The Black Rod

Drop dead , said the City to Colin Craig. Oh, not so succinctly. But the message was clear---beat it, get lost, scram. It took less than a dozen words to slam the door in Craig's face, lock it, bolt it, and hope he went away. Craig, you see, is the local director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And more than a year ago, he politely asked the City for briefing notes, memos, emails and any other documentation they had regarding the process by which Winnipeg's new Fire Hall No. 11 ballooned in size to it's present corpulent state. Not that it's gargantuan in the way the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is -- four football fields of empty space enclosed within a steel and concrete skeleton. But it is almost half again as big as the other three firehalls built as part of the same infrastructure replacement program. And Fire Hall No. 11 is the fishiest project of the entire Sheegl-Shindico Bid-Rigging Scandal that's consumed the pu...

It's time to call in the cops. Talk to anybody in this city and they'll tell you the public perception is that the Winnipeg Firehalls Scandal has crossed an invisible line that separates collusion from corruption. Credence in anything the city's administration says died a swift death when the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation revealed how city officials responded to their question of who supersized the new St. James firehall to become 40 percent larger than originally designed. Er, said Winnipeg's senior civil servants, there's no documentation on that. Nothing. Nix. Not an email, not a note, not a scribble in the men's room.  Zip.  Given that the Firehall No.11 (St. James) is being blamed for most of the $3 million cost overrun on the $15 million project to build 4 new fire stations, the city's answer is completely unbelievable. Did somebody sweep the files clean of all references to Fire Station 11? CAO Phil Sheegl ...

If part of the Winnipeg Free Press story by Mike McIntyre about the killing of Justin Demarais seems familiar, a tad too familiar, there's a good reason.  You've read most of the details about the murder victim being an alleged perp himself in an exclusive on this blog. In 2008. http://blackrod.blogspot.ca/2008/08/hip-hop-murder-more-twisting-taman.html Since the Free Press scalped our story but edited out important specific details, it's only right that they be presented once more so readers can A) see for themselves, the lifestyle that years later, led to Demarais' body being found in an Andrews St. rooming house. And B) how citizen journalists scooped the MSM. FRIDAY, AUGUST 01, 2008 Hip Hop Murder?, More Twisting Taman  Testimony, and the return of. .. ... The investigation into last weekend's mysterious abduction in the 500 block of College Avenue is a homicide investigation. Winnipeg police have been told the still missing, still unidentifi...

Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz says there's no need for an audit of the latest city mega-million-dollar boondoggle---the project to convert the downtown post office into a new police headquarters. Everything you need to know about the reason for the huge cost overruns was explained in a report to his executive policy committee in December, he says. Russ Wyatt, chairman of city council's finance committee, says there's no need for an audit of the latest city mega-million-dollar boondoggle. It's too expensive, he says, and for what ? It will only say exactly what the audit of the project to build four new firehalls said---that the city's chief administrative officer (since departed) was incompetent. Councillor Brian Mayes, a member of EPC, says there's no need for an audit of the latest city mega-million-dollar boondoggle because it's much ado about nothing.  "What we're really looking at here is 12 or 13 percent overrun ... most of it ...

Bwahahahaha. The snow's up to our roofs, it's colder in Winnipeg than on Mars, and the mayor thinks that clearing the snow and ice off city streets is an unnecessary luxury.  Sometimes you really need a laugh. The Globe and Mail came to the rescue Saturday. In a puff piece about the over-budget, overdue, over-hyped Canadian Museum for Human Rights, writer Roy MacGregor gushed that "(m)ore than 75,000 people"  have donated money to build the thing. "It is a striking and memorable building, if rather eccentric." Which is Toronto-high society-speak for "Yikes, is it ever ugly!" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/in-winnipeg-a-striking-museum-for-an-evolving-city/article16193962/ The punchline of the piece is how wrong MacGregor's awe-inducing declaration of public support for the epic money pit is. By all accounts, the real number of donors to the CMHR is barely 7500.  That's right, one-tenth of wh...