Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz had to do some big-time fudging of the facts to sell his runaway property taxes to the public. His latest budget calls for a 3.87 percent increase in taxes, and a promise to keep raising taxes for the indefinite future. So what, says Katz, the City of Winnipeg still has the lowest municipal property taxes among major Canadian cities. In fact, those are the exact words used in a wraparound Winnipeg Budget supplement carried by all the city's weekly newspapers, just immediately above a photo of Mayor Sam grinning from ear to ear, and beside a bar graph allegedly comparing taxes in Canada's major cities. You will note we used the word 'allegedly'. Memo to the Mayor: did you really think we wouldn't check? The Mayor's PR blitz cites the source of the comparative taxes paid in cities from coast to coast as "City of Calgary 2011 Residential Property Taxes & Utility Charges Survey", released Novem...
The origin of the Usher of the Black Rod goes back to early fourteenth century England . Today, with no royal duties to perform, the Usher knocks on the doors of the House of Commons with the Black Rod at the start of Parliament to summon the members. The rod is a symbol for the authority of debate in the upper house. We of The Black Rod adopted the symbol to knock some sense and the right questions into the heads of Legislators, pundits, and other opinion makers.