Skip to main content

First Casualty of the Election

The election hasn't been called yet, already it's claimed the first casualty.

It's been apparent for weeks now that there has been a deep split at the Winnipeg Free Press between the editorial page and the editors of the newspages. One has been railing against the corruption exposed by the Gomery Inquiry and calling for an immediate election; the other has been promoting the federal Liberal party and local Liberal MP's at every turn.

Guess which was which.

Call us precient or paranoid, but The Black Rod was in the midst of writing about this scism at the very hour the stretcher was called onto the battlefield.

Wednesday, the paper made it clear it speaks with one voice, and that voice is not the voice of ex-Publisher Murdoch Davis, who has been unceremoniously shown the door. And with him, we expect, will go all those calls for the resignation of Paul Martin and his Liberals.

There can be many reasons for a change of top management, ranging from financial misdeeds to personnel matters (read hanky-panky), but the timing of Davis' departure seems to point in one direction---politics.

The day after the ban-on-publication on Jean Breault's testimony was lifted and everyone could read for themselves of the kickbacks, payoffs, inflated contracts and general corruption enmeshing the Liberal Party, the Winnipeg Free Press editorial du jour declared an election was needed, immediately. Given the paper's staunch support of the Liberals in the last election, this was a shocker.

The day after Paul Martin's grovel on national TV, the FP editorial on Friday declared "Mr. Martin is Wrong", citing "the evil that has been disclosed" and concluding the public needed "a chance to clean house in Ottawa."
This week, with the publisher conspicuously missing from his office, the editorials in the Winnipeg Free Press came out strongly for corporate tax cuts. The words "Gomery" and "evil" have been nowhere to be found, like Murdoch Davis.

The litmus test of our supposition will be whether the Free Press editorial page endorses the same-sex marriage of Paul Martin and Jack Layton even without the necessary legislation.

It's hard to say who ordered the tumbrell for Davis---newspaper owners Ron Stern and Bob Silver, who pretty much turned the Free Press into a Liberal cheer-sheet last June or soon-to-be-owners the Aspers, who were just promised $100 million from the federal Liberals. Hmmm.

No one would like the answer more than Ottawa bureau chief Paul Samyn whose Tuesday scoop is looking more and more like what's known in the business as a C.E.S.-career-ending story.

In what was an obvious Page One story at any other newspaper, Samyn's story appeared buried innocuously in the second section of the Winnipeg Free Press.

Samyn cited official documents showing that proponents of the Asper Human Rights Museum tried to get taxpayers to pay for limos, gourmet coffee, and in-room hotel movies. More than half the expenses the Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights wanted to pass off onto the public purse, was $12,000 for consulting services from former Liberal Party candidate Glen Murray!

One quote in the story seems fishy, though. "We don't pay people to negotiate with us to get contracts from us" said Daniel Snidal, a payments officer with Western Economic Diversification Canada.

Oh? Since when? Somebody better tell Judge Gomery, the rules have changed.

Of course the placement of the story was such that it wasn't meant to be read. Not like the Page One stories "Spring election? Bad idea" and "Day-care cash at risk", which is part of a series, following "Gas-Tax Money at risk" and "Floodway expansion money at risk."

The Gomery Inquiry story on Tuesday consisted of ten paragraphs on Page 10. The daily picture of Liberal MP Reg Alcock was on Page B2.

Even better proof the firing of Davis was all politics, was evident in the April 28th edition of the Free Press.

Page 3 blared "PM to make key visit to Winnipeg" ... and right beneath the story, the announcement "Davis out as Free Press publisher". Right underneath it. The juxtaposition makes the message very clear.

It turns out that Davis was axed the same day- the same day, mind you, as an exclusive interview with Prime Minister Dithers was granted to Samyn.

Amazingly, with all that is going on in Ottawa these days, the most extensive comments made by Martin were in defence of - you guessed it - his appointment of Glen Murray to chair the National Roundtable on Kyoto and Martin's bleating about the "partisanship" of the parliamentary committee that rejected the nomination.

"I really hold the Tories responsible for that."

Memo to Paul Samyn: next time remind the PM that his new bedmates, the NDP also voted, without exception, to reject Glen Murray. They didn't see Murray as "an outstanding mayor who had extensive involvement in environmental issues." Maybe they'll have to sleep on the couch for awhile.

The other person left hanging by the sudden disappearance of Murdoch Davis is new Editor Bob Cox. Before he could even see his new office, he's lost his mentor.And his job is getting tougher than ever, even if you discount the political "guidance" he's going to get when he arrives.

Case in point: the story that topped the second section of the Winnipeg Free Press on Tuesday, headlined "Katz cleared of conflict" by Mary Agnes Welch.

Ostensibly the story is about twin reports by the city auditor and the provincial ombudsman exonerating Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz of any suggestions of conflict of interest over the sale of the old Winnipeg Arena. The arena will be sold to land developers represented by Katz's friend and business partner Sandy Shindleman instead of to a group that wanted to build a water park.

But if you read deep into the story - deep, deep, deep into the story---over onto the jump page, you'll find that the city auditors recommended what Mary Agnes calls "small tweaks" to the way the city handles "requests for proposals."

The only hint of what these changes will be is a mention of "clarifying exactly what kind of information must be included in a proposal." This sounds more than a "small tweak" to us.

This sounds like exactly why they rejected the water park proposal.

And if that's the case, wasn't the selection process flawed? Not to mention behind closed doors.

We can't help but think that the rehabilitation of Sam Katz in the pages of Free Press is directly connected to the fact that despite the parallel municipal lordship being established by Lloyd Axworthy, Sam Katz is the man who runs things in this town, and the feds have to hand him the cheques, and not Dan Vandal, Murray's was-to-be heir-apparent.

Popular posts from this blog

The unreported bombshell conspiracy evidence in the Trudeau/SNC-Lavelin scandal

Wow. No, double-wow. A game-changing bombshell lies buried in the supplementary evidence provided to the House of Commons Judiciary Committee by former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould. It has gone virtually unreported since she submitted the material almost a week ago. As far as we can find, only one journalist-- Andrew Coyne, columnist for the National Post--- has even mentioned it and even then he badly missed what it meant, burying it in paragraph 10 of a 14 paragraph story. The gist of the greatest political scandal in modern Canadian history is well-known by now. It's bigger than Adscam, the revelation 15 years ago that prominent members of the Liberal Party of Canada and the party itself funneled tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks into their own pockets from federal spending in Quebec sponsoring ads promoting Canadian unity. That was just venal politicians and a crooked political party helping themselves to public money. The Trudeau-Snc-Lavalin scandal is...

Crips and Bloodz true cultural anchors of Winnipeg's aboriginal gangs

(Bebo tribute page to Aaron Nabess on the right, his handgun-toting friend on the left) At least six murder victims in Winnipeg in the past year are linked to a network of thuglife, gangster rap-styled, mainly aboriginal street gangs calling themselves Crips and Bloods after the major black gangs of L.A. The Black Rod has been monitoring these gangs for several months ever since discovering memorial tributes to victim Josh Prince on numerous pages on Bebo.com, a social networking website like Myspace and Facebook. Josh Prince , a student of Kildonan East Collegiate, was stabbed to death the night of May 26 allegedly while breaking up a fight. His family said at the time he had once been associated with an unidentified gang, but had since broken away. But the devotion to Prince on sites like Watt Street Bloodz and Kingk Notorious Bloodz (King-K-BLOODZ4Life) shows that at the time of his death he was still accepted as one of their own. Our searches of Bebo have turned up another five ga...

Manitoba Hydro is on its deathbed. There, we said it.

Manitoba Hydro is on its deathbed. Oh, you won't find anyone official to say it. Yet . Like relatives trying to appear cheery and optimistic around a loved one that's been diagnosed with terminal cancer, the people in power are in the first stage of grief -- denial. The prognosis for Hydro was delivered three weeks ago at hearings before the Public Utilities Board where the utility was seeking punishingly higher rates for customers in Manitoba. It took us this long to read through the hundred-plus pages of transcript, to decipher the coded language of the witnesses, to interpret what they were getting at, and, finally, to understand the terrible conclusion.  We couldn't believe it, just as, we're sure, you can't--- so we did it all again, to get a second opinion, so to speak.  Hydro conceded to the PUB that it undertook a massive expansion program--- involving three (it was once four) new dams and two new major powerlines (one in the United States)---whi...

Nahanni Fontaine, the NDP's Christian-bashing, cop-smearing, other star candidate

As the vultures of the press circle over the wounded Liberal Party of Manitoba, one NDP star candidate must be laughing up her sleeve at how her extremist past has escaped the scrutiny of reporters and pundits. Parachuted into a safe NDP seat in Winnipeg's North End, she nonetheless feared a bruising campaign against a well-heeled Liberal opponent.  Ha ha.  Instead, the sleepy newspeeps have turned a blind eye to her years of vitriolic attacks on Christianity, white people, and police. * She's spent years  bashing Christianity  as the root cause of all the problems of native people in Canada. * She's called for  a boycott of white businesses . * And with her  Marxist research partner, she's  smeared city police as intransigent racists . Step up Nahanni Fontaine, running for election in St. John's riding as successor to the retiring Gord Macintosh. While her male counterpart in the NDP's galaxy of stars, Wab Kinew, has responded to the contro...

Exposing the CBC/WFP double-team smear of a hero cop

Published since 2006 on territory ceded, released, surrendered and yielded up in 1871 to Her Majesty the Queen and successors forever. Exposing the CBC/FP double-team smear of a hero cop Some of the shoddiest journalism in recent times appeared this long August weekend when the CBC and Winnipeg Free Press doubled teamed on a blatant smear of a veteran city police officer. In the latest example of narrative journalism these media outlets spun stories with total disregard for facts that contradicted the central message of the reports which, simplified, is: police are bad and the system is covering up. Let's start with the story on the taxpayer funded CBC by Sarah Petz that can be summed up in the lead. "A February incident where an off-duty Winnipeg officer allegedly knocked a suspect unconscious wasn't reported to the province's police watchdog, and one criminologist says it shows how flawed oversight of law enforcement can be." There you have it. A policeman, not ...

Winnipeg needs a new police chief - ASAP

When did the magic die? A week ago the Winnipeg police department delivered the bad news---crime in the city is out of control. The picture painted by the numbers (for 2018) was appalling. Robberies up ten percent in  a single year.  (And that was the good news.) Property crimes were up almost 20 percent.  Total crime was 33 percent higher than the five year average. The measure of violent crime in Winnipeg had soared to a rating of 161.  Only four years earlier it stood at 116. That's a 38 percent deterioration in safety. How did it happen? How, when in 2015 the police and Winnipeg's police board announced they had discovered the magic solution to crime? "Smart Policing" they called it.    A team of crime analysts would pore through data to spot crime hot-spots and as soon as they identified a trend (car thefts, muggings, liquor store robberies) they could call in police resources to descend on the problem a...