The Black Rod

Is Sam Katz auditioning for a new career as a comedian? He's no Robin Williams, but you've got to start somewhere.   When the news broke that the province of Manitoba had asked the RCMP to review the trio of city audits that uncovered massive favoritism in handing out construction contracts "and to conduct any investigations it considers appropriate," Katz tapped his funny bone to knock off some one-liners in the form of a "statement." His best: "The province has made their decision and chosen to exercise their right to refer to the RCMP, and all of council would support their decision , and I hope this brings closure." Bwahaha. Now that's funny. It may be too subtle for many people, but it's in the true tradition of understated British humour. You see, Katz is saying just the opposite.  He and his council cabal voted AGAINST sending the audits to the provincial justice department , a move made by c...

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...

The last time we looked at the Winnipeg Firehalls Scandal we demonstrated how the project degenerated progressively so that it went from: - a one million dollar surplus on the first new fire station, t hen -  a pair of big deficits on the next two, to. .. a fourth and final station being built by a process that's completely out of control with: -  no tender, -  no contract, -  no fixed budget, -  no timeline -  and no oversight. Now for the bad news. To justify city council approval to cover a cost overrun of at least $2.2 million on the firehall currently being built in St. James ( the last of the quartet okayed by council in 2009) the fire department submitted a "report". In it was a financial accounting of the project so far--- what was spent on which firehall and how it compared to the original budget. We spent a week pouring over the numbers. Here, for the first time ever, is a detailed report of how the new firehalls ...

The City of Winnipeg's top civil servants have defiantly closed ranks around Fire Chief Reid Douglas whose handling of a $15 million project to build four new fire stations is at the heart of a scandal that's shaking public trust in city government like never before. Douglas submitted a report last week to a city committee seeking another $2.3 million from the 2013 budget to cover cost overruns on the new firehalls.  He's already spent the $15.3 million allocated for the project but only three fire stations have been built and the last, in St. James, only just started.  Douglas twice increased the size of the fourth firehall without telling city councillors why, then tried to hide the increased cost  from them, even as late as last month (September). He wrote in his report supporting the extra funding that : "The Fire Chief had the authority to change the scope of the project in order to accommodate these operational needs and efficiencies as they were antic...