The Black Rod

In front of a handpicked audience Tuesday, unelected Premier Greg Selinger pulled back the curtain on the twin pillars of the NDP's re-election campaign---Hate and Hype. Selinger spewed unadulterated vitriol at his opponent, Progressive Conservative leader Hugh McFadyen, accusing him of every sin conceivable to a hardcore socialist. NDP propaganda has been peddling lies all summer that McFadyen plans to poison Lake Winnipeg, to fire doctors and nurses and kill babies, and, most horrific of all, to sell Manitoba Hydro [also known as a.) depending on science not politics to make water policy, b.) supporting balanced budgets, and c.) a myth invented out of whole cloth by the NDP.] The NDP leader was spitting venom as he viciously attacked McFadyen and painted himself as the saviour of Manitoba who is bravely fighting off the rightwing barbarian hordes. But it's the intensity of his hate that's notable. It's not just a politician disagreeing wi

On May 31, 2011, Winnipeg entrepreneur Mark Chipman handed the provincial election to Hugh McFadyen. "Here," he (may have) said, "take it. Carry it over the goal line. Show 'em what a winner looks like." "Echh," replied McFadyen, "Keep it. I don't want it." And with that, McFadyen, the hapless leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, showed he doesn't have a single political instinct anywhere in his body. On May 31, 2011, Mark Chipman announced that NHL hockey had returned to Winnipeg. The Jets were back. The news electrified the province. It should have had Hugh McFadyen doing cartwheels at Portage and Main. He should have bought every billboard in town to carry his face smiling ear-to-ear and the message "I told you so" to every voter in the province. Because McFadyen was the only politician who even dreamed that the return of the Jets was a possibility. It's right there on the

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has informed the federal government in no uncertain terms that it can't pay its tax bills to the City of Winnipeg. And the CMHR says in its latest annual report that it will have no money to cover its utility bills once it opens. From the 2010-2011 annual report: "The Museum will be seeking the government's approval to augment the operating funds already committed by an amount sufficient to cover the required property tax (PILT) payments and to address ongoing pressures of inflation in operating, maintenance and capital repairs." Translation : The CMHR has a plan. The government should give it more money to pay its outstanding bills. Much more than the $21.7 million a year that's budgeted. Then everything will be alright. oh, and if the museum doesn't pay its tax bill in 2012 for the third year running it goes up for a tax sale. In Winnipeg that means the City takes ownersh

It's becoming another of those defining stories of Winnipeg. A young girl leaves home and disappears. She's either never seen again or her body is eventually discovered in the river or in some secluded location. Pleas for help to nail down her last movements go unanswered. She's usually aboriginal. This week it's the story of 17-year-old Tiffany Skye. RCMP say she was last known to be alive on Monday, August 8, 2011. Five days later, Saturday, Aug. 13, her body was recovered from the Red River near Lockport. Police quickly determined who she was but an autopsy Aug. 16 failed to disclose a cause of death. Read that again. She didn't drown. Which means they don't know how she died and how she wound up in the river. Police then began adding some of the mystery to her disappearance. They waited at least 10 days after she was found to release her identity to the press. They didn't give out her name until five days after

Yep. Still dead. We had to check after Monday's media wallow over the death of the new Moses, Jack Layton, aka the man who accomplished nothing in his federal career apart from propping up the corpse of the Liberal Party until it literally fell to pieces. Let's see, he was leader of the fourth largest party in Parliament, never spent a day in government, and waited until the Liberals finally imploded to pick up the pieces and lead a gaggle of Quebec students and separatists to Ottawa under the NDP banner. Then he expired, leaving the party in the hands of a 68-year-old woman with the English language skills of Stephane Dion and who, when elected, was a card-carrying separatist party member and financial donor. Way to go, New Moses. But while the mainstream media commentators rushed to buy sackcloth and ashes before prostrating themselves at Layton's cold dead feet, they studiously avoided the only question anyone wanted answered--- who is going to lead

Chances are you've been talking a lot about crime lately. What with a triple shooting in Transcona and a teenager stabbed in a public park this week, shots fired as two ethnic groups faced off in Osborne Village last week moments before one man was stabbed to death on the street, and a summer of arsons spreading fear throughout Fort Rouge and St. James. No wonder we're the violent crime capital of the country according to Stats Canada. What you don't know, is that it's much, much worse than you think. Statistics Canada divides its annual crime stats into two parts. There's the crime severity index and the violent crime severity index, which get confusing if you don't speak Bureaucrat. The crime severity index is the number of crimes reported to police in a city and the violent crime severity index is a measure of how serious those crimes are. So a city may have a lot of shoplifting and vandalism, and place high in the crime

Ditch what you think you know about the melee in Osborne Village last weekend which resulted in shots fired and the stabbing death of one man. There's lots the police aren't telling the public. Here's some of it: You've heard that the incident involved an estimated 50 people. You haven't heard that it involved a confrontation between one group of Asians, Vietnamese in appearance, and another group, East Indian in appearance. Each of these groups was about 15 in number. The rest of the people on the street were bystanders. The night had been unusually testy in the Osborne Village Inn, with scuffles breaking out in the line to get in, and on the dancefloor. At closing time, the patrons spilled out onto Osborne as usual, but instead of dispersing, they coalesced around a face-to-face confrontation between two men. One man accused the other of having stabbed his brother a year ago. The sides formed and trouble was in the air. Bar staff s

The Manitoba Public Utilities Board dropped its biggest bombshell yet and it hasn't made a peep in the mainstream media. It turns out that Manitoba Hydro may not need to build the immensely expensive and bitterly controversial Bipole III transmission line after all. You read that right. NOT. BUILD. BIPOLE III. How can that be? Manitoba Hydro, which has been frantically hiding the cost, insists Bipole III is absolutely, positively necessary for mankind and must be built or the sky will fall and the seas turn to blood. Just as fiercely, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition insists the 832 mile line is a great big boondoggle that's being reeled out on the orders of the NDP on the wrong side of Lake Winnipeg, the west instead of the east, at an inflated cost for degraded efficiency. Unelected Premier Greg Selinger says Bipole III is being built for free -- Americans will pay the full cost of construction when they buy electricity from new power plants that wil

The Public Utilities Board has issued a scathing denunciation of Manitoba Hydro's plans for a decade-long, $20 billion spending orgy on giant new power plants and transmission lines. Hydro intends to build these megaprojects to profit from exporting electricity to Americans for years before the power is needed by Manitoba customers. But the PUB warns that if Manitoba Hydro's gamble fails to pay off, those Manitoba customers could see their monthly bills more than double, with Hydro selling electricity to U.S. customers for less than it costs to produce the power in the first place. The' money quote' from the PUB has been cited in the Winnipeg Sun and the Globe and Mail. (The full 111 page order can be found on the PUB website. We read it so you don't have to. Quotes in italics with translation into English were warranted.) "The Board indicates within this Order its concern that if MH proceeds with its development plan “as is” t he inadvertent