The Black Rod

Have you heard? There's a new sheriff in town. Unfortunately, it's Barney Fife. Last week the NDP slapped a star on Dave "Six Months" Chomiak and pushed him into a scrum to announce the government's new anti-gang strategy. Correction---the NDP's new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new anti-gang strategy. The NDP's over-arching anti-gang strategy has been to attack them with news releases. Just skimming the surface of their own announcements of gang-fighting initiatives we find: "A street gang containment initiative, started in 2000. This initiative includes the international-award winning RCMP Gang Awareness Unit, Project Gang Proof's helpline, website and handbook, and intensive probation supervision through COHROU." "A witness counter-intimidation response by police and Manitoba Justice, launched in 2003." "A new three-member Manitoba Corrections Organized Crime Intelligence Unit. The integrated unit will specialize in collect

CJOB radio host Geoff Currier did more damage Tuesday to the prospects of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights than the proverbial bull in a china shop. After years of ignoring the scam being perpetrated by Gail Asper on Manitoba taxpayers, CJOB finally tiptoed into the debate over the huge, growing, and unrestricted cost overruns for her daddy's legacy project. And Currier, inadvertently, opened with a bombshell revelation. Introducing Colin Craig of the Canadian Taxayers Federation he said: "Initially we had planned to have both Gail Asper and Arni Thorsteinson from the Human Rights museum in studio... Without too much detail, we couldn't come to an agreement on the format of the interview ." So the millionaires who are spending at the very least $160 million of taxpayers' money on their pet project don't want to answer any questions about where the money is going. Ain't that interesting? Especially since Gail has run to her boyfriend Premier Gary Doer f

According to the Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeggers are just a bunch of big babies, spooked by their own shadows. We're too ignorant to understand crime statistics, unlike the brilliant analysts at the newspaper who see clearly that we suffer from a distorted fear of crime, when the actual risk is just in our heads. The FP has published two Pollyanna-ish stories this week celebrating a drop in crime and chiding readers for being fear mongers. But it's the condescending and insulting analysis of the stats by the newspaper's "crime" reporter Mike McIntyre that needs to be addressed most, because virtually every sentence he wrote is woefully wrong . According to McIntrye, Winnipeg citizens need a reality check, some perspective in looking at crime reports, and only a little common sense to avoid becoming a statistic. Winnipeg, he declared, is not a city under siege by criminals. Too bad he doesn't read his own newspaper. It was barely five months ago, in February,

Don't you love it when some guy comes to Canada from some godforesaken lawless pit of savagery in Africa and starts telling us he doesn't approve of the way local police do their job? Gordon Sinclair couldn't resist yet another sole-sourced anti-police diatribe Wednesday, even as his own newspaper reported that the NDP intends to launch an in-your-face attack on street gangs that have turned Winnipeg into one of the most violent and dangerous cities in the country. Sinclair turned his column over to the sad and unchallenged story of Jackson Nahayo, "who had spent a sleepless night crying", over his allegations of police abuse. Nahayo, it seems, can't tell the difference between police in a civilized country and rampaging bands of gun wielding killers and rapists in Burundi, where he was born and the country he fled. "At the suggestion of a reporter for a Christian newspaper" he emailed Sinclair who jumped at the chance to blacken the reputation of t

Call us comrades. It's not often we make common cause with left-wing activists, but when it comes to the proposed water utility for the City of Winnipeg, make room for us on the barricades. We may not share their not-so-hidden agendas, but when it comes to the water utility it's been the Left that's asked the right questions, raised the right objections, and done the heavy lifting to slow and hopefully stop the juggernaut. We've spent days reading the background material on this deal. When we started, we knew next to nothing, having, like most citizens, ignored the issue as long as humanly possible. It wasn't long, however, before we knew what we needed to know---the water utility proposal stinks. From A to Z, it's rife with red flags that collectively scream "CON JOB." What's the Rush? Mayor Sam Katz says we have to approve the water utility immediately. There's not a second to spare. He's deliberately misleading the public. In the adminis

After piloting the Crocus Investment Fund into the toilet, CEO Sherman Kreiner explained his labour-sponsored venture capital fund had had multiple bottom lines. At the end, returns for shareholders were playing second fiddle to job creation, community development, and the spread of Kreiner's Mondragon model of anti-capitalism. Nothing has changed. Today, as managing director of the University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation, Kreiner counts at least four bottom lines: "environmental sustainability, social sustainability, economic sustainability, and cultural sustainability." And the core service of the university that employs him---education---- is playing second fiddle to Kreiner's grandiose scheme of---what else?--- job creation, community development, and the spread of the Mondragon model of anti-capitalism At least he's thankful he's not Sam Katz. Because if the news media found out that the mayor was funnelling business his wife's way in the

You know the drill.... You try to squeeze in a couple of weeks vacation and when you come back your desk is overflowing with work. You pick up the top document and ...WHOOOO. STOP THE PRESSES. ( How do you spell the sound of a whistleblower's whistle?) The internet is literally buzzing about Brennan. Bob Brennan. Manitoba Hydro CEO Bob. Four sources are saying Big Bob has become the living embodiment of Hydro's 'I'm all right Jack' attitude. And why, say others, is the news media ignoring the story? Whistler A said: " Was talking to a PCL guy last night and supposedly, Bob Brennan, the CEO, has demanded his office be redesigned 6 times , including moving it from the South side to the North side. This has cost about $2 mil ." Whistler B said: " Absolutely true. His office was in the south side of the building and had a $100,000 roof over it because the 23rd floor is a mechanical room (paranoid of leaks apparently). That wasn't good enough. So now,

In an uninspiring pack of 15 city councillors, North Kildonan's Jeff Browaty has distinguished himself by being the first to commit to waiving property taxes on millionaire moocher Gail Asper's pet project, The Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Browaty was asked point blank Tuesday on CJOB's Nighhawk nighttime talkshow whether he would support the expected bid by the CMHR to waive $9 million in city taxes. Gail Asper deliberately or otherwise "forgot" to include city taxes in the annual operating budget she negotiated with the federal government. Given that the museum project is already so deep in the hole they'll reach China before solvency, their only hope is for Gail Asper to come to council waving her tin cup, her gold-plated tin cup, and beg them to forgive the entire 9 mil. Browaty knows that. So he answered in typical weasel fashion. "Well, let's just see what the specific ask is. I, uh, you know, I…" Guest host Marty Gold pressed the poi

Magicians of yore would invoke spirits with the incantation 'Abra Cadabra', and--poof--- a rabbit would emerge from an empty hat or a comely assistant would vanish, only to reappear seconds later behind a velvet curtain. Nowadays, to make bags of money appear out of nowhere, tawdry politicians chant 'Infrastructure Deficit.' And the public yawns. For they know the trick too well, and it always ends the same way, with the only thing disappearing being the money in their pockets. The Great (in girth) Russ-o and Magic Sam the Magic Mayor have already intoned the magic words and Wednesday they will unleash an imaginary dragon at Executive Policy Committee, allegedly to shame senior governments with money into giving lots of it to Winnipeg. The monster is named Seven Point-Four Billion, which, they say, is what Winnipeg needs to spend over the next 10 years just to replace the streets crumbling under our feet and the bridges falling down on our heads. Oh, woe, cries Mayor Ma