The Black Rod

The grand love affair is over. No, not Harry and Meghan. We're talking the Manitoba NDP and the Manitoba Nurses Union. It was a match made in woke heaven---the NDP's sweet-talking Wab Kinew and a giddy, love-starved union walking hand-in-hand while whispering sweet nothings to each other. But what began with canoodling during the 2023 election campaign has, alas, ended in a slow slide of recriminations, broken promises, and enough gaslighting to illuminate foggy London. At the start, the future was so shiny. Magic Wab would walk the land scattering fairy dust everywhere.  Emergency rooms would burst from the earth and rivers of nurses would flow to depleted hospitals and nursing homes.  Such (election) promise.  And, oh, the months of pillow talk... The NDP announced with great fanfare that they would immediately begin "fixing "healthcare" by conducting "listening tours". They would visit health-care centres across the province to hear from nurses, doct...

Police in Manitoba have, like James Bond, a licence to kill, according to the latest report from the provincial police watchdog, the IIU (Independent Investigation Unit). That's the shocking conclusion of a mandatory, and seriously slanted, investigation into the police killing of 59-year-old Bradley Singer in his home on Magnus Avenue a year ago. Singer was an innocent man, alone, probably asleep, bothering nobody, when police arrived at his door just before dawn in February 2024. He was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, magnified by extreme paranoia. Police had come with an order to take him to see a doctor who was concerned that Singer's mental health was deteriorating. But, through a series of misjudgements and missteps, about two hours later Singer was dead, peppered with at least six police bullets fired at point blank range. https://blackrod.blogspot.com/2024/02/charge-em-magnus-avenue-shooting-by-cops.html We knew the IIU had something to hide when they...

At the end of the NDP government's first full year in office (November, 2024), the Manitoba Nurses Union surveyed its members to the achievements of the new administration. The results, released last week, were a stinging rebuke to Wab Kinew and his touted reforms of health care in the province. By every measure in the survey, the NDP fizzled, flopped and failed. "Overall, grade the performance of the government in living up to its many promises with respect to improving health care and patient outcomes,"  asked the union. 66 percent of respondents said the NDP either failed-- and things have gotten worse-- or there was "no improvement, with things the same as before." The NDP promised they would hire hundreds of new nurses to open more beds and eliminate the mandatory overtime that was eroding nurse morale. "Grade the effectiveness of the government's staffing initiative on vacancy rates and/or nurse workload in your facility/site/program." 61 per...