The Black Rod

Like the guilty fugitive trying to outrun the law, Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz can almost feel the hot breath of the bloodhounds on his neck. With each passing day the pressure grows for a police investigation of the looting of the city under Katz's terms of office. The public is seething with anger. Whether in private conversations, Internet comments, or twitter, the message is the same -- where are the cops?  Won't anybody stop this corruption? Katz was feeling the heat in spades at Wednesday's special council meeting to chew on the EY (Ernst and Young) audit of five years of city real estate deals. His Sweet-Sam-smile was replaced with a face fixed in pure hate, teeth drawn back in a psychopathic grin that fooled no one. Mayor Sam launched a condescending attack on the EY auditors who highlighted his pal Phil Sheegl's involvement in one shady deal after another.  He attacked city auditor Brian Whiteside, who, you'll remember, refused to join Sheeg...

Sam Katz didn't decide not to run for another term as mayor because he wanted to spend more time with his family.  Puh-lease . Wasn't there another cliche he could use? And he didn't decide because of some off-the-cuff comment four years ago, that nobody remembered,  to serve only two terms. Hey, this was the guy who lied outright to get elected in 2010 by painting himself as  the defender of elderly and poor homeowners, only to stab them in the back as soon as he got re-elected by raising their property taxes and promising annual increases from here until forever.  Breaking his word was like breathing air. Effortless. And he didn't decide not to run because he was afraid he might lose to a North End baba whose entire work life has been spent as an NDP hack. He trounced her once before and in an election over who was hated more by taxpayers, him or the NDP, he still held a slight edge over the NDP's candidate. And he didn't walk awa...

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...

Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz says there's no need for an audit of the latest city mega-million-dollar boondoggle---the project to convert the downtown post office into a new police headquarters. Everything you need to know about the reason for the huge cost overruns was explained in a report to his executive policy committee in December, he says. Russ Wyatt, chairman of city council's finance committee, says there's no need for an audit of the latest city mega-million-dollar boondoggle. It's too expensive, he says, and for what ? It will only say exactly what the audit of the project to build four new firehalls said---that the city's chief administrative officer (since departed) was incompetent. Councillor Brian Mayes, a member of EPC, says there's no need for an audit of the latest city mega-million-dollar boondoggle because it's much ado about nothing.  "What we're really looking at here is 12 or 13 percent overrun ... most of it ...

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...