The Black Rod

Like most in Winnipeg, we were first shocked, then titillated by the news stories about the damning report into the Winnipeg School Division by John Wiens, "dean emeritus and professor, faculty of education, University of Manitoba," that was  released last week. Then we read the report. We can't recall ever reading a more alarming political document in recent Manitoba history. Instead of what we had been lead to believe from the news accounts --- that Wiens found the school board so dysfunctional that the province may have to seize control -- we found a biased attack by an NDP insider with a major personal conflict of interest whose intention was to discredit the school board to set up a hostile takeover by the NDP government. But that's not even the unnerving part. A careful reading of  the 106-page report revealed a chilling mindset of authoritarian governance that would be perfectly normal in North Korea or Soviet Russia---but never, ever in a free an...

Janice Lukes has to be fired from Winnipeg council's executive policy committee immediately. She was hand-picked by Mayor Brian Bowman to sit on EPC and to chair the city's influential public works committee.  We'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't know what a mistake he was making. Winnipeg cannot have someone who openly breaks the law sit on the city's most powerful committee.  Especially now that we see how much of a Trojan Horse she is for the bike lobby, promoting, priorizing and spearheading major projects that benefit a tiny special interest group at the expense of the rest of taxpaying Winnipeggers. It was that allegiance to the bike lobby that caught her up. The Winnipeg Free Press recently published a story about a stretch of Pembina Highway leading to the University of Manitoba that bicyclists feel is unsafe. Stretch of Pembina has already proved deadly for cyclists By: Kristin Annable  It’s a no man’s land for cyclists. A ...