The Black Rod

Writing about the Driskell Inquiry got us to thinking that there hasn't been this much backstabbing since Julius Caesar went to lunch with his best pal, Brutus. That incident was immortalized in contemporary notes: FLAV Flavius Maximus, private Roman eye. I'd like to ask you a few questions. What do you know about this? CAL I told him, Julie, don't go. Don't go Julie, I said. Don't go, it's the Ides of March. FLAV Now look, Mrs. Caesar, I'd --- CAL If I told him once, I'd told him a thousand times, Julie, don't go ... FLAV Please, don't upset yourself. CALPURNIA Julie, don't go, I said. It's the Ides of March. Beware already. At the Driskell Inquiry, the line of backstabbers is long and, apparently, still growing. - Perry Dean Harder ratted on Jim Driskell for running a chop shop operation, and wound up dead. - Ray Zanidean's brother in Regina told police they should talk to Ray in Winnipeg about an arson in Swift Current. - Zanidea...

Hands up everyone who knows the terms of reference of the Driskell Inquiry. Hmmm. Thought so. Maybe we need to review them, in the words of Commissioner Patrick LeSage: This is not a re-trial, a re-hearing of the Driskell murder trial, it is an inquiry to look into the conduct of Crown Counsel who conducted and managed the trial of James Driskell, and the subsequent appeal and departmental reviews of his conviction, and consider whether that conduct fell below the professional and ethical standards expected of prosecutors at that time. Secondly, to inquire into whether the Winnipeg Police Service failed to disclose material information to the Crown before, during, or after James Driskell's trial, and if so, to consider whether the non-disclosure contributed to a likely miscarriage of justice in the prosecution against him. So... Examine the conduct of Crown Attorney George Dangerfield? Check. Examine the conduct of the Winnipeg police? Check. Who's missing? The evidence at t...

Shakespeare said it best in As You Like It: " All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players ..." And we've seen some damn fine theatrics at the Driskell Inquiry these past five weeks. The Inquiry is on hiatus for a few weeks but if Commissioner Patrick LeSage doesn't spend the interval writing his report before everyone is brought back he's wasting our money. It's no secret what the final report will say. That's the beauty of a show trial, you have the verdict first, then the trial. It saves so much time and effort that way. Convicted already are Winnipeg Police detective Tom Anderson (ret.), Crown Attorney George Dangerfield (ret.) and Chief of Prosecutions Bruce Miller (posthumously). They've been found guilty of doing their jobs. The irony is that of everyone at the Inquiry, the only person in all of Manitoba and Saskatchewan who cannot be blamed for anything, because all his sins have been forgiven, is James Driskell , t...

Dan Vandal limped out of the starting gate on Tuesday to take another run at civic politics. He's chosen to challenge City Councillor Franco Magnifico to a fight for St. Boniface, but if his wimpy stand on the $300 million OlyWest hog processing plant is any indication of his campaign, he's on his way to becoming a two-time also-ran. Vandal, a former city councillor himself and a losing mayoral candidate in the last civic election, put his foot down over OlyWest. Well, he didn't exactly stamp his foot. He sort of gingerly minced around the issue. "For the first time yesterday, Vandal clarified his position on OlyWest, saying he wouldn't have voted for the city's $3.4 million incentive package without public consultation and an environmental assessment by the province's Clearn Environment Commission," said the Winnipeg Free Press story. Got that? He's against OlyWest, sort of, kinda, don't quote him on it. He's put in more qualifiers in hi...

The plight of an Afghani interpreter, grievously wounded while helping Canadian soldiers, has reached the desk of Canada's Minister of Defence. Mohammed Niaz lost both legs when a rocket propelled grenade went through a Canadian G-wagon during a battle in May in Panjwai province in Afghanistan. Five Canadians were slightly wounded. Niaz was taken to the Coalition hospital at Kandahar airfield. While recuperating there from his injuries, he pleaded with Canada to help him ( http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2006/06/todays-topic-help-me-canada.html ) get the same treatment that wounded Canadians receive in military hospitals in Germany and Canada. After we reported his story in June, The Black Rod received e-mails from Canadians, and even American soldiers who remembered Niaz, who wanted to help him. Obviously many of them also wrote to the Minister of National Defence.This week we read that one of them got a response from Gordon O'Connor, Minister of National Defence. (h/t to Small ...

Bwahaha. It seems that baby bloggers have been titillating themselves by sharing ---if you can believe it --- fantasies about The Black Rod. Bwahaha. Guess we should feel flattered. * Equally amusing are the antics of Winnipeg Free Press reporter Mia Rabson and Opposition leader Hugh McFadyen. McFadyen held a news conference Wednesday on hallway medicine and Rabson wrote a story about it. It seems that information uncovered by a Freedom of Information request contradicts (big time) Premier Gary Doer's contention that hallway medicine is a thing of the past thanks to the NDP. Strangely, Rabson's story fails to mention that the information supporting her story and McFadyen's news conference came from Winnipeg Sun columnist Tom Brodbeck (who wrote about the real hallway medicine numbers in his column on Tuesday.) Now, given the Paul Samyn/Lloyd Axworthy fiasco ( http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2006/08/credibility-cloud-over-axworthy.html ) we all know we can't trust any quot...

They went in for a new haircut... ...and walked out with a sex change. Welcome to A Hundred Days of Hughie. The Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party was desperate to replace their lacklustre leader Stu Murray. After a yawnfest leadership campaign, they picked lawyer Hugh McFadyen, he of the pearly fake smile and metrosexual fashion sense. Hugh stepped into a Legislature that had been paralyzed for weeks by a campaign of bellringing, designed to stall the passage of the budget until the NDP agreed to hold a public inquiry into the Crocus Fund scandal. Throughout the Tory leadership campaign, there had been whispers that the NDP might call a snap election before the new leader gained any traction. The idea was preposterous. The NDP had a majority, had been in office only 3 years, had no major issue to campaign on and could only foresee an election spent defending their decision to turn a blind eye to the shenanigans at Crocus that cost tens of thousands of voters their pension savings...

Not so fast, Lloyd. Did you forget something? Lloyd Axworthy, president of the University of Winnipeg and Canada's former foreign minister, has been a busy boy these past two weeks, giving interviews and writing op-ed pieces on his opinion of how Stephen Harper has botched the country's foreign policy. How, you ask? By supporting Israel. Axworthy's latest work appeared Wednesday in the Winnipeg Free Press. It was part of the newspaper's buck and wing to placate Axworthy for an embarassing mistake by the paper's Ottawa reporter, Paul Samyn. Samyn, you see, allegedly misquoted Axworthy so that it sounded like Axworthy was criticizing Winnipeg's Asper family for using their "media empire" to unduly influence the government in Israel's favour. The Free Press was desperate to forestall anyone from concluding that Axworthy was saying Jews (in the proxy of the Aspers) had too much influence in Canada because they control the media. The newspaper apologize...