The Black Rod

Every year the Mayor delivers a State of the City address to the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.  And every year a transcript is published on the Internet. So, of course, given that, as usual, our invitation to the event was lost in the mail,  we went looking for the Mayor's address on the Web. Imagine our shock. This was the State of the City address? It was a measley five paragraphs long.  It read as if it was cribbed from a city travel brochure. It looked like the Mayor dashed it off at the last minute on a sheet of toilet paper while sitting on the crapper. Winnipeg is great, it's got a zoo, and some American stores, and (a white elephant, aka) a human rights museum, said Mayor Sam Katz. And there's some theatres, and restaurants, and a convention centre and "optimistic spirit." Okay? Gotta run ... According to reporters, Katz padded his delivery with extemporaneous comments about frozen water pipes, a pledge by Kins...

The 2014 Winter Olympics have ended and Canadians are still on a high. We trounced the Americans in hockey (always a good thing) and our women's curling team set an Olympic record that can never be beaten (all wins, no losses). All in all, we're betting Canadians will say they got their money's worth at these Olys. How much money?  The federal government kicks in $22 million a year towards winter sports. (Another $34 million goes to summer sports and $6 million to team sports.) Canada sent 221 athetes to Sochi: 27 speed skaters, 25 men’s hockey players, 24 snowboarders, 21 women’s hockey players, 20 freestyle ski jumpers, 17 figure skaters, 16 bobsledders, 15 alpine skiers, 13 cross-country skiers, 10 curlers, eight lugers, eight biathletes, seven ski jumpers, six ski cross competitors and four skeleton racers. They did us proud, each and every one of them, and that includes the coaches and parents of the athletes. But while rooting throug...

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...

It's time to call in the cops. Talk to anybody in this city and they'll tell you the public perception is that the Winnipeg Firehalls Scandal has crossed an invisible line that separates collusion from corruption. Credence in anything the city's administration says died a swift death when the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation revealed how city officials responded to their question of who supersized the new St. James firehall to become 40 percent larger than originally designed. Er, said Winnipeg's senior civil servants, there's no documentation on that. Nothing. Nix. Not an email, not a note, not a scribble in the men's room.  Zip.  Given that the Firehall No.11 (St. James) is being blamed for most of the $3 million cost overrun on the $15 million project to build 4 new fire stations, the city's answer is completely unbelievable. Did somebody sweep the files clean of all references to Fire Station 11? CAO Phil Sheegl ...