The Black Rod

After two days of being incommunicado, Red River College President Stephanie Forsyth surfaced Friday in a blitz of phone interviews with Winnipeg television, radio and newspaper reporters. She launched a charm offensive to bury the taint of Bev Oda (she of the $16 orange juice) that hangs over her after the Canadian Taxpayers Association revealed that Forsyth had claimed $78,000 in expenses in her first 16 months on the job. That's an average of just under $5000 a month on top of her $261,000 salary. Forsyth's message? She's entitled to her entitlements and everything she claimed was a proper expense, even the super-special high-end $205 golf shoes. But because you poopy-heads made such a big deal of it, she was going to repay the money for the golf shoes. Satisfied? Richard Lennon, chairman of the Red River College Board of Governors, joined Forsyth's atonement parade to say the college would launch a whitewash by the end of the mon...

Hear that? That's the silence on the airwaves where the popular radio station KICK-FM used to broadcast. 92.9 KICK-FM, (more formally known as CKIC-FM), operating under the aegis of Red River College, pulled the plug on itself at 4 p.m. Wednesday rather than submit to the further scrutiny of the CRTC in a licence renewal process.  That silence is the bitter legacy of Winnipeg Free Press editor Margo Goodhand, whose interference in the running of KICK-FM led directly to the demise of the station which had been on the air almost 10 years. It was only a couple of weeks ago when Margo Goodhand made the surprise announcement that she was resigning as of the end of July. She was, she said, leaving her sweet post for parts unknown after five years at the helm. However she managed to stay around just long enough to see the irreparable damage that she caused to the radio station, to the reputation of the college, and, worst of all, to the integrity ...

Corporate documents from Manitoba demanded by a federal government agency have turned up missing. Without them, there's no way to prove that a shadowy committee which oversees the spending of tens of thousands of dollars from Red River College was created legally. If those documents can't be found or it turns out they were destroyed, hidden or never existed , high-level executives and former executives of Red River College could face charges which carry a maximum penalty of six months in jail and/or a fine of $5000. This includes the college lawyer, a former vice-president and the Dean of Business. A whistleblower tried to warn Colleges Minister Erin Selby last year that the shady committee was not legitimate and that $275,000 of college money was at risk, only to receive a form letter telling him to take his complaint somewhere else. Once it was clear the minister intended to do nothing about the bogus committee, the whistleblower was dis...