The Black Rod

  By any measure, Glen Murray is unfit to be mayor of Winnipeg. He's been openly lying to voters for months about the disgraceful behaviour that caused him to be fired from his "dream job" as head of the Alberta think tank the Pembina Institute. And coupled with his thuggish attempt to intimidate the female Mayor of a small township in Ontario when he was in the Liberal cabinet, his actions speak volumes about his prejudice against women whether they are colleagues, employees or elected officials. Murray has hidden behind the fiction that he left Pembina because of "personal issues" and that any recent criticisms are just sour grapes from employees who objected to his attempt to modernize and shake up the think tank. A couple of devastating investigative reports by CBC have shown that nothing could be further from the truth. Murray's critics aren't hiding behind the usual "anonymous sources" that too many "investigative reports&quo

It's astonishing how hard the Winnipeg news media are working to sanitize the details of former mayor Glen Murray's disastrous stint in his "dream job" (before he got fired) at the Pembina Institute, an  Alberta clean-energy think tank. Is it because they think their readers/viewers can't handle the truth or that they are too sensitive to be told the gross facts? Or is this reflective of their slanted coverage of the Winnipeg mayoral candidates? Murray quit his job as an elected member of the Ontario legislature to become the executive director of the Pembina Institute because, he said at the time, he couldn't resist his "dream job" , working on environmental issues at the end of his political career. Then, only eight months later, he got the bum's rush out the door. Today Murray is painting himself as a victim. He was hired, he says, to bring fresh thinking to the think-tank but the organization couldn't handle change, so they agreed "m

What better way to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation than by injecting some truth into the Truth column. Then the Reconciliation can follow with the critics of Winnipeg Mayor candidate Don Woodstock issuing their apologies to him for telling the truth at an all-candidates forum held by the  Council of Women of Winnipeg . Woodstock stirred a mini-tempest when he addressed the topic of ways to improve safety for women. Another  candidate had raised the issue  of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and Woodstrock responded by saying  Indigenous men bore much of the blame and needed to do more to stop violence against women. The knee-jerk reaction wasn't long in coming. MKO Grand Chief Garrison Settee was interviewed by CBC. "Settee said on the path toward reconciliation, Indigenous people are trying to meet non-Indigenous people halfway and don't need someone like Woodstock spreading stereotypes. "He should drop out of the race and work on h

There's always been something fishy about Glen Murray's abrupt and unexplained departure from his "dream job" in Alberta. Murray left the prestige, salary, and power of a cabinet minister in the Ontario government to head a think tank in Calgary. He raved rhapsodic at the opportunity to lead the fight against climate change in his new post. From an interview with Steve Paikin of TVO, TVOntario, a publicly funded English-language educational television network, just after taking over as executive director of the Pembina Institute  https://www.tvo.org/ transcript/2463712 WHEN I TURN 60, WHICH WILL BE IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS, THAT WAS THE THIRD PHASE OF MY LIFE,  SORT OF THE ELDER PHASE. ... BY THAT POINT I WOULD KNOW MYSELF BETTER , I DON'T HAVE TO PROVE MYSELF ANYMORE , AND I WAS GOING TO DEDICATE ALL OF MY ENERGY TO  THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE IN THE WORLD, AND FOR ME, IT'S CLIMATE CHANGE. ... BUT I THINK IT TAKES AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP A

  A months-long campaign of intimidation to get a small-town mayor in Ontario to approve a housing development ended in 2010 when a federal auditor in the tax department was arrested for framing the mayor on a bogus allegation of tax evasion. Three years later, that auditor was about to go to trial when the intimidation of Mayor Marolyn Morrison of Caledon, Ontario, revved up again from a most unlikely source.  At the heart of the new pressure campaign was an Ontario provincial cabinet minister---Glen Murray. Last week CBC News carried half of the sordid story . This is the full story as uncovered in a two-part investigative series by the Globe and Mail in 2018 (with background from other older news stories) - including an email from Murray's chief of staff warning him to stay out of the matter as any involvement by him in the contested land-for-housing  dispute could be construed as interference in a quasi-judicial process. To see for yourself, scroll to the part "Quee