The Black Rod

Reading the transcripts of the Public Utilities Board's current hearings into Manitoba Hydro's requests for rate hikes is a lot like mining. You enter a deep, dark, scary tunnel of near-impenetrable verbiage. Sometimes you wander off into passages that seem to go nowhere, leaving you crying for help. You often feel stifled, struggling for breath as the walls seem to close in on you and the lights dim and you wonder what possessed you to be here in the first place. But then you stumble across a vein of gold. Here are some nuggets from the last few days of hearings: Winnipeg Lawsuit Update Ten months after the City of Winnipeg launched a lawsuit against Manitoba Hydro for $10 million, Hydro still hasn't filed a statement of defence . The city claims it was shortchanged when Hydro remitted money it collected from a 2.5 percent tax on electricity and natural gas. Hydro calculated the tax on pre-GST sums; the city says it should have added the tax after the...

The only person not surprised by the arrest of Whitey Macdonald on a 30-year-old warrant for drug smuggling was his former friend Bob Wilson. Hard-luck Bob Wilson was left to take the rap for Whitey when, despite being under guard following his 1980 arrest in Florida, Macdonald melted into thin air one day, never to be seen again until a generation had passed. Wilson was convicted and sentenced to 7 years in prison. An MLA at the time of his arrest, he was kicked out of the Legislature in disgrace. He lost his bailiff business. And he went crazy. From Day One he's proclaimed his innocence. And every single day since he's been consumed with proving it. He's spent almost every waking hour--- through a marriage, a divorce and even a recent bout of brain surgery--- thinking about his trial, obsessively tracking every person remotely connected to his case, and writing---writing tens of thousands of letters, notes, appeals, and bizarre communications consistin...

Gail Asper has told Canada's Ukrainian community to shut up and accept their second-class status in the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. In a hissy column in the Ottawa Citizen on Tuesday, Asper dropped the mask of reason and went for the jugular of Lubomyr Luciuk, director of research for the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/travel/need+understand+where+came+from/4123794/story.html "Instead of creating a divisive climate , I would urge Luciuk to give the Canadian Museum for Human Rights' dedicated board, management and staff an opportunity to work on and present at the appropriate time the museum's content in its full form." Translation into people-speak: shut yer yap, and let the big kids do their job. Luciuk has driven Gail Asper and her colleagues at the CMHR into a tizzy with his demand, echoed by other Ukrainian associations, that the Holodomor, the deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainians on...

Manitoba Hydro has quietly postponed its next planned megaproject, the $3.5 billion Keeyask generating station, for at least a year because it can't agree on a contract with with its American customers. Hydro is preparing to double in size over the next decade with the construction of three new power stations on the Nelson River---Wuskwatim, Keeyask and the big daddy of them all, Conawapa. Getting the Americans to pay a fat premium for the "clean" power from these plants is supposed to cover most of the $17 billion cost of building them. But the Yanks' reluctance to sign on the dotted line is making Hydro's house of cards wobble. Hydro officials told the Public Utilities Board that two factors are affecting negotiations---the economic downturn in both countries, and the unexpected development of shale gas. The PUB is holding hearings into Hydro's insatiable desire for rate hikes to its Manitoba customers. Manitoba Hydro wa...

It's a clear case of serendipity. Once again a government agency has wheeled out a new slogan to sell Manitoba to potential tourists , as well as to people living here already. "It's Manitoba Time" is Travel Manitoba's new pitch in their coming annual marketing campaign. They must be plenty gunshy after having watched the brutal rejection of the NDP's previous effort at branding the province---the disastrous Spirited Energy campaign. The first public reaction appears to be ... huh ? Well, at least the reaction isn't as hostile as it was for Spirited Energy, which was DOA, although the government continued to flog it for months to the bought cheers of a tiny band of sycophants. Travel Manitoba says don't judge the slogan in isolation, wait for the context of the campaign. And there's some truth it that. Miller Time was a slogan to sell a beer. But the commercials sold fun. Young men hitting a bar after work to share a brewski or ...

Waiter, a double serving of crow for the Winnipeg Free Press table, please. The first week of the new year isn't even over and already the corrections are piling up and apologies flying over at the Free Press. Facts wrong? Political bias? Yep, just business as usual. First, there was the public face-plant by columnist Lindor Reynolds whose front-page story about the closing of a family-run fabric store named the wrong store throughout the story. So sorry; heh, heh, we all make mistakes; now quit calling me, she told readers the next day. And then there was the story by Ottawa reporter Mia Rabson which revealed that the series of Conservative Party-bashing stories she'd written throughout 2010 were w-r-o-n-g wrong. Full-out, completely wrong. Vaccine centre had quiet death -- Bidders not told of decision for six months -- Timing rules out local politics as factor By: Mia Rabson Posted: 5/01/2011 1:00 AM OTTAWA -- Canada's chief pub...

A new year brings proof that the lunatics have taken over the asylum. There was this story in the Winnipeg Free Press: Mould in school keeping First Nation's kids out By: Larry Kusch Winnipeg Free Press Posted: 4/01/2011 1:00 AM | THEIR school contaminated by mould, the 400 elementary school kids at Bunibonibee Cree Nation at Oxford House have not attended regular classes for most of the past 12 months. The Oxford House Elementary School was shut down in mid-January 2010 after teachers and students complained of nausea and headaches. It has yet to reopen, although an official with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) said in a recent interview repairs may be completed by the end of February this year. The school is all of 35 years old and they want it replaced. Indian Affairs says they'll give the reserve $1 million "above normal maintenance spending" to fix the mould problem. On the same day.... $10 million to spend on memorials for residen...

There's just enough time on the last day of the last year of the first decade of the 21st Century for us to name our Newsmaker of the Year. It seems in hindsight like there were only two stories that dominated the year 2010. A tumultuous mayoral election pitted NDP pawn Judy Wasylycia-Leis against battered, chipped and dented incumbent Sam Katz. And millionaire moocher David Asper played the long con with the city and province in a tawdry proposal to build a new football stadium, allegedly on his dime, but which ended up tens of millions of dollars over budget with the government, paying the whole shot, and Davey walking away with four or more million in his pocket. While others might nominate a con man or a deceitful politician of one stripe or another, our standards are higher. When the dust settled, we could see clearly the two who deserved to be named Newsmaker of the Year, 2010 ---for, yes, it was a tie --- a tie between JHendrix70 and AlexLV. Sure...

Well look at that. It's the end of December, and you know what that means... It's TWO YEARS since the Manitoba Hydro Whistleblower made a complaint to the provincial Ombudsman. Two years and still no resolution. Resolution? Hell, two years and no nothing. Ombudsman Irene Hamilton has managed to botch the first complaint under the NDP's much vaunted Public Interest Disclosure Act so badly it will never be used again. Now there's a legacy. First Hamilton tried to pawn the complaint off to the Auditor General, who, oops, turned out to be a former member of the Manitoba Hydro board of directors, and who announced defiantly she was under no obligation in law to investigate anything. When she eventually acknowledged that the perception of conflict of interest would render moot anything she did with Hydro, the complaint was returned to the Ombudsman's Office. Hamilton then decided to wait to see the results of a report commissioned by the Public Utili...

It took a City Hall insider to spot Phase Two of the Selinger & Katz Stadium Scam. Remember when they said Winnipeg was going to reap millions from the sale of the land where the old stadium sits? Well, forget it. Brian Kelcey, former budget advisor to Mayor Sam Katz, was disgusted to the core at Katz's contemptuous disregard for the public in ramming a deal for a new stadium through city council. And that was before he noticed the newest twist in the con job. http://www.stateofthecity.ca/front-page/2010/12/17/its-not-over-until-the-fat-stadium-sings.html "... in what amounts to an invitation for delay, lowball pricing or worse, the City has chosen to use an Expression of Interest process (EOI) instead of a straight auction for the land or portions thereof," wrote Kelcey. "... note that using an Expression of Interest allows City Hall to use maximum flexibility in who it chooses to sell the land to, because the "express your interest...