.

He declared his own experience with the Taxi Board taught him a lot. Crime against cab drivers was cut 90 percent using cameras and shields, he said. We're not sure if that's a hint he supports surveillance cameras.

Then came the barrage: Community policing. Foot patrols in Manitoba Housing complexes. More police, concentrating them in high risk areas.

We're sure he meant to add kittens, puppies, rainbows and every other feel-good idea under the sun.

Oh, and he wants to recreate the Boston Miracle.

Here's how the Boston Globe described it:

"In 1996, police started Operation Ceasefire, which focused on identifying members of gangs, offering them ways out, and threatening them with federal sentences in prisons far away from their families if they continued to be violent. Clergy from the Boston TenPoint Coalition helped by offering services to gang members, such as job and education opportunities, to steer them from trouble."

There was an 18-month stretch when not a single youth in the city was killed. That's when people starting using the term "Boston Miracle." That's the part Ashton wants you to know.

What he doesn't want you to know is that after a few years of declining murder stats, the situation reversed. The number of gang killings began climbing each year. By 2005 the number of homicides had reached a 10-year high of 75.

Ashton's bottom line---he's supported every one of the NDP's failed strategies to fight gangs, but this time it's different. Uh huh.

Fighting Gangs. The Great Divide. People vs. Profs

A group of about 30 people marched from the North End to the Legislature yesterday.

There wasn't a university egghead in the bunch. Nor could you find a single Indian Chief or Nahanni Fontaine or any of the usual hate-the-police crowd who claim to speak for native people.

That's because the message the marchers brought to the politicians wasn't the message being peddled in Manitoba's universities or newspapers or by racial demagogues in the aboriginal community.

It was the direct opposite of the "special report" prepared by leftwing university professors for the attention of Attorney General Dave Chomiak, which embraced the "wisdom" of members of a violent street gang who said authorities should end a crackdown on gangs and concentrate on ending poverty.

The residents of the North End who made the long march didn't carry signs saying "End Poverty". Their message was "Stop the Violence." And it was directed at those same gang members and their ilk.

The march was organized by North End resident Daniel Ranville. Speaking as someone who lives in the neighbourhood where the gangs operate, his words were ashes in the mouths of the university professors and professional Indian spokesmen.

Native people are becoming ashamed of being aboriginal because of the actions of the gangs, he said. The violence is getting worse; more innocent people are being hurt; and the violence is most often directed by Indian thugs against aboriginal victims. The word 'criminal' is becoming synonymous with 'aboriginal.'

Decent, hard-working native residents of the North End are being tarred with the image, Ranville said. As the reporter Aldo Santin put it in the Winnipeg Free Press:

"Ranville, a social worker, said many aboriginal people in the community go to work every day, send their children to school and pay their bills. He said many of them are demoralized by the violence that is initiated by other aboriginal people."

The solution, said the marchers, has to come from the gang members themselves; they have to take personal responsibility for changing their lives.

"Some of us have come through these challenges and we can make a contribution to our community," Ranville said in the Free Press. "We’re marching to show that the situation is not as hopeless as it seems - challenging but not hopeless."

Will the voice of the people be heard in the Legislature? Don't hold your breath. Here's why.

The same day as the march, the NDP government, which has a hands-off policy when it comes to aboriginal street gangs, issued yet another news release on the topic.

September 16, 2009

MANITOBA JOINS WESTERN PROVINCES TO DISCUSS ANTI-GANG ISSUES:
CHOMIAK

Attorney General Dave Chomiak will meet with his western
counterparts tomorrow and Friday in Saskatoon to share
information on best practices and discuss initiatives for
fighting organized crime.

Why wait for the post-meeting news release when you can read the results in The Black Rod today. Look no further than....

Promising Practices for
Addressing Youth
Involvement in Gangs

Research Report prepared by
Mark Totten, PH.D
April 2008

In support of the Strategy,
Preventing Youth Gang Violence in BC:
A Comprehensive and Coordinated
Provincial Action Plan

Or....

Aboriginal Youth and Violent
Gang Involvement in Canada:
Quality Prevention Strategies
Mark Totten, M.S.W., R.S.W., Ph.D.

Volume 3: pages 135–156
March/mars 2009
www.ipc.uOttawa.ca (Institute for the Prevention of Crime, Ottawa)

Yep, same guy. He's the Director of Research at the Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa, so he's got the clout to influence policy.

And what's his conclusion?

The answer to fighting youth gangs is---wait for it----more social workers.

Stop laughing.

You'll find it all in his B.C. report under the heading:

"The initiatives described below are proven to be effective in preventing membership in gangs and intervening with gang-involved youth."

The initiative that Dave Chomiak will be talking most about is called Wraparound. It's the latest buzzword in gangology.

Here's how Totten describes it:

• Wraparound is a complex, multifaceted intervention strategy designed to keep youthful offenders at home and out of institutions whenever possible.

* "A comprehensive continuum of individualized services and support networks are “wrapped around” young people, rather than forcing them to fit into categorical, inflexible therapeutic programs (Portland State University Research and Training Center, 2003). Individual case management is a cornerstone, although Wraparound is very different from conventional case management programs: in the latter, an individual case manager or probation officer navigates them through traditional social and youth justice services (Burchard et al., 2002).

* A collaborative, community-based interagency team (with professionals from youth justice, education, mental health, and social services systems) designs, implements, and oversees the project. One organization takes the lead in coordinating each individual Wraparound case.

The bottom line---more social workers.

There was another project that almost made the grade except for one teensy-weensy problem.

"• The Little Village Project (Spergel, 2006; Spergel et al., 2003) has shown the most positive outcomes of any comprehensive gang intervention program."

Little Village is an inner-city area of Chicago with the gang violence problems you would expect to find there. Starting in 1992, authorities launched a " balanced, three-pronged approach that encompasses prevention, intervention and suppression activities."

The outcomes were good except for one problem. The problem? "...there was not any major decrease in the overall gang crime in the Village (Spergel et al., 2003)."

As for What Doesn't Work in Totten's opinion..."Approaches described below are proven to be ineffective and should be stopped."

* ‘get tough’ approaches
* sending gang members to jail
* government education programs
* aboriginal leaders outreach

"Get tough and ‘lock ‘em up’ approaches have the exact opposite effect of that intended: incarcerating gang members and those at risk of joining gangs is very expensive, increases gang cohesion and recruitment, and in many cases results in these youth committing more serious crimes upon release. Instead, Wraparound approaches, based upon an integrated system of care model, result in significant cost savings and have excellent outcomes."

• Traditional detached-worker programs, which use social workers, youth and recreation workers or Aboriginal leaders who outreach into gangs are ineffective and can do more harm than good by increasing gang cohesion (Klein, 1995).

• Curriculum-based prevention programs targeting youth at-risk for gang
involvement, such as the American Gang Resistance Education and Training
program (G.R.E.A.T.) and the many Canadian primary prevention initiatives (see Appendix B) effect modest, short-term change. However, follow-up studies have fund program participants to be as likely as non-participants to become gang members in the long-term.

Uh oh. Check out what's in Appendix B:

2001 - 2006 Manitoba primary prevention initiatives (recreation, educational videos, booklets, primary and secondary classroom education, parent information, community collaboration)
• Lighthouses, Manitoba Justice.
• Project Gang Proof, Manitoba RCMP, Winnipeg Police Service, Manitoba Justice.
• Take Action: Street Gang Awareness, Winnipeg Police Service.

Memo to Winnipeg Police: Keep it up. You've got the scumbags squirming

After a lone gunman sprayed a North End wedding reception with bullets on July 25th, killing one woman and wounding a number of other guests, Winnipeg police began squeezing gang members for information.

The late July attack even roused Attorney General Dave "Six Months" Chomiak to drop the Manitoba NDP's ten year moratorium on disturbing aboriginal street gangs. He began babbling about adopting a new, new, new, new, NEW gang strategy aimed at the same gangs that have thrived on his government's watch.

It was all too much for six members of the Manitoba Warriors.

The police had been paying special attention to the Warriors, some of whom had been guests at the wedding, raising suspicion that they had been the targets of a rival gang. This small contingent couldn't take the heat, so they went running for help to the only people still dumb enough to fall for their con---university eggheads.

"So when these men approached us, saying that they wanted to convey their experiences of living in the North End, their thoughts on the recent events that have occurred there, and their insights into what it will take to make meaningful change, we took advantage of this opportunity."

"It was in this spirit that we met with six members of a North End street gang over two days in early August."

Sure enough, within a month, the eggheads, had whipped up a special report they titled "Violence and Street Gangs in the Inner City" (excerpted above) and submitted it to Chomiak to get him to call off the dogs.

Their message: gangs are not the problem, society is.

"Street gangs are the product of the poverty and systemic racism that have long been present in the North End," declared the authors--- Marxist professor Elizabeth Comack, Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Manitoba; flaming anti-capitalist Jim Silver, Professor of Politics at the University of Winnipeg; associate dean of the department of bleeding hearts at the U of M, Lawrence Deane; and every gang member's (almost) special pal, Larry Morrissette, the Director of OPK, a program to employ the unemployable.

Having bestowed the greatest accolade the Left can give, that of "Victim", on the violent gangs, the university eggheads then adopted the gang mentality and declared that the real enemy is---wait for it---the police.

But everything they see as wrong, we see as right:

"...in response to the perceived increase in levels of violence the Winnipeg Police Service has flooded the North End with officers and cruiser cars. (To which, we say Yay.)

As a consequence, the men said, the police have been “in their face,” as they are being regularly stopped and asked to account for themselves. (Double Yay.)

Sometimes this practice occurs when children are present, and it is so frequent that one man was stopped three times in one hour as he made his way around the North End. (Wow, a member of a violent street gang who has a long criminal record and brags he's not going to stop his life of crime is upset he's being stopped by police. Somebody call his momma.)

“It’s like the military in the North End now,” another said. “It’s all-out war on us.” (A great big Hooray.)

They likened the atmosphere now to what they understand to have been the case in big American cities, like Los Angeles, fifteen years ago. Police are swarming the North End. SWAT teams are present at funerals. “It’s like we’re under siege.” (Booyah)"

******
"The view of the street gang members is that flooding the North End with enlarged teams of police officers will not deter them from what they are doing. It will, rather, anger many residents of the North End who are not
involved with illegal or violent activities but who are targeted anyway because they “fit the description.”

***
"From previous studies done in Winnipeg’s inner city we know that most innercity residents do want a greater police presence in their neighbourhoods. But what they want is community policing where police are a positive presence and get to know the neighbourhoods and the children. Aboriginal people in particular do not want the aggressive style of policing involved in flooding the North End with cops and harassing people, because too often those harassed are guilty of nothing at all."

"The result of this intensified policing strategy, the street gang members told us, will be an angry response from the community and more disrespect for the police, which will generate yet more suppression and harassment, leading to a vicious spiral that is as likely to promote violence as to quell it"

To believe the university professors, people in gang-infested communities would sooner live with intimidation, murders, and drive-by shootings than have police patrol their streets trying to arrest the people responsible for the intimidation, murders and drive-by shootings.

Memo to university eggheads: Six loser gang members are not spokesmen for the North End or the Inner City. Nor do they speak for "aboriginal people". What planet do you live on?

These communities are filled with decent, law-abiding native and non-native people who welcome the police presence and want more of it. They may ask for community policing, but given second choice they'll take stepped up patrols and aggressive in-your-face harassment of gang members.

And if "aboriginal people in particular" don't like it, all they have to do is stop defending street gangs, stop making excuses for them, and join the fight against them.

Drive the gangs out of the community, and the police will stop looking for criminal suspects in that community. D-uh.

But that's too obvious for the eggheads. They would rather peddle the gang mythology. You can see why.

They write of their gang contacts with obvious admiration. And the gang gurus play their role for all its worth.

"... they talk about their work in much the same way as more conventional businessmen do, saying that it’s a “dog eat dog,” rough and competitive business that’s “all about money.” It is also a business in which “You can’t let anyone take advantage of you. You can’t be seen to be weak.” This situation is not new; it has been the case for at least the past 20 years. “If something is done to us, or to one of our gang, we have to retaliate. Otherwise, “they make us all look weak … and that comes down to money… If we look weak we can’t make money.... That’s what it’s 100 percent all about.”
Another said:
“We just do what we gotta do.” The struggle over illegal drug money have been very successful in mainstream life had his early life been different. All of them could have had different lives. “We’re not dumb guys. We figured out how to f’ing take over neighbourhoods, worked our way through prison, make mass money selling drugs.” It is very easy to imagine him as a successful high profile businessman."

But then, you see, these are big bad gang members with hearts of gold.

"What emerged most strongly during our meeting was that these men do not want youngsters in the North End-“the next me”-to go through what they have gone through."

They realize (cue the violins) its too late for them, but they want to prevent young children from following in their footsteps. If only these kiddies had good homes, playgrounds, and a future, they wouldn't join gangs. (pass the hankies.) The government should stop wasting money on attacking gangs, and spend it on ending poverty. (Why, why hasn't anyone thought of that before?)

It will take years. It will take millions. But, declared the professors, "If You Want to Change Violence in the‘Hood, You Have to Change the ‘Hood." Word. And Peace Out, nigga.

But the baby gangsters have nowhere to turn except thug life. They can't get normal jobs. They swear too much. They're covered in tattoos. They hate working regular hours.

Since they're not going to change, says the egghead report, society must change. The deviant life of gang members must become the new normal.

The model, they said, would be co-author Larry Morrissette's OPK program, which hires gang members and would-be gang members to renovate houses. It pays more than minimum wage and diverts the participants from a gang lifestyle by giving them pride of accomplishment. They don't have to quit the gang, and unless they commit "serious" crimes, they're still welcome.

With a budget of $450,000, the project currently has 9.5 employees. And with only $1 million more, it could hire the 30 other young Aboriginal men in waiting, most with street gang affiliations, who would like to join. Of course, since they can't get a real job anywhere else, they would have to be on the public dole forever, but that's the price society must pay.

(What those Marxist academics failed to do is a little arithmatic. OPK pays more than the minimum wage, meaning that each employee makes, say, a dollar more than the minimum wage, which would mean about $20,000 a year. At 9.5 employees, that's less than $200,000 annually in wages. So where does the other quarter of a million dollars go? Rent? Or executive salaries? And how much of that extra million would go to those executives, who would have more employees to supervise? )

The academics were, by this time, bursting with fresh? ideas. Why, they asked, shouldn't we hire gang members to work as “spokespersons for something different.”

Translation: pay gang members to tell kids to stay out of gangs. Their gang gurus said this would be a perfect job for them.

How original. This has only been happening for the past 15 years. How's it working, by the way?

It would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. Remember, these academics are teaching your children. They're infesting another generation of youth with their hug-a-thug mentality.

'Learning from the Wisdom of Street Gangsters' is the heading they give to their conclusion.

"If we want to change the violence in the ‘hood, we would do well to heed the wise advice of these hard-headed men who know the ‘hood all too well."

"These street gang members, all of whom have served time in federal and provincial penal institutions, brought wisdom to this important issue that has been largely missing in the public debate about inner-city violence."

In a city where poor communities fight daily against the ravages of gangs, these ivory tower university eggheads have the audacity to glorify six members of a violent street gang. Instead of recognizing how they're being manipulated to keep the police from breaking up the gangs, these academics damn the police and praise the thugs. To add insult, they bask in the "wisdom" of the drug dealing criminals.

Not even the personal experience of their co-author deters them.

Almost two years ago, Larry Morrissette was interviewed in the National Post ('Real warriors hold jobs', Jan 20, 2008, Kevin Libin, National Post):

" But for every troubled young aboriginal he helps ... new gang members are minted every day. In many communities, it is no longer even an option.
"If you're native, it's almost like it's a given that you have to be part of some organization," Mr. Morrissette says. He packed up his family and moved to another part of town after his own son was knifed after refusing to join one of the gangs."

Swan is 1st, CBC was last, and what's new with Waub and Gary

We were surprised to see Minto MLA Andrew Swan as the first out of the gate to announce he wants Gary Doer's job as leader of the Manitoba NDP and Premier of the Province.

The first to step forward is always the sacrificial lamb, the least likely to succeed.

We thought for sure it would be Thompson rep Steve Ashton. He hasn't got a chance of winning, but he's the North's favourite son. Even after conceding, he could always claim he was a winner for forcing northern issues on the party's agenda.

Instead, Swan showed his political acumen by reaching for the Loser's ring first.

Swan is a cabinet minister, the Minister of Competitiveness, Training and Trade. That job is so irrelevant he can abandon it in the middle of a recession at the drop of a hat and nobody cares. Quick....who was the Minister of Competitiveness, Training and Trade before Swan?

Riiiiight. It was Scott Smith, who found the experience his ticket to obscurity.

The biggest asset Swan brings to the race is his rep as Gary Doer's chief cheerleader. Remember Spirited Energy? Even after the public laughed the slogan into irrelevance, Swan slapped on his Spirited Energy cape and annouced he was going to spend $2 million to expand the campaign to the rest of the country.

And when Opposition leader Hugh McFadyen said in the last election he would work to bring the Jets back to Winnipeg, Swan said the only one who could accomplish that was Gary Doer!

We'll give him this much, right now he's leading in the Muppet vote, given he's a dead ringer for Beaker.

At Swan's announcement, he was supported by the NDP's contingent of Strong Women---plus Erin Selby. What a public slap in the face to Greg Selinger, another cabinet minister on everybody's list to run for the leadership.

Here's the the public face of the NDP's women MLA's, including two cabinet members, who don't think Selinger is the best choice to lead the party. They prefer a divorce lawyer who spent 14 years driving wedges between couples. That's gotta hurt.

*****
You know what hurts? Giving CBC-TV news a big boost and watching them fall on their faces.

CBC got thumped badly in the story du jour Wednesday, the arrest of a woman for nearly beating a baby to death in Gilbert Park. In horse racing terms they were the 'also ran.'

CKY had the best coverage. Global didn't do badly, but announced they were withholding the baby's name because Child and Family Services "might" be involved. Yeah, that's what we want; a television station that gives us less information.

And, what's this? The CBC's Waub Rice voiced an entire story without his trademark sing song inflections. Has somebody been taking voice lessons?

****
Have you noticed how everyone in the MSM is avoiding the obvious? Prior to taking up his new job in Washington, Gary Doer has had, shall we say, a little work done? His famous snaggle-toothed grin is gone, replaced by some even, pearly-white choppers. And it's not your imagination, he does look younger, courtesy of a slight nip/tuck that lifted those jowls 10 years.

The big question is....did the Mrs. get something too?

We're closing a crack house a week in Winnipeg

Score 1 for the CBC and 1 for City Councillor Harvey Smith.

But it's only one down, and 35 to go. So applaud by all means, but not for too long.

CBC-TV shamed city and provincial officials into doing something about a crack house on Simcoe Street that had been the target of a drive-by shooting last week.

Initially city officials told the CBC "we called the landlord, what else can we do?" But after video of the ramshackle building and its terrified occupants, with death threats painted on the outside and gang signs inside, appeared on the supperhour news, somebody lit a fire under somebody's ass.

The next day a swarm of inspectors descended on the building, and before they were through they ordered it shut down and the poor residents were told they had three days to clear out.

Guess that shows what they can do---if they want to.

But the original newscast had a disturbing loose end. The community has apparently identified 35 other crack houses, booze cans, and gang hangouts just like the one on Simcoe which need to be cleaned out. And Harvey Smith said he has been banging his head against the bureaucracy wall in his efforts to get some action against them.

We were shocked by what we discovered when we started looking into the story.

It turns out that over the past three years Manitoba's Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act has being used to shut down an average of one crack house or gang hangout a week.

It's not only an indicator of the extent of the crack epidemic in Winnipeg, but it's been happening right under the radar of the news media in the city.

The Safer Communities Act has been used about 340 times since it was passed in 2001.

In almost every case, the owners of the property agreed to voluntarily shut down and clean out the troublemakers. And that's a good thing, because once you see how many hoops the authorities have to jump through to shut down a building where the owner refuses to cooperate, it's a wonder they can ever do it.

The province has only had to go to court three times to get an order to force the shutdown of a crack house. The third case was in court this spring.

A neighbour complained to the provincial Public Safety Investigations Unit about a crack house operating for almost a year in the 200-block of Des Meurons Street just off Marion. He had tried calling Crimestoppers, but got no action.

The PSIU set up video surveillance in October and November, then warned the owner they were watching her. "The activities did not stop," the judge said in his ruling. In late November they resumed video surveillance, which showed that in a five day period 203 people entered the house through the back door and 184 left the same way.

The result---another letter to the homeowner in December. The frustrated neighbour called back to say the crack house was still operating 2 1/2 months after the PSIU got his complaint.

They set up more video surveillance in early January and found 95 people visiting the home over a four-day period.

"On January 12, 2009 investigators received a complaint from police about the property being a very active crack trafficking house.

A final video surveillance was conducted for 19 hours between March 9 and 10, 2009. Approximately 36 people were observed to visit throughout the late afternoon until early morning, the majority only for a few minutes. As well, on nine occasions, momentary interactions took place on the street between someone from the property and people in vehicles," the judge said.

It took until March 19, 2009 before the homeowner was served with notice the province intended to get a court order to shut the house down.

Late March. Almost SIX MONTHS after getting the complaint about the crack house.

They had to bring a the PSIU investigator, "an expert in drug culture and drug trafficking.", to court to say all that activity sure looked like it was a crack house.

Well, duh. Any one of the neighbours could have told you that. In fact, they did.

So six months later, a judge ordered the house closed up for 40 days, which he thought was a long enough cooling off period to send a message to the crack addicts to go somewhere else.

The law allowed him to shut the house down for 90 days, but he felt that was too harsh for the homeowner and her adult son and daughter. They were allowed to stay until her son finished school, but only the 3 could be in the house at any time.

So the police, who had known about the crack house from a Crimestoppers tip did, or could do, nothing to shut it down.

The provincial authorities took six months to "investigate", and in the end a judge told the homeowners to take a 40 day vacation, leaving it to the police to be house-sitters and make sure nobody, other than the woman and her children, lived in the house for three months until the closure order took effect.

Is it any wonder that Harvey Smith has white hair?

The CBC catches fire, but here's one story they will never report

The CBC is on fire.

CBC-Television News broke from the pack this week, and it wasn't only its coverage of the Hillary Wilson-Cherisse Houle story.

The day of ignition was Monday, the day the Winnipeg Free Press reported that murder victim Hillary Wilson had known Cherisse Houle, a prostitute also found dead on the outskirts of Winnipeg one month earlier. (A reader has pointed out that CTV"s Stacey Ashley actually broke this detail on Sunday's 6 o'clock newscast - ed.)

From then on they did something exceptionally unusual in Winnipeg---they followed the story every single day, advancing it bit by bit throughout the week.

Sure, some of the scoops were bunk. The two dead girls both testified, reported CBC, at the trials of members of an Asian gang that traded crack for sex from as many as 20 young aboriginal girls.

It turned out the "gang" was six Vietnamese men in their mid-50's, half of whom were deported upon conviction.

And the "mysterious van" following girls from a rally at the Legislature turned out to be the overactive imagination of paranoid teenagers. But, still, it got us watching---every day.

And that's bad news for the other television newsrooms where reporters have to learn a whole new vocabulary, including the words "exclusive", "scoop", and "follow that story." This sort of competition hasn't been seen in decades.

And CBC has learned how to use their aboriginal journalists. Aboriginal "journalists" have been hired to fill quotas and to "reflect the face of the community." Actual reporting skill was a bonus, if it existed.

We know from personal experience; we engaged in a conversation with one of CBC's "aboriginal journalists" who told us he knew our Matthew Dumas story was true, but he wasn't going to do it because he felt the police were to blame. We wondered where he was when the inquest vindicated our scoop; probably finding his true calling as a mall security guard.

But this week we saw some true aboriginal journalism. Sheila North-Wilson used her access as an Indian to dig out stories. Good and bad, we still tuned in every day to see the latest. Now that's reporting.

And it wasn't just the aboriginal stories.

While the rest of the TV stations and newspapers sleepwalked past the drive-by shooting of a Simcoe Avenue apartment house, CBC went to the scene and turned up a barnburner of a story. Death threats spraypainted on the building. Residents terrified by the crack dealers opening selling drugs from their suites. An owner in B.C. who didn't care a whit. City officials who whimpered "We've done everything we can. What else can we do?"

The next day it was a different story, and one we saw only on CBC. A pack of city inspectors descended on the apartment house, wrote up every infraction of every bylaw, and left with a message---this place will be cleaned up or shut down, fast.

That's action. That's reporting. And that's why we're setting our dial to CBC television news to see what they've got first in the supperhour.

******
But here's one story you're never going to see on CBC or apparently anywhere in the Mainstream media in Winnipeg.

Not one MSM outlet picked up on the blockbuster news revealed last week by Colin Craig of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation on http://www.taxpayer.com/taxpayer/news-archive?news_id=3561.

Craig had a sit-down with Patrick O'Reilly, the chief operating officer of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and Susanne Robertson, the chief financial officer.

They told him this jawdropping information:

"…while the museum's cost overrun figure has publicly been reported at $45 million, the CTF learned the original overrun figure sat at $58 million."

That's 58 MILLION DOLLARS, folks.

Before a shovelfull of imported dirt was turned, the CMHR was $58 million in the hole. (That's 35 percent over budget for anyone keeping score.)

We were stunned. But not as stunned, we're betting, as Gail Asper and Patrick O'Reilly were on Thursday, May 21, 2009, before anyone knew the budget was as much as a penny over.

That's the day The Black Rod reported that by our estimate the museum was at least $55 million in the red.

You can see now why Gail and Paddy went scurrying to the Winnipeg Free Press editorial offices the following Monday to, er, discuss the museum's budget.

Those stupid bloggers got it all wrong. Sure there's a small shortfall, $45 million, but it's already being taken care of and there's nothing to worry about. We have "asks" out and expect to rake in the dough any day now.

Yeah... We got it wrong.

WE UNDERESTIMATED the budget shortfall.

And why the difference between the actual budget overrun and the $45 million they admitted?

It seems they had been busy as beavers while the deficit was still a secret.

They chopped $13 million out of the budget "by modifying electrical and ventilation systems, reducing the protective coating on concrete floors and opting for less costly stone for its walls," according to the June 11 Macleans magazine. (What were they coating the floors with? Gold?….ed.)

O'Reilly said something similar to the Winnipeg Free Press the day he confessed to a budget overrun.

"Patrick O'Reilly, the museum's chief operating officer, said the museum's board, appointed by the federal government, has gone through the entire budget and has been able to trim about $12 million from construction costs. He said most of the cuts -- which the public won't notice -- are for interior building materials, changes to floor supports and redesigning the air-conditioning and heating system."

But, like you, we never guessed the $12-13 million was on top of the $45 million. We assumed he meant that over the course of planning there had been snips and trims which had prevented the budget shortfall from being even bigger than $45 million.

It shows you how naïve we were.

They claim they've raised $2 million of the $45 million shortfall already, although they won't say how or where they got the money.

But the cheerleading Free Press, which hasn't reported the true deficit of $58 million, was all giggly Sunday about Gail Asper's new fundraising schemes.

The days of batting her eyes at fawning boards of directors of major corporations are long over. Now it's begging for spare change from the little guy, just like the rest of the panhandlers.

A mass grape-stomping at a Corydon Avenue restaurant, and pie-throwing at the University of Manitoba are among her brainstorms.

But it's watching her take money from a teenaged go-cart racer and kids in Junior Achievement that turns our stomachs.

A multi-millionaire is getting children to raise money for her pet project which will then send her on free trips around the world to, uh, see other museums.

It makes you want to puke.

****
Correction: We've been informed that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is subject to federal Access to Information requests. It's the material of the museum, which is exempt by an amendment to the law.

Gary Doer's out. He's in. Who?

The answer---
Lloyd Axworthy.

The question?
Who will replace Gary Doer as leader of the Manitoba NDP and as Premier of Manitoba?

Forget the knee-jerk professional pundits. The so-called potential candidates are either waist deep in delusion (Steve Ashton), shoulder deep in scandal (Greg Selinger) or nose deep in obscurity (Nancy Allan).

Gary Doer's parting gift to his once-heralded-heir, Bill Blaikie, was a knife in the back Sicilian-style with a declaration on how out-of-touch Old Lefties (like Billy) are with the electorate.

The party brass could appoint an interim Premier---nice-guy Gord Mackintosh fits the bill---to carry them over the winter while the leadership "race" steals the spotlight from the Opposition. Or they could seize the brass ring now, install his Lloydship and dare the Opposition to challenge his holiness.

Axworthy is no stranger to the Manitoba Legislature.He was elected as a Liberal in Fort Rouge in the 1973 election and re-elected in 1977. He was the only Liberal in the legislature from 1977 to 1979 when he went into federal politics.

He left Ottawa in 2000, so he's distanced from the Liberal Party's Sponsorship scandal.

He's been President and vice chancellor at the University of Winnipeg since 2004. During his tenure he's made educating aboriginal students a top priority.

Dirt free? Check
Five years promoting education as an ethical priority? Check
Aboriginal cred? Check

He comes with a sackfull of awards and honorary degrees, and, he never fails to tell you if given half a chance, that he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.

He just fails to tell you he was nominated by a single U.S. Senator and his chances were so slim he endorsed the ultimate winner, International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

During his stint at the U of W, Axworthy has run a parallel civic government, engaging in his personal urban renewal project all around the university with little input or interference from City Hall.

His funding partner over the years was none other than Gary Doer.

And best of all, Doer can rest easy that he's passed the torch to someone who will make sure Gail Asper has all the money she needs for her boondoggle human rights museum.

But he comes with a few negatives.

* His age. Almost 70, he's older than your grandfather. But he still looks younger than the army of living dead in the NDP's front bench.

* He's rabidly anti-Conservative and is a leader of the unite-the-left movement. If the federal government reduces the equalization payments that are the lifeblood of the NDP, Axworthy could launch an anti-Harper campaign which would trap the provincial PC's in the middle. He's also a knee-jerk anti-American, although he's keeping those tendencies in check as long as Obama is President. But those sentiments go a long way with the labour movement which will decide who becomes leader of the party.

* And scratch the surface and you'll find he's as much an Old Leftie as Bill Blaikie, except he engages in the rhetoric only among friends.

Blaikie, it's going to turn out, was Axworthy's stalking horse.

Never interested in the Premier's job himself, he let others say he was. He reported back to Lloyd on caucus issues and personalities so Axworthy wouldn't be walking in cold when the time came.

And the time has come.

The NDP needs someone with built-in name recognition, a familiar face they don't have to sell to the public. As an apostate Liberal, Axworthy will be expected to draw voters from the moribund Manitoba Liberal Party, possibly leading to an unbeatable merger of the left, aka the big fish swallows the little fish. And if he attracts the undecided vote, all the better.

In short --- IN YOUR FACE HUGE MCFADYEN.

Gary Doer's ethics cabinet

It was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud.

But Gary Doer was laughing up his sleeve every minute of it.

The time: Jan. 30, 2001
The occasion: Manitoba's Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections

The NDP was taking another opportunity to humiliate and torture the Tories over the scandal that cost the Conservatives the 1999 election.

Leading the hectoring was Steve Ashton, then the Minister of Highways, who took aim at what he called the win-at-all costs school of ethics.

ASHTON:
I want to ask some questions that directly follow from some of the aspects we have seen in the last number of years in terms of elections, sort of, if one was to describe it, the lack of ethics that seems to have characterized the Conservative Party's approach in both the '95 and the '99 elections...

There was a cover-up engineered by senior PC Party officials of that specific incident. I think we are going to be asking today some questions as to whether there was a cover-up on a further matter, in this case the overexpenditure by the Conservative Party in the 1995 election.

Monnin was very clear. I mean, he referenced specific cover-ups by senior PC Party officials in regard to the running of the three candidates in Dauphin, Interlake and Swan River, and I guess I think it stretches credibility to suggest that it was somehow an honest mistake made by a party that managed to lose all of its records in a warehouse as part of the cover-up during the Monnin inquiry, records that were then found, and then were found to have exceeded the limit by more than $13,000.

Gary Doer must have been chewing his lower lip to control himself. Even as he listened to Ashton's tirade, Doer knew that the NDP was guilty of even worse.

They had cheated the public treasury of $76,000 in the 1999 election campaign and probably an equal amount in 1995. In fact, their election fraud scheme had been operating for almost 15 years, raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally.

The refunds were put in a slush fund to be used secretly on the next campaign. After all, there would be no need to account for it to Elections Manitoba since it wasn't donated by anyone, except the duped taxpayer.

The fraud scheme run by his election team, which included Dave Chomiak as co-chairman, was started under Doer's predecessor Howard Pawley, then continued under Doer's watch.

Unions donated workers to the NDP and the party paid their salaries during the campaign. The unions then kicked back the exact amount of those salaries to the party, so that the cost of union help was zero. But the NDP insiders handling election finances would claim the union workers as paid help on their final election returns, and the party would collect partial reimbursement from the public trough.

ASHTON:
I think the obvious questions have to be asked about the degree to which the overspending was, according to the Leader of the Opposition, a misunderstanding when everything else related to the financial statements in that election involved cover-up, deception, dishonesty. You know, the words that I used are understatements relative to what has happened.

We have the Conservative Party, and I mean this has got to be the ultimate oxymoron, sort of a Conservative Party code of ethics. We see a situation where they have been caught, their fingers in the cookie jar again. It has been demonstrated that they had a whole pattern of cover-up in this particular place. Now, what do we find in terms of the public of Manitoba? The Conservative Party says, oh, it was a mistake.

The violation of the elections law in 1995 cost the taxpayers of Manitoba money. It was not just the question of the Conservatives spending more money than they were supposed to. It cost taxpayers for the investigation. Let us not forget these investigations, whether they be in Interlake or the Monnin inquiry, have cost taxpayers a lot of money. When it came to the Leader of the Opposition, clearly his party having ducked this one because of the statute of limitations, he basically said, well, it was a misunderstanding, it was a mistake and that is the end of it.

The NDP fraud was finally uncovered by an Elections Manitoba audit in 2001, the same year as this committee meeting. But it wasn't raised in the Legislature until this year, 2009. The NDP continues to dispute the findings of the forensic auditor who red-flagged the practice in 2001 and who was removed from the file at the insistence of the NDP. It was an honest mistake, a difference of interpretation of the law, Gary Doer told the Legislature over and over again.

ASHTON:
I want to ask the Chief Electoral Officer how we can develop a system that can bring people responsible for this kind of cover-up, this kind of obstruction of the democratic process, to account, because we are faced in a situation here where we have the statute of limitations on the one hand and the new Leader of the Conservative Party, who, and I have to take him at his word as a member of the Legislature, says he was not involved in the specific transactions, was part of the campaign.

How do we get some accountability for this kind of action? By the way, I want to put on the record, this was no misunderstanding. A party that lost all of its electoral records in a warehouse as part of a cover-up is quite capable of trying to cover up what in this case was a clear violation of The Elections Act in overspending.

They have twice since failed the test in terms of electoral ethics. I want to know if they do not learn the lesson internally how we make sure we have a better system that can bring the people responsible for this kind of, I believe, deliberate obstruction of the democratic process and deliberate overspending to justice.

Doer, Ashton, Chomiak and rest of the NDP caucus have refused calls for a public inquiry into the 1999 election fraud.

But in 2001, Gary Doer couldn't resist getting into the fun.

DOER:
My concern is, and when you read your report that is before this committee today, the '99 report, on page 55, the last sentence: "there was a cover-up engineered by senior PC party officials" and on the top of page 56, "that the PC party comptroller caused a false statement to be filed with Elections Manitoba contrary to Sec. 81 and 83(b) of The Elections Finances Act."

Then if you look at the review you find that on the one hand there was a cover-up and the materials and statements were not available and on the other hand the overspending, contrary to the act, that took place of $13,600 was not eligible for prosecution because of the time limits. Now it seems to me an act that was criminal, or certainly contrary to the law, illegal act as cited on page 55 and page 56, allows for a time for a separation from the '95 election by a cover-up, and then the Conservative party is therefore not subject to a prosecution because of time limits.

So, on the one hand, there was illegal activity in terms of the cover-up engineered. There was a breach of the laws in terms of the overexpenditures dealing with the $13,000, but the one act of the cover-up contributes to a lack of prosecution on the other illegal act. Then I read legal advice about the time limits. It seems to me, if somebody does not follow the laws in terms of disclosure, how then can a time limit let somebody off on breaking another law based on a technicality?

That to me is counter-intuitive to what the Legislature is trying to do with the public, what we are trying to do with each other, what society really believes, that justice should not only be pursued but be perceived to be pursued, and so the inescapable logic of the two conclusions of breaking the illegal act is if the one act contributed to the other act not being prosecuted.

So, in other words, one prosecution did not proceed because of another situation. If the records were available fully to you properly and legally in '95, '96, then the issue and I guess my question is this issue of the overexpenditure then would be on the public record and therefore subject to the prosecutions pursuant to the act. Would it not, Mr. Balasko?

The NDP stalled the investigation of the 1999 fraud for 2 1/2 years, then struck a secret deal with Balasko to pay back the money. The payback went on the public record---in an obscure mention in an obscure public document released three days before the 2003 provincial election.

ASHTON:
But I am just wondering to the Chief Electoral Officer,... how we can put much faith into a system whereby the people that have been responsible for the breach of ethics not just on the one issue but here time and time again are then going to be again in the position of investigating, in this case making one phone call-this is the new Leader of the Opposition-and then saying: Oh, well, it was a misunderstanding; there was a mistake.

How can we have any faith in that sort of process and how can we restore some faith, because quite frankly when we have a situation like we have here, where once again, the Conservative Party, not only breached any sense of ethics, to my mind they broke the law.

Chief Electoral Officer Richard Balasko sang one tune in 2001 and quite another this year.

BALASKO
I am sure that everybody shares the common goal that the election law is upheld and that people who break the law are brought to account, and I have not heard anyone say anything other to me about that.

When the scandal broke this spring, Balasko said he was never interested in going after the party insiders who altered the NDP's election records. He was only concerned that the agents who signed the papers, not knowing they had been altered, did the right thing and signed corrected financial statements that could be put in the record.

And for the record, 13 NDP election candidates were informed in 2003 that their official financial statements were phony. Greg Selinger, the Finance Minister, was one of them, and he kept the secret for six years. Another one was Nancy Allan, who now holds the Labour portfolio.

Ashton, Selinger, and Allan are on the pundits' list of potential candidates to replace Gary Doer as leader of the NDP and Premier of Manitoba.

To understand Gary Doer's sudden recollection of the promise he made to himself to leave politics after 10 years, read this story in The Black Rod:

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2009/06/elections-manitoba-sinks-in-ndps-rebate.html

Gary Doer---Gittin' while the gittin's good

Manitoba Premier Gary Doer went for a checkup this summer and got some bad news.

His teflon was gone.

Internal polling showed that NDP support had gone softer than jell-o. The day when his personal popularity could carry the party through times of trouble were over.

The NDP has been running a stealth election campaign for over a month. We saw it, but couldn't figure out what was going on. By the new law of fixed election dates, the next election isn't until October, 2011. So how, we kept asking ourselves, could they precipitate an early election?

With Doer's resignation as Premier, we now know the game.

The NDP had to change its public image with or without Doer at the helm. They launched their '11 election campaign early, counting on the momentum to carry them through the dark days ahead.

- Gary Doer is telling everyone he's leaving because he's been Premier for 10 years and its time to revitalize the party. Don't believe it.

He's bring driven out of office by scandal. Revelations that Elections Manitoba covered-up a scheme by the NDP under Gary Doer to fraudulently collect payback from the taxpayer for non-existent election expenses hurt more than the MSM wants to admit.

It was the first time that a political scandal touched Doer personally.
He knows he's dirty and he doesn't want to face the buzzsaw of questions in the House again, not when he can duck out now and claim the high road.

This is the best time to leave, right before the perfect storm that's brewing for 2010 hits.

- The Opposition has been in hiberation all summer, allowing the heat of the election scandal to drop from boiling to barely tepid. The Manitoba economy has escaped the ravages of the recession, and if the government has been told privately that equalization payments are being slashed, Doer will be long gone before the public knows how deep the red ink will be.

He won't have to approve a harmonized sales tax that will raise taxes on everyone and everything; he'll leave that to his successor. By the time the Brian Sinclair inquest exposes the defects in the NDP's health care system, Gary Doer will be Mr. Yesterday . If the Public Utilities Board concludes the NDP's socialist economy-boosting Manitoba Hydro mega-projects are riskier than buying 649 tickets, they can talk to the hand.

And when the Canadian Museum for Human Rights sinks in a sea of debt, he'll leave it to the new Premier to bail them out.

- The MSM dragged out the usual dinosaurs to comment on likely candidates for the Premier's job. All they did was demonstrate how out of touch they really are.

Theresa Oswald, said poli-sci prof and media whore Paul Thomas. Uh, Paul, she's moving to Wisconsin, where her hubby just got a job and bought a house this summer. And the kid starts school in the good ol' USA this September.

Greg Selinger. You mean the man who ran a backchannel into caucus for the Crocus Fund so they could get pesky governance laws changed whenever they ran out of cash? The same guy who covered-up the NDP election fraud scandal for five years---after learning about it and demanding a letter of exoneration from the election team? That guy?

Steve Ashton. Uh, Paul, he doesn't represent a Winnipeg riding and that's the battleground, as it's been since the Nineties.

Bill Blaikie. Didn't anyone notice how deftly Gary Doer slipped the stilletto into Blaikie's ribs?

Doer returned several times to the idea his success was based on transcending the traditional attitudes of the Old Left, as he called it, and the Right. He, himself, had governed for all the people, he said. The Old Left was out of touch with the modern electorate.

Old Left? Is there anyone further left than Bill Blaikie? Rabidly anti-American. While in Parliament, as a member of the NDP caucus for 29 years, he voted the party line against every tax cut proposed and for every tax hike.

He demonstrates a dangerously selective memory on his years with the federal NDP. For example he has no memory of anyone named Joe Comartin, the NDP Justice Critic, nor does he remember the NDP's boast that it successfully kept deterrence and denunciation out of the Youth Justice Act, thereby successfully undermining any punitive measure against young criminals and fueling the car theft epidemic in Winnipeg.

- Doer mused about his legacy. He spoke whistfully about national parks. The man who set aside land for Assiniboine Park lost the next election, but we all thank him, he said. He peppered his quitting announcement with repeated references to the Point Douglas Provincial Park.

Up to now that was considered just a gleam in his eye, given how there have been no consultations with Point Douglas residents. But we see that it's much, much more.

It could be his parting gift to his sweetie Gail Asper and a finger in the eye of the Winnipeg taxpayer.

If he manages to create by fiat a provincial park that runs along the Red River from Waterfront Drive to Higgins Avenue, he'll also manage to include the Canadian Museum for Human Rights within its boundary.

The museum's address is 85 Waterfront Drive, didn't you know?

One situated on a provincial park, the museum would be exempt from city taxes, thereby saving them $5 million to $9 million a year. And screwing the City of Winnipeg out of that same amount.

Stop The Madness

Attorney General Dave "Six Months" Chomiak looked dour, as if he was attending a funeral. Winnipeg Police Chief 'Elvis' McCaskill yammered something about listening to the community or hearing the community or dancing with the community; nobody listens to him anymore, so it hardly matters.

RCMP Assistant Commissioner Bill Robinson did most of the talking.

The province was setting up an Integrated Task Force for Missing and Murdered Women, he said. It's job: find out who's killing native prostitutes and dumping their bodies outside Winnipeg.

The news media swooned. It was official. They could now give themselves orgasms by saying "task force" as often as possible.

The unit is made up of three RCMP officers, two RCMP analysts and four Winnipeg police officers. And they're all experienced. Wow, imagine that.
How's it going to work, the reporters begged.

Well, said Robinson, they're going to review all the files of unsolved homicides involving female victims; they will review all the files on missing girls and women where foul play is suspected, and....they will analyze them to find similarities and links.

Oooooh, the reporters said. Why hasn't anyone thought of that before? That Dave Chomiak is a genius. How did he think of this?

But, there is even more Chomiak's office issued an official news release. "The unit will have access to the combined resources of both police organizations including the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) database and the Project Disappear website."

Okay, enough.

We've seen staged news conferences before, but this was in a class all its own. How Robinson kept a straight face, we can't imagine.

They're going to review files and analyse them? Well whoop-de-doo.

What do you think homicide police do already? Sit around their office and play Clue?

And the super-squad is going to use ViCLAS? You mean the computerized program set up 12 years ago to let police departments share information on homicides, missing persons and unidentified human remains so that possible links between cases might be discovered and serial killers caught? That ViCLAS?

The one available to all police homicide units?

But Sheriff Barney Fife Chomiak was feeling the heat after the deaths of two native prostitutes in a month, and he did what the NDP does whenever it feels the heat. He issued a press release to demonstrate he's a man of action.

So the Integrated Task Force for Missing and Murdered Women is joining the Integrated Organized Crime Task Force, and the Integrated Gang Intelligence Unit in the public safety arsenal.
With better results, everyone hopes.

The NDP announced in the Manitoba Integrated Organized Crime Task Force in November, 2006.

"Our government is committed to an anti-gang strategy that allows prosecutors and law enforcement to focus resources on organized crime in the most effective way possible," Chomiak said. "Organized crime is directly linked to drugs, prostitution and violence in our communities, and fighting organized crime demands an aggressive, integrated response to keep our communities safe."

How's that worked out so far?

Are you feeling safer in your community now that "Six Months" Chomiak has run gangs out of town?

But, but, but, the Integrated Task Force for Missing and Murdered Women is modelled on the sucessful task forces in Edmonton and Vancouver, isn't it?

There's a discouraging thought.

Project Kare was started in 2003 to probe prostitute murders around Edmonton. They started out looking into 39 unsolved homicides and 40 missing women in Western Canada. They reviewed the files and looked for links. They even offered up a $100,000 reward for tips leading to the arrest of a serial killer.

After six years, they've made...

... two arrests.

* In May, 2006, a woman phoned police to say she found a woman's body in a hockey bag that had been left at her home in Fort Saskatchewan, near Edmonton. The bag was her brother's. Project Kare officers stopped reviewing files long enough to drive out and arrest the brother. They charged him with two murders, but he was convicted of only one; its hard to beat the rap when you're carrying a dead body in your hockey bag.

Okay, you want to know---did the sister collect the $100,000?

The police wouldn't say, citing privacy laws. But her bro only got convicted of one murder, so he wasn't exactly a serial killer.

* Then, in September, 2008, Project Kare announced they had made a second arrest. Did the unit, now 50 strong, use some of their "state-of-the art technology and cutting-edge investigative techniques"( to quote an Edmonton Sun reporter)?

Nope.

Three men and two girls were convicted of a rape-murder. They had to give DNA samples, one of which matched DNA on a girl killed two days before their victim. You know, a DNA like the one regular, non-super-special homicide detectives make every day in this country.

Oh, and their suspect just won a new trial on appeal on his original murder conviction.

After six years and $9 million in salaries, Project Kare has solved zero murders on its own. It took one phone call and matched one DNA sample.

And Vancouver? Well, they convicted serial killer Willie Pickton. And, uh, they arrested and brought Willie Pickton to trial. And...........Willie Pickton.
Maybe if they had a police helicopter... What do you think?

Which brings us to Cherisse Houle and Hillary Wilson, the latest cause celebres of the aboriginal victim industry.

Remember when Winnipeg Free Press reporter Mike McIntyre was saying his super-secret anonymous justice sources were telling him the skinny was that Cherisse Houle was killed by a serial killer? That's old news, today.

The new news on CBC (which has been doing a pretty good job on the Hillary Wilson homicide, we should say) is that the deaths of the two young women may be related to their giving testimony at the trials of a gang of Asian men who traded cash and crack cocaine for sex with a bevy of teenage girls, as many as 20 ( the Free Press today claims another victim says 50), and as young as 11.

Its gotten the other girls involved in a frenzy. They're paranoid and convinced they're next to be scooped up and killed. CBC did a story about a "suspicious van" some of the girls saw on a North End street following a vigil for Wilson.

Calm down. Reporters still haven't learned that Google is your friend.

That gang turns out to be a group of six Vietnamese men in their fourties and fifties. At least two were deported and the others given stiff prison terms several years ago.

We could be wrong, but the idea of homicidal Vietnamese men prowling the streets bent on revenge strikes us as far-fetched.

more to come...

more from court: The Law, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Unions claim they exist to improve the lives of employees. Tell that to Gail Eckert.

She had been working for Canstar Community News Ltd. for 15 1/2 years when the company was unionized by Media Union of Manitoba. She had worked herself up through the organization and held the position of manager of sales development. She earned a base salary of $85,000 a year plus commissions.

The bargaining unit didn't include Eckert's job. But her Spidey sense tingled and, fearing the worst, she asked to attend the ratification meeting. She was barred by the Media Union.

And, you guessed it, at the eleventh hour Canstar and the Media Union added Eckert’s position to the bargaining unit. They changed her title to account executive at a base salary of $42,175, with a right to earn an additional $16,000 per year if certain sales objectives were met. Canstar guaranteed Eckert the additional sum for one year only.

In March 2008, she quit, claiming that she had been constructively dismissed without cause, primarily due to the reduction in her salary. She sued for wrongful dismissal.

Tough luck, said Court of Queen's Bench judge Perry Schulman in tossing the case.

"The issue on this motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s claim for damages for wrongful dismissal and interference with contractual relations is whether the fact that the plaintiff was dragged against her will into a union and into a collective agreement regime exempts her claim from the principles articulated in the case of Weber v. Ontario Hydro, [1995]..." he wrote.

And? Nope, he said. Case dismissed.

Solidarity forever.

****************

The winner of the Nice Try Award of the day goes to ....Joseph William Zadworny, who sued MPI for his $200 deductible after a tree fell on his parked car.

The car was written off and he was paid $1,940 by MPI. He went to small claims court for his deductible back, arguing that pamphlets distributed by MPI---"The Guide to Autopac" and "All about Deductibles"---state that deductibles are waived for a wildlife collision.

He lost, but appealed to the Court of Queen's Bench asking the judge to interpret the word “wildlife” to include vegetation. He even quoted from dictionairies to support his proposition.

Nice try, but....

The court doesn't recognize dictionaries as legal authorities.

And the regulations governing MPI actually says deductibles don't have to be paid if you run into any "wild animal or bird listed in Schedule A of the Wildlife Act”. Yes, they have a list.

The claim was dismissed.

And Zadworny had to pay $100 in court costs.

All rise, court is in session...

So many good court stories are going unreported, we've decided to step in and do the job ourselves. Welcome to the Black Rod Court series.

Battlin' Mayors

The City of Winnipeg threw a hail mary pass to get out of a $2 million breach of trust lawsuit launched by the Aquatic Hall of Fame and Museum.

But a Court of Queen's Bench judge has knocked it down and told city lawyers to suit up and bring their best game to court.

The city filed a motion for a summary judgement---a ruling that essentially says, look, everyone knows there's really nothing to this lawsuit, so let's toss it out before we have to go to the expense and bother of a trial.

Madam Justice Lori Spivak, in a written ruling, said the hall of fame has enough evidence on its side, including an almost-forgotten signed agreement with the city in Mayor Steven Juba's day, to warrant a full trial.

The city plans to call its own former mayor, Susan Thompson, to dump on the aquatic hall of fame.

The trial will be a kick to the groin for modern pundits who tout "vision" as the touchstone of successful politicians, especially mayors. It's embarassing evidence that vision comes with a best-before date. 43 years after Juba lured the Aquatic Hall of Fame to Winnipeg as part of his vision for the city, it's been given the bum's rush out of town, vision be damned.

With the 1967 Pan Am Games coming to Winnipeg, Juba thought a Swimming Hall of Fame would be the perfect accessory for the newly built Pan Am Pool. He sold the Canadian Amateur Swimming Association on his idea and the hall of fame was created. It stayed until two years ago when a dispute over who had to pay for insurance ended the relationship and the hall of fame was shown the door.

They sued for breach of contract. As the city was preparing its arguments to get the case thrown out of court, their opponents made a last-minute discovery. Somebody blew the dust off a 1973 agreement between the city and the Aquatic Hall of Fame and "Voila."

Here's the part the city hates:

NOW THEREFORE THIS AGREEMENT WITNESSETH THAT in consideration of the sum of One Dollar ($1.00) (the receipt of which sum is hereby acknowledged), the Hall of Fame hereby transfers its Aquatic Memorabilia to the City for permanent display purposes at the Pan-Am Pool, 25 Poseidon Bay, Winnipeg, on the understanding that the Hall of Fame will be maintained at that site.
In the event that, for some unforeseen reason the Pan-Am Pool should no longer be the site of the Hall of Fame due to the fact of the demolition of the building, the City hereby agrees to transfer all the Aquatic Memorabilia donated back to the Hall of Fame for and in consideration of the sum of One Dollar ($1.00).
The City hereby agrees to insure the Aquatic Memorabilia against fire and theft either through its current total property insurance policy or under such insurance scheme or self-insurance plan as it may decide upon from time to time, and in the event that a loss should occur through fire and theft, the City agrees to pay the actual cash valuation of such loss over to the Hall of Fame for replacement or substitution purposes only, such replaced or substituted article of Memorabilia to become the property of the City.

Furthermore, the museum directors say they were responsible for a $1.5 million expansion of the Pan Am pool which was supposed to provide more room for the hall of fame. Now that they've been given the boot, the city was wrongfully enriched by the expansion and they should be paid back, plus the costs of moving, plus the cost of the display cases they left behind.

Susan Thompson, the Mayor at that time of the Pan Am pool expansion, says the City negotiated with the other levels of government to raise the money to expand the pool facility, and there was never a deal with the Aquatic Hall of Fame for exclusive use.

City lawyers are now preparing to argue the 1973 agreement doesn't say what it says.
************

What is it honey? It's a present, because I love you so much.

Once he was considered one of Winnipeg's movers and shakers. Now he's hiding behind his wife's skirts to avoid his creditors.

A flock of creditors thought they had won a victory when they successfully sued Costas Ataliotis to get $875,000 by seizing his house at 604 Park Boulevard. They registered the judgment in the Winnipeg Land Titles Office on June 1st, 2007.

But on June 25, Suzanne Ataliotis, wife of Costas, told them to stick it because she, and not her husband, owned the house.

The court was told the house was bought in May, 1999 with title initially in both their names. On September 2, 1999 title was transferred to Mrs. Ataliotis alone for the sum of one dollar.

The creditors are arguing she holds title in trust for her husband. At the least he's the "beneficial" owner of half the property.

Mr. Justice Kenneth Hanssen, of Court of Queen's Bench, made the following observations after hearing a motion to get the registration of the judgement tossed:

[16] While Mrs. Ataliotis has been the sole registered owner of 604 Park Boulevard since 1999 there is evidence that in 2003 Mr. Ataliotis’s assistant Marion Murphy provided two credit unions with a net worth statement in which Mr. Ataliotis represented he had a 100% ownership in the property as a joint tenant. As well he listed 604 Park Boulevard under his real estate holdings. There is also evidence that in 2003 a copy of the net worth statement was provided to Culease Financial Services with Mr. Ataliotis’s permission.

[17] Mr. Ataliotis and Mr. Wolinsky were officers and directors of Maple Leaf Distillers Inc. until the company went into receivership in January, 2006. Until then, many of the expenses for 604 Park Boulevard were paid through the Maple Leaf corporate bank account. These expenses were allocated at Mr. Ataliotis’s request to his shareholder’s loan account.

[18] Mrs. Ataliotis’s evidence is that the transfer of the property to her name alone in 1999 for one dollar was essentially a gift from her husband. She claims that she never pledged or permitted the property to be used by her husband for any purpose whatsoever and never allowed the property to be used by her husband to support his personal guarantees. She did not work outside of the home from 1999 to 2007. She says the mortgage payments and other expenses for the property were mostly paid by her husband although some of the money came from her own sources.

[19] At an examination in aid of execution on August 16, 2007, Mr. Ataliotis gave evidence that his wife paid the mortgage payments on the property and he did not recall listing the property in a personal net worth statement. He also testified he never advised any of the financial institutions that one of his real estate holdings was 604 Park Boulevard. He says the property was transferred to his wife’s name on the advice of his accountants KPMG who told him it was a prudent thing to do.

"... findings of credibility will be necessary, I am satisfied a trial is required." he wrote.

The CMHR---what, exactly, as we getting for $310 million?

With attention now focused on the never-ending cost of building the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, something is being lost.

What's going to be in the building?

We know that construction is eating up almost 90 percent of the $310 million new, new, new, new budget of the CMHR. What's the other 10 percent or so buying?

Sooner or later every discussion about the museum hits a wall of competing special interests. How will the Palestinian story be told, if at all? Will the Armenian genocide have as big an exhibit as the Holocaust? What about the starved Ukrainians? The Hutus and Tutsis? Homosexuals? Trans-sexuals? Trans-sexual homosexuals?

The museum proponents know these catfights are senseless, but they've chosen to stay silent and not correct any misconceptions.

Is it because the truth might be more controversial than the baseless speculation?

To start, purge any idea of a traditonal museum from your minds. The CMHR will only have one major permanent exhibit--on the Holocaust. Canada's Indian peoples have Favoured Victim Status with the museum, which entitles them to "historical exhibits around the perimeter of the structure."

The museum backers have said repeatedly that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is an "ideas museum."

"That is, a museum based on an intangible conceptual framework - an idea." is how Patrick O'Reilly, Chief Operating Officer of the CMHR, explained it to the Canadian Museums Association in March.

And how do you tell the story of an idea? With the most modern of bells and whistles.

"We don’t have a collection as one would normally expect from a museum. We will house some artefacts (sic), and we will from time to time seek to borrow others, but our stories will be told through narrative dialogue, through first person accounts, through memory and oral history."

"That means, among other things, that our collection will be predominantly digital."

You read that right. "Our collection will be predominantly digital."

"A journey through the museum will take visitors through more than 1 km of interactive experiences." says an article on Canada.com.

"One display will employ a gesture-responsive wall full of factual information that will work in a fashion similar to Nintendo Wii technology; with a simple swipe of the hand in the air, visitors will be able to turn virtual pages. Upon entering the museum, visitors will be given a “human rights key” that will provide a digital recollection of their experiences that they can later take home." gushed a Canwest story.

"...it may mean using social networking to bring strangers (or, as their known on Facebook, new friends!) together in dialogue and debate. We want to encourage that sort of virtual interaction, along with technology facilitated interaction in the museum, to bring about shared understanding and learning," added O'Reilly.

"We intend to be both a traditional museum in a gorgeous new building built in Winnipeg, and a virtual museum housed on the internet." said O'Reilly.

"We also need to be FUN !" he declared. (emphasis, his.)

Fun. It's the latest thing in museums.

O'Reilly told his audience the CMHR is adopting the cutting-edge ideas of Jane McGonigal, an award winning designer of reality games. At a lecture given to the the Newseum in Washington in December (which you might still see here:
http://www.futureofmuseums.org/events/lecture/index.cfm), she laid out her theory that museums in the 21st century need to become more like games to attract visitors and keep them coming back.

Here's how McGonigal herself described some of her ideas in a National Public Radio panel:

Ms. MCGONIGAL: When people show up at museums, can't we give them a mission or a goal? Can we give them feedback? Are there virtual honors that you can show to your friends online afterwards depending on what exhibit you were interacting with? Is there a better community that we could provide real-time interaction with other visitors?

The American Association of Museums website summarized her ground-breaking theories better than we can:

Why Should You Watch This Lecture?

Games are astoundingly popular and pervasive in American Society, capturing market share and attention at an ever-accelerating rate. Ninety-one percent of youth under age 19 play computer games, and this participation does not drop off as they age. The average age of a gamer is 35, and one in four gamers is more than 50.

Dr. McGonigal challenges us to consider:
What makes games so compelling, even addictive?
How can museums become experiences as engaging as games?
Given the vast number of hours millions of people invest in playing complex, online games, how can museums harness this creativity to give their audiences opportunities to contribute to advancing their missions?

Museums can learn and benefit from studying popular games because:
Games are museums’ competitors—vying for people’s increasingly scarce leisure time.
Games present an opportunity for museums to engage new audiences and interact in new ways with existing audiences.
Successful games can teach museums how to create experiences that are deeply satisfying.
Games may provide new ways for museums to have a profound impact on society if they are designed, as alternate reality games are, to change people’s real world behavior.

It's an exciting idea. It also explains how the CMHR intends to get return "visits" and why they stress the importance of on-line visits in the visitor count.

But is also raises the question: are we essentially building a high-end computer video game in a $265 million shell?

What connection does the digital museum have to the glass palace with its 300-foot spire?

They knew you were going to ask that eventually.

In March 2008 Arni Thorsteinson, then-chairman of the Advisory Committee on the CMHR, wrote the government saying what a wonderful idea it was. At the time Thorsteinson, who is now chairman of the board of trustees for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, addressed the question of architecture in a roundabout fashion by summarizing what others said about it:

"Some respondents placed importance on the building design as an essential component to the museum’s overall success. A grand, attractive and iconic structure could reflect the value and importance that Canada and Canadians place on human rights, and could serve as a source of pride. Some respondents have suggested that a powerful and dramatic building design has the potential to draw tourists to Winnipeg."

"At the same time, some respondents have cautioned against sacrificing content and flexibility for an iconic yet unworkable building design. There was a perception that final decisions have been made with respect to the building design and therefore some expressed concern and criticism that having a site and potential building design already chosen was tantamount to putting the cart before the horse. Others have been critical of the budgeted cost. Bold and creative architecture can be important in attracting visitors and providing a meaningful visitor experience. Indeed, museums around the world have embraced monumental architecture as a solution to many of their operating challenges. The disadvantage in doing so, however, is an unbalanced focus on the building often at the expense of programs and services."

We all know it was a foregone conclusion. The "iconic" design was in from the beginning and is still untouchable.

They're no longer claiming, as they did in 2006, that the museum is a surefire tourist attraction which would see 400,000 visitors a year. And obviously there's no connection between the design and the theme of the museum, although they tried their hardest. Just read this hallucinogenic explanation of the design. (Warning. Barf alert.)

"Human Rights International Design Competition, 2005
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Winner of Competition:
Antoine Predock Architect, PC, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Other Finalists:
Dan Hanganu Architects & the Arcop Group of Montreal, Canada
Saucier + Perrotte Architectes, Montreal, Canada
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is rooted in humanity, making visible in the architecture the fundamental commonality of humankind-a symbolic apparition of ice, clouds and stone set in a field of sweet grass.
Carved into the earth and dissolving into the sky on the Winnipeg horizon, the abstract ephemeral wings of a white dove embrace a mythic stone mountain of 450 million year old Tyndall limestone in the creation of a unifying and timeless landmark for all nations and cultures of the world.

The Journey through the museum parallels an epic journey through life. Visitors enter the museum between the Roots, protective stone arms suggestive of an ancient geological event. Clutching the earth, the roots are calibrated to block northern and northwestern winds and celebrate the sun, with apertures marking paths of equinox and solstice. Containing the essential public interface functions of the museum, the Roots create a framework for ceremonial outdoor events with roof terraces and amphitheater seating.

The journey begins with a descent into the earth, a symbolic recognition of the earth as the spiritual center for many indigenous cultures. Arriving at the heart of the building, the Great Hall. Carved from the earth, the archaeologically rich void of the Great Hall evokes the memory of ancient gatherings at the Forks of First Nations peoples, and later, settlers and immigrants.

Like a mirage within the Museum, the Garden of Contemplation is Winnipeg’s Winter Garden. Basalt columns emerge from the top surface of the timeless granite monolith. Water and medicinal plants define space and suggest content. The First Nations sacred relationship to water is honored, as a place of healing and solace amidst reflections of earth and sky. The space of the Garden functions as a purifying “lung” reinforcing the fundamental environmental ethic, which grounds the building.

The journey culminates in an ascent of the Tower of Hope, with controlled view release to panoramic views of sky, city and the natural realm. Glacial in its timelessness, the Tower of Hope is a beacon for humanity. Symbolic of changes in the physical state of water, material and form, it speaks to the life affirming hope for positive changes in humanity. An allusion to the vaporous state of water, the Cloud, houses the functional support of the Museum. With strong overlaps to the visitor experience, the cloud is envisioned as light filled and buoyant, in marked contrast to the geologic evocation of the Roots and Stone Galleries, providing a visible reminder from the exterior, in tandem with the Tower, of the power and necessity of hope and tolerance. "

What, then, is the connection between the $265 million building and the $35 million museum? Gail Asper.

To her this isn't just another project.

It's her idea of public service.

Millionaires don't have to concern themselves with those trifling matters that plague little people---will the overflowing garbage bins be picked up before the kids set the mattresses on fire; can my children go out to play without being victimized by gangs; will my house be peppered with bullets in the next drive-by shooting?

Millionaires get to think about big things. Vision. World peace. Global Warming. Human Rights.

But millionaires need complete freedom for their activist endeavours. They can't be bothered with grubby politics, what with all those rules, and freedom-of-information demands, and persnicketly unschooled fools second-guessing you every minute.

So when Gail Asper sets out to change the world with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, its got to be done with panache, with the proper architectural flare that bureaucrats and wage-earning moneygrubbers can't understand. And with complete freedom.

No government interference or even influence.
No freedom-of-information requests to be filled out.
And with other peoples money.

"Technology can be dismissed as smoke and mirrors, as the flavour of the month, and it would be easy to assume that it will be mothballed as soon as the fads pass. We have to assume some risk in trying these new technologies but Museums can become valued resources for schools, in part through our leadership in implementing new technologies and using the web." said O'Reilly.

Who's taking that risk? Pardon us if we think it's the taxpayer who's paying the freight.

The CMHR, as O'Reilly says, clearly has a mission: to instill a sense of activism in children.

"We see strong links through formal education, and this is where we will engage educators in curriculum development and where we’ll tie in a student travel program that will engage students in preparatory studies at home, a trip to the museum and a contributory project in their community upon their return. "

But isn't the next obvious question, what direction will the CMHR be pointing these little human rights crusaders?

"Our goal isn’t to find the truth, nor to present “the story”; rather it involves bringing many people together, challenging all to think differently, and to consider other points of view." O'Reilly said in his speech.

Really?

What do we find in the museum's own bumpf?
http://www.canadianmuseumforhumanrights.com/resource/File/The_Inside_Story.pdf

In the very beginning of the 7 stages of the museum we find:

1. Aboriginal Rights (Exterior)
On the exterior of the theatre are Aboriginal sayings that express concepts of community, co-existence, respect and modes of governance.
The other side of the structure displays the titles of treaties between Aboriginal peoples and the British Crown and Canadian government.
Historical exhibits around the perimeter of the structure let visitors explore Aboriginal history and the struggle to regain rights that were lost.

That's funny. Aren't we told that the museum isn't out to present any "truths" and all sides of contentious issues will be presented fairly and evenly?

It's starting to look like the museum's promises of fairness are as credible as their budget projections.

Let's say it again: what, exactly, as we getting for $310 million?

Education or indoctrination?

CMHR won't be able to revise this history

He ducked. He dodged. He weaved. But in the end, he coughed up.

A drop-dead number. On the record. In stone.

CJOB radio host Geoff Currier sparred Thursday morning with Arni Thorsteinson, chairman of the board of trustees for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and with Gail Asper, chairman of the fundraising campaign by the Friends of the museum.

It was carefully choreographed with scripted questions and absolutely no fielding of calls from the public. But in an uncharacteristic display of journalism, Currier wouldn't let Thorsteinson get away without answering if the museum project had a "ceiling," a cost that wouldn't be exceeded no matter what.

"We're at that point now," Thorsteinson finally said. "We've got our final budget. We're highly confident that we will complete the project at that cost."

That cost: $310 million. Write it down. Print it out. Paint it on the wall.

Because Thorsteinson and Gail Asper must be held to account to that number. No excuses. No more moving finish line.

Not that we believe it.

They'll be back, begging cup in hand, within a year.
"That steel work was trickier than anyone expected."
" That glass is so unique, it's worth every extra penny."
"We've spent so much, already, we can't stop now."
You know the drill.

Still, CJOB, without apparently recognizing a real news story even when it's biting them on the ankle, actually squeezed out a lot of information the museum proponents would sooner have kept secret:

* they were aware before construction began that the museum budget was wildly out of whack and easily $50 million in the red

* they have formally asked the City of Winnipeg and Manitoba Premier Gary Doer for more millions.

* the provincial Department of Education will be providing backdoor funding to the museum to subsidize visits by school children.

* they insist that their claim of 250,000 visitors a year means real people going through the turnstyles, and not visits on-line.

Is CJOB switching format from a news station to a history station?
Readers of The Black Rod have known for 2 1/2 months that Gail Asper and Arni Thorsteinson were aware that they were at least $45 million over budget before the first shovel hit the imported dirt on the project in December.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2009/05/truth-is-rare-commodity-from-backers-of.html

Friday, May 29, 2009
The truth is a rare commodity from backers of the CMHR
The board of trustees of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights knew six months ago that their financial plans had gone horribly off the rails.

And that's not counting the $5 to $9 million in property taxes they will owe each year and which they haven't a clue how to pay, and which Currier carefully avoided mentioning.

Or maybe they do.

They've gone to the city and province panhandling for more money, haven't they? How much? Why hasn't anyone at either level of government revealed the approach? Why are our elected officials hiding Gail Asper's midnight call?

Are they trying to find some backdoor way to channel money to her pet project, like the Department of Education? Funny how that use of taxpayers' money was never publicized. How much money has Education Minister Peter Bjornson promised to spend on propping up the Canadian Museum of Human Rights? Was he ever planning to tell the public?

The funniest claim is that the museum backers expect a quarter of a million real people to visit the museum.

Currier failed to ask about Gail Asper's own bogus claims of tourists flocking to Winnipeg, which, as revealed in The Black Rod
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2009/08/shame-gail-asper-sexed-up-tourist.html were based on adding up all the visitors coming in groups and claiming the CMHR was responsible for luring them here.

Did Thorsteinson and Asper forget that in March, 2008, a report from the Advisory Committee on the Canadian Museum for Human Rights was delivered to Josee Verner, Canada's Heritage Minister, in which they stated:

"It will be important, though, to acknowledge that visitors to this museum will also include online visitors, people engaged through outreach and through travelling programs."

There, in black and white, they confessed that online visits will be included in their visitor total. And the CMHR plans travelling shows to attract people in other cities.

Wow, that's going to boost the economy in Winnipeg.

By comparison, Folklorama, which hasn't cost us $300 million in 40 years, boasted 446,000 visits to 44 pavilions last year. And they don't have to bus anyone in at government expense.

Gail Asper told CJOB that their business plan predicted 250,000 visits annually by real people. That would be the secret business plan that can't be shown to anybody, so we can put as much credibility to it as we put in the museum's constantly changing budget numbers.

But the most stomach-turning segment of the interview came when Currier asked what he called the "skunk at the picnic question"----is this just really only your pet project?

Asper called on the ghost of her father to prove alleged public support for the museum. If, she said, the project had been pitched to the levels of government and nobody had bitten, then her father, Izzy Asper, would have walked away, saying "Fine, I've got other things to do."

But "the fact is", said Gail, the federal, provincial and city governments "loved it."

Unfortunately for her, the one thing millionares can't do is rewrite the past, or expunge the record.

On April 17th, 2003, Izzy Asper announced the "potential creation" of a $270 million Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

"The Asper Foundation has proposed a unique partnership for funding the capital cost of the museum, estimated at $200 million for the first phase." he said.

The original proposal, prepared in 2001, called for $100 million from the federal government, $20 million from the province, $20 million from the city of Winnipeg, and $60 million from the private sector.

But Izzy Asper died in October, 2003. And the fact is the CMHR wasn't exactly embraced wildly by politicians or the public.

There had been a lot of meetings. At the time of his death, the City of Winnpeg had provided a letter committing to $20 million "in a combination of cash and value in kind (land)." They were still debating a property tax exemption. The province submitted a letter agreeing to cover 10 percent of capital costs (which included site development, building construction, interior furnishings, and exhibits."

And the federal government was in for $30 million.

The headlines pick up the story...

Human rights museum stalled as Ottawa considers funding
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 7, 2004

Politicians at odds on human rights museum funding dispute
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Nine months after Izzy Asper's death, the museum proponents were fighting the federal government over money. They claimed Izzy Asper had a verbal agreement with former Prime Minister Jean Chretien that the feds would cough up $100 million.

CBC asked Manitoba MP Reg Alcock who was telling the truth.

"Chrétien had promised to donate further money, said Treasury Board Minister Reg Alcock, but it wasn't going to be $100 million, a figure he says the Asper Foundation named on its own.
"There's no evidence of that," Alcock said. "Because they decided they wanted that [and] we had to deliver it is just wrong. It's just not the way we do business."

It wasn't until April, 2007, 3 1/2 years after Izzy Asper's death, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper put life into the CMHR. He formally committed to paying up to $100 million of the $265 million cost of the project, plus covering the annual operating costs of $22 million--- and only after making the Canadian Museum for Human Rights a national museum.

Historical revisionism isn't very becoming.

Oh, and for the record, we weren't the first to call the CMHR an Asper pet project.

That honour belongs to the CBC.

Politicians at odds on human rights museum funding dispute
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 10:24 AM ET
CBC Arts

The Asper Foundation revealed the museum's three design finalists in April.
The $270-million museum, which aims to be the world's largest human rights insitution and learning centre, was a pet project of Izzy Asper, the late media magnate.

Human rights museum stalled as Ottawa considers funding
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 7, 2004 1:28 PM ET
CBC News
Plans for the proposed Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg could be in jeopardy because of a dispute with the federal government over its funding.
Supporters of the $270-million museum, a pet project of late CanWest Global chairman Israel Asper, were counting on a $100-million commitment from Ottawa to create the world's largest human rights institution and centre for education.

Tomorrow: Pig, meet Poke. Do you know exactly what we're spending $310 million on? You won't believe it.

Somebody's talking

The arrest of five Indian Posse members in one day, mostly for a string of shootings dating back two years, means only one thing---somebody's talking.

That could be a major breakthrough in the fight to break up Winnipeg street gangs which have become more brazen and reckless by the day.

Among the trio of Indian Posse gang members charged Tuesday with a two-year-old murder is Travis Arnold Personius, who is currently in prison in Saskatchewan. The name was unfamiliar, so we went digging for more information, and found it in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Personius was sentenced only one month ago to five years for jamming a gun into a stranger's chest and telling him "One shot to the heart and you're dead."

The 23-year-old from the Opaskwayak Indian Reserve near The Pas, pleaded guilty to using a firearm in an attempted robbery; he had demanded the man's tie. The April 20, 2008, incident was defused, court was told, when a friend walked over and Personius said he was "just fooling around."

Before sentencing, the judge asked Personius if he had anything to say. Boy, did he ever. Maybe he was just showing off for the high school class in the courtroom at the time, but Personius laid out his life as a stand-up member of the thug life. Some of what he said might have relevance to the murder charge facing him in Winnipeg.

"He'd been in a gang for 12 years and in the previous two years his friends had "started killing each other off." He felt his own life was in jeopardy, so he left his long-term girlfriend and their two small sons and came to Saskatchewan.

Although he had stayed away from alcohol for four years since his last conviction, he became depressed, had nightmares and drank heavily.

He'd been drinking for days at the time of the offence and doesn't remember anything after eating a handful of magic mushrooms, he said.

"I'm extremely sorry for what happened to that man, 'cause I don't bother civilians. Any time I bring harm on somebody it's against another gang member.

"I hope the victim starts to work through it so he won't be traumatized for the rest of his life and finds peace in himself." ('Fooling around' leads to jail, By Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix, July 15, 2009)

Petronius was arrested in a car with a loaded .22 calibre handgun hidden under his seat. At the time he was banned by court order from possessing firearms because of previous convictions for assault with a weapon and aggravated assault.

Because of double time awarded him by the judge for pretrial custody, Petronius had only two years and nine months left on his five-year sentence, meaning he could have been out on day parole in time for Christmas. The new charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder throws those plans all to hell.