The Black Rod

Is Sam Katz auditioning for a new career as a comedian? He's no Robin Williams, but you've got to start somewhere.   When the news broke that the province of Manitoba had asked the RCMP to review the trio of city audits that uncovered massive favoritism in handing out construction contracts "and to conduct any investigations it considers appropriate," Katz tapped his funny bone to knock off some one-liners in the form of a "statement." His best: "The province has made their decision and chosen to exercise their right to refer to the RCMP, and all of council would support their decision , and I hope this brings closure." Bwahaha. Now that's funny. It may be too subtle for many people, but it's in the true tradition of understated British humour. You see, Katz is saying just the opposite.  He and his council cabal voted AGAINST sending the audits to the provincial justice department , a move made by c...

The looting of Winnipeg started almost as soon as Phil Sheegl got on the city payroll. And it lasted almost until the day he quit. That's the cold truth you're left with after reading the latest audit presented to city hall, an audit of five years of real estate deals conducted by the city under Sheegl's watch. Phil Sheegl, the best friend of Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz, was hired in April, 2008, as the director of the city's department of planning, property and development. In  November, 2008, he was appointed deputy Chief Administrative Officer, and in 2011 he replaced Glen Laubenstein as CAO. Three months after Sheegl got the planning job, the city announced it was looking for real estate advisors and brokers to "assist the city with real estate transactions".  They eventually qualified five. "In the transactions where an external advisor was retained, there was no documentation explaining the rationale why an external adv...

Drop dead , said the City to Colin Craig. Oh, not so succinctly. But the message was clear---beat it, get lost, scram. It took less than a dozen words to slam the door in Craig's face, lock it, bolt it, and hope he went away. Craig, you see, is the local director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And more than a year ago, he politely asked the City for briefing notes, memos, emails and any other documentation they had regarding the process by which Winnipeg's new Fire Hall No. 11 ballooned in size to it's present corpulent state. Not that it's gargantuan in the way the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is -- four football fields of empty space enclosed within a steel and concrete skeleton. But it is almost half again as big as the other three firehalls built as part of the same infrastructure replacement program. And Fire Hall No. 11 is the fishiest project of the entire Sheegl-Shindico Bid-Rigging Scandal that's consumed the pu...

He took down the most powerful man in Winnipeg. He ripped away the curtain hiding a corrupt culture of favoritism and untendered contracts worth millions of dollars being handed out secretly by the city's most senior civil servants. He exposed the year-long cover-up conducted by the mayor and  Winnipeg's top administrators. He's been like Hercules cleaning the Augean Stables, and, like Hercules, he has a long list of tasks to accomplish still. The Black Rod's Newsmaker of the Year --- for the second year in a row --- is Winnipeg auditor Brian Whiteside. Last year, Whiteside was a shoo-in for his courage in standing up to Chief Administrative Officer Phil Sheegl and his minions. They prepared a nice whitewash report clearing Sheegl of any impropriety in the secret delivery of contracts for four new firehalls to Shindico, the company owned by Mayor Sam Katz's palsy walsy for many a year.  They expected Whiteside to passively sign on, bu...

Winnipeg's top civil servant is trying to prevent a city councillor from digging deeper into the mismanagement and possible corruption behind two projects which have gone millions of dollars over budget.    You have to wonder why.   Deepak Joshi, the fill-in Chief Administrative Officer, wrote a personal letter to Coun. Paula Havixbeck trying to intimidate her into silence over her persistance in getting to the bottom of the firehalls scandal, in which Joshi was involved up to his eyebrows, and the disastrous project to turn the downtown post office into a new headquarters for the police department.   Joshi was the city's Director of Planning, Property and Development (oh, the irony) when the twin fiascos of the firehalls and police HQ were unfolding. He was appointed Chief Operating Officer in 2011 by then CAO Phil Sheegl, who said in a news release: "I'm making these changes to clarify the roles and responsibilities of senior...