The Black Rod

Brian Bowman is running scared. Six weeks away from an election for mayor of Winnipeg, a poll showed that eight out of ten voters were looking for someone other than the incumbent to fill the post. After four years in office, Bowman had the support of barely 22 percent of decided electors. But with the undecided measuring at 57 percent, the poll was meaningless. The polling company, Probe Research, should be ashamed to have even released such a perverted measure of opinion. Three weeks later, a (heavily manipulated) poll (more about that in a minute) showed that Bowman's support had grown to 34 percent, or roughly three voters in ten. This time the pollsters claimed they could peer deep into  the undecideds ( 39 percent of those polled) and detect that Bowman's support was actually 61 percent.  Given that his main opponent's support had barely climbed from 11 percent to 15 percent among decided voters, Bowman should have been taking a victory lap. But a poll with 39 percent...

Manitoba's shiny new office to investigate police shootings has failed its first major test. When 24-year-old Mark DiCesare was surrounded by a veritable army of gun-toting police officers and blasted to eternity in an empty field in River Heights, the public wanted an answer to one, and only one, question. One. Count 'em. One. Did he have a gun? That's it. That's what everybody who heard the shocking news wanted to know. Did he have a gun? Once people knew the answer to that simple question, they could debate the need to shoot but at the same time would let the investigation take its course. "A police source" told the Winnipeg Free Press on Friday, Nov. 6, the day DiCesare was killed by Winnipeg police, that he did have a gun. And CJOB reported that "Brendan", who goes by one name like Madonna, also saw DiCesare with a gun, a "large" one. Yet, since the day police unloaded their deadly weapons, they've been strangely...

As if you need more proof that the laws for the peasants don't apply to millionaires like Gail Asper and her pet project the Canadian Museum for Human Rights --- but here's some more. We told you this week that some unknown Fairy Godmother at City Hall secretly wiped out $118,000 from the museum's property tax bill. That act saved the museum which won't, or can't, pay its taxes from being put up for tax sale in the event it fails to pay in 2012 for the third year in a row. We've since learned that the CMHR is getting even more special treatment from the Winnipeg tax department. The museum is the only property in the entire city that is exempt from penalties for non-payment of property taxes. More than $50,000 in penalties should have been added to the museum's outstanding tax arrears last year, but wasn't. The City of Winnipeg website clearly states that penalties of 1.25 percent are charged on unpaid taxes. Plus 7.5 percent in the curr...

The Winnipeg police tried communicating with the public Friday and, as usual, failed miserably. They called a news conference to reassure the citizens of the city that the October Spree Killer who shot three people this time last year, was not shooting people at random. The shootings, said the police, might be (hint, hint, are extremely likely to be) connected to drug dealing in the North End . So take it easy, folks, went the official message. You don't need to worry that you or your kids (one of the shooter's victims was only 13) are going to be shot down in cold blood without warning. That might sound comforting to Winnipeg city detectives who don't actually live in Winnipeg, or to mainstream media reporters from the suburbs. But people who actually walk the streets where the shootings took place can see right through the police bafflegab. First, a brief recap of the shootings: * Thomas Beardy was killed outside a home on Dufferin Avenue. In a charitable ...

Ditch what you think you know about the melee in Osborne Village last weekend which resulted in shots fired and the stabbing death of one man. There's lots the police aren't telling the public. Here's some of it: You've heard that the incident involved an estimated 50 people. You haven't heard that it involved a confrontation between one group of Asians, Vietnamese in appearance, and another group, East Indian in appearance. Each of these groups was about 15 in number. The rest of the people on the street were bystanders. The night had been unusually testy in the Osborne Village Inn, with scuffles breaking out in the line to get in, and on the dancefloor. At closing time, the patrons spilled out onto Osborne as usual, but instead of dispersing, they coalesced around a face-to-face confrontation between two men. One man accused the other of having stabbed his brother a year ago. The sides formed and trouble was in the air. Bar staff s...

The pack journalism of the Parliamentary Press Gallery was on display like never before this past weekend. We got to see the extent to which they're willing to go to inject their personal political biases into the election campaign and to pass off their own opinions as news. But, sadly for them, we also got to see how the days of the mainstream media are numbered. It all began at a Conservative Party election rally in Mississauga where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was answering questions from reporters. Harper-hater Terry Milewski of the CBC got to the microphone with a list of carefully prepared ambush questions which he, himself, confessed were the talking points of Harper's critics. The next day, press gallery reporters for CBC, CTV, CP, the Toronto Star and even Postmedia spread stories across the country that the audience, prompted by Harper aides, drowned out Milewski's questions to protect the Prime Minister. The stories are lies. The reporters...

Winnipeg's news outlets collectively deserve a fat raspberry for their fawning coverage of the NDP's announcement of the elimination of Manitoba's small business tax. They were spun like tops and, to this day. don't know it. In a nutshell: * The NDP announced they were reducing the tax on companies that make $400,000 in profits or less to zero. * They held a news conference in an Osborne Village cupcake shop whose owner, Derrick Godfrey, said he would save $10,000. * “This move is about supporting entrepreneurship. It allows small businesses to keep more of their profits and reinvest in their companies, their employees and their communities," said Catherine Swift, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses. Let's see -- the hard-Left government of unelected Premier Greg Selinger cuts taxes, gives a whack of cash back to a businessman, and is embraced with hugs and kisses by the small business lobby. What could be wrong wi...

We've always respected the opinion of former police officer Robert Marshall, now an occasional writer for the Winnipeg Free Press. Which is why his latest column was so sad. And so troubling. Extremely troubling. Marshall wrote how the gang culture has poisoned communities to the point where honest citizens are afraid of helping police. "Snitches should not fear stitches" was some editor's idea of a clever headline for the story, wherein he or she adopted the gang lexicon that anyone who provides police investigators with information is a reviled "snitch". But politicians must not ignore the clarion call of Marshall's column --- police in Winnipeg have lost control of the streets! A spree killer roams the city for an hour, gunning down innocent people, and three weeks later, the best police can do, is beg for help? And that's the best-case scenario. Winnipeg police are actually suggesting that there might have been two or three killer...