Skip to main content

The Tim Sale Story: A Free Press fairy tale

Someone call a doctor. She's got a bad case of amnesia.

How can you write about Tim Sale and not mention Hydra House, the granddaddy of the scandals that's tarring the NDP government.

* Whistleblower Jim Small wrote to then-Family Services Minister Tim Sale warning him about the free-spending of the managers of Hydra House, a non-profit housing corporation.

* Sale, setting the standard for NDP investigations, slandered him in the Legislature by dismissing his complaints as coming from a "disgruntled employee".

* He then ordered a review of a carefully selected slice of Small's allegations, which, as expected, "cleared" Hydra House of all wrongdoing.

* Until two years later, that is, when the auditor general did his own investigation and substantiated all of Jim Small's complaints.

Of course, a couple of million dollars had been misspent by then but Tim Sale didn't care, he had moved on to the Health portfolio, and it was someone else's problem.


And so was Aiyawin, the non-profit native housing corporation, which was also enmeshed in allegations of financial irregularities. Yes, they too had come to the attention of then-Housing Minister Tim Sale, who hemmed and hawed and never quite got around to investigating them.

So, 18 months later when the auditor general delivered a report condemning the problems of Aiyawin, Tim Sale was, you got it, gone.

His tenure at the Health Department, replacing the overwhelmed Dave Chomiak, has been anything but rosy. Not that Mia Rabson has noticed.

Sale has managed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more each year and the health care system keeps coming apart at the seams. And don't even mention the people dying waiting for treatment in Emergency wards (no problem, she didn't- ed.).

Which brings us to Tim Sale's timely departure.

You see, in early July, a poll was released indicating that for the first time since the NDP was elected in 1999, the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives are leading in popular support. By five points, 43 percent to the NDP's 38 percent.

Winnipeg Free Press columnist Frances Russell, an NDP supporter, proclaimed the reason was obvious. Roads. And highways.

People were fed up with potholes and poor roads and were taking it out on the government, she declared.

like university professors Paul Thomas and Alan Mills immediately concurred. Roads, they said. And highways. It's obvious.

Well, boys...and girl. It's not.

The poll was conducted over the least two weeks of June, which corresponded with the closing days of the Legislature. And the big issue at the Legislature was not roads. Or highways.

It was health care. Namely how the shortage of doctors meant the closing of hospital emergency wards. And Health Minister Tim Sale delivered his usual icy response each day.

It's not such a big problem. We've got it under control. Why are you griping?

The Opposition was griping, because voters are griping.

Everyone in Manitoba has either experienced the health care system, or knows somebody who has. And despite all the millions Tim Sale has spread around, people have lots to gripe about.


If it's not enough doctors to staff emergency wards, it's how long it takes to see a doctor when you need one.

We started to write about the four-hour waits at Misericordia Hospital, where people are told to go if they need a doctor for a non-life-threatening problem. Except that family and friends just laughed at us. Four hours? We wish, they said. Try six hours. Try eight hours.


And it's not just Misericordia. It's throughout the system. And the NDP knows it.

So Tim Sale, the Health Minister, is retiring from politics. Expect him to start by leaving cabinet. His replacement, of course, will not be able to answer questions in the House when the Legislature resumes sitting in late September. House rules doncha know.

So much for the Opposition's plan to take up where they left off. Purely coincidental, of course.

Sale will blaze a trail to the Exit door for others whose presence at election time could be poisonous on the campaign trail.

Say goodbye to Dave Chomiak. He of the promise to "end hallway medicine in six months." The NDP plan consisted of getting the unions to stop compaining about hallway medicine. Problem solved.

When it was pointed out patients were still in the hallways of hospitals, the NDP said that couldn't be. Those hallways had been redesignated waiting areas. Problem solved.

Some people still didn't get it and kept griping. So the next year the NDP pointed to official medical records that showed there was no hallway medicine.

Winnipeg Sun columnist Tom Brodbeck discovered that the magic secret involved pairing patients in hallways with rooms at the far reaches of the hospital. One patient and one room cancelled each other out, even if the patient was in a hallway and the room was empty. Problem solved.


Except that people might not see it that way. So, it's time for a new health minister, someone not burdened with a promise unkept and scandals unforgotten.Someone, like maybe, Minister Huff 'n Puff, himself. Aka Justice Minister Gord Macintosh.

Sure he's been a disaster as minister of justice. Street gangs are rampant. Motorcycle gangs unchecked. The crack epidemic uncontrolled. Car theft epidemic.The value of life in Manitoba worth one day in jail.

But as former House leader, he knows the rules of the Legislature. He can stall the Opposition through the winter until an election is called in the spring just before the Securities Commission may get around to holding hearings into the Crocus Fund scandal.


After all, you can't stall an investigation foreever. Eighteen months to two years is about par, even with the new leader of the Conservatives on side. Ask Tim Sale. He's got more experience dodging scandals than anyone else in cabinet.

In fact before he got into cabinet he was the NDP's point man on - you guessed it -
Crocus, and saw nothing wrong with investments in Westsun and Green Gates.

Ok Ok, maybe that was too early for Tim to tell there something amiss.

But when Seven Oaks School Division's Brian O'Leary leaked a provincial math test and was reported by a teacher in 1998, O'Leary's biggest defender was - that's right -
none other than Tim Sale.

So like we said, ask Tim Sale about dodging scandals. But hurry. His time is short. There's an election to win.

And while you're at it, ask him when he's going to rise in the House and apologize to whistleblower Jim Small.

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 controversy over

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 and nip it. The police