The Black Rod

  What do you do if you're a news reporter and the biggest story of the day, if not the election, falls right into your lap? Well, if you work for CBC Winnipeg, the answer appears to be 'news be damned' if it doesn't fit the narrative being promoted at the moment. The Black Rod happened to be on the scene when a deranged man smashed out the windows of a clearly marked CBC vehicle on Main Street in broad daylight Monday afternoon.  The female reporter cowered in the front seat, weeping while speaking to someone on her cell phone. The male camera man huddled in fear in the back seat as he, also, talked on his phone. Neither of the news crew was using their phone to capture video of the attack. The car was parked outside of Our Place/Chez Nous at 676 Main St. just south of Higgins. The CBC team had obviously just interviewed some of the directors of the drop-in centre that's closing after 30 years on the Strip amidst, as their CBC report later that evening put it...

  With 2022 receding fast in the rear-view mirror there's just enough time to ordain the annual Newsmaker of the Year. He arrived with the biggest anticipation, the biggest name, the biggest voice, the biggest lead in the polls, and the biggest hype in the press. He ended the year as the biggest loser, and that's not a reference to having the biggest waistline in the race to be mayor. Ladies and gentlemen, say goodbye to Glen Murray. Goodbye because his crash-and-burn campaign was like watching the Hindenberg drop gently from the sky before erupting in uncontrollable fire, consumed in minutes. That sucker will never fly again. With an election set for October, the press treated Murray's anticipated candidacy like the Second Coming. Murray, who was mayor from 1998 to 2004, had come home to retake the reins at city hall. When would he announce? The official announcement came on June 22.  To the press, the election was over. Nobody could beat Glen Murray. His campaig...

  Two cases of blatant fake news in the Winnipeg mainstream media this week serve as prime examples of why consumers continue to abandon the MSM by the thousands. The most egregious is the smear campaign being conducted in the Manitoba Legislature by the NDP and Liberals against Kevin Klein, the Progressive Conservative candidate in the upcoming Kirkfield Park by-election. The smear was led by MLA Dougald Lamont, who has officially donned the crown as the slimiest politician in the province. Lamont is the "leader" of a rump group of 3 MLA's who sit in the far back benches under the banner of the Liberal Party of Manitoba, though they have no chance of ever becoming the government, and can't even elect enough members to qualify as a legitimate 'party' in the Legislature. Lamont has been attacking Klein for working with Peter Nygaard, the "disgraced fashion mogul" as the Winnipeg Free Press labels him. Nygaard is in jail in Toronto awaiting trial on...

  By any measure, Glen Murray is unfit to be mayor of Winnipeg. He's been openly lying to voters for months about the disgraceful behaviour that caused him to be fired from his "dream job" as head of the Alberta think tank the Pembina Institute. And coupled with his thuggish attempt to intimidate the female Mayor of a small township in Ontario when he was in the Liberal cabinet, his actions speak volumes about his prejudice against women whether they are colleagues, employees or elected officials. Murray has hidden behind the fiction that he left Pembina because of "personal issues" and that any recent criticisms are just sour grapes from employees who objected to his attempt to modernize and shake up the think tank. A couple of devastating investigative reports by CBC have shown that nothing could be further from the truth. Murray's critics aren't hiding behind the usual "anonymous sources" that too many "investigative reports...

It's astonishing how hard the Winnipeg news media are working to sanitize the details of former mayor Glen Murray's disastrous stint in his "dream job" (before he got fired) at the Pembina Institute, an  Alberta clean-energy think tank. Is it because they think their readers/viewers can't handle the truth or that they are too sensitive to be told the gross facts? Or is this reflective of their slanted coverage of the Winnipeg mayoral candidates? Murray quit his job as an elected member of the Ontario legislature to become the executive director of the Pembina Institute because, he said at the time, he couldn't resist his "dream job" , working on environmental issues at the end of his political career. Then, only eight months later, he got the bum's rush out the door. Today Murray is painting himself as a victim. He was hired, he says, to bring fresh thinking to the think-tank but the organization couldn't handle change, so they agreed "m...

What better way to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation than by injecting some truth into the Truth column. Then the Reconciliation can follow with the critics of Winnipeg Mayor candidate Don Woodstock issuing their apologies to him for telling the truth at an all-candidates forum held by the  Council of Women of Winnipeg . Woodstock stirred a mini-tempest when he addressed the topic of ways to improve safety for women. Another  candidate had raised the issue  of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and Woodstrock responded by saying  Indigenous men bore much of the blame and needed to do more to stop violence against women. The knee-jerk reaction wasn't long in coming. MKO Grand Chief Garrison Settee was interviewed by CBC. "Settee said on the path toward reconciliation, Indigenous people are trying to meet non-Indigenous people halfway and don't need someone like Woodstock spreading stereotypes. "He should drop out of the race and work on ...

There's always been something fishy about Glen Murray's abrupt and unexplained departure from his "dream job" in Alberta. Murray left the prestige, salary, and power of a cabinet minister in the Ontario government to head a think tank in Calgary. He raved rhapsodic at the opportunity to lead the fight against climate change in his new post. From an interview with Steve Paikin of TVO, TVOntario, a publicly funded English-language educational television network, just after taking over as executive director of the Pembina Institute  https://www.tvo.org/ transcript/2463712 WHEN I TURN 60, WHICH WILL BE IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS, THAT WAS THE THIRD PHASE OF MY LIFE,  SORT OF THE ELDER PHASE. ... BY THAT POINT I WOULD KNOW MYSELF BETTER , I DON'T HAVE TO PROVE MYSELF ANYMORE , AND I WAS GOING TO DEDICATE ALL OF MY ENERGY TO  THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE IN THE WORLD, AND FOR ME, IT'S CLIMATE CHANGE. ... BUT I THINK IT TAKES AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP A...