The Black Rod

For the first time ever, we need to issue a content warning. If you are easily upset by obscenity or descriptions of explicit sex acts, don't read on. The witchhunt has started. The first to be dragged to the stake is Stuart Murray, the newly announced Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. His crime? He's not pure enough for the homosexual lobby. Detractors of the CMHR said from the beginning it was going to be a publicly funded tool to promote left-wing feminist/homosexual social engineering. Not so, insisted the museum's backers. When reporting to the federal Heritage minister in 2008, Arni Thorsteinson, then-chairman of the federal advisory committee on the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, wrote: (All emphasis herein is ours) “There was a concern among respondents in the web-based consultations and focus groups testing that the CMHR could be influenced by political activities, or special interest groups in a manner that could affect, or be pe...

Manitoba Premier Gary Doer sat stonefaced in the Legislature, staring at the raving man who stood beside him. The man was bellowing at the top of his lungs, his arms flailing, spit flying from his mouth. It was three days ago. Doer watched as the madman ranted on and on, and the lame-duck premier counted the minutes until he could walk away from this madhouse to the sanity of a diplomatic posting in Washington. But we don't have that option. For that lunatic in the Legislature was none other than Manitoba Attorney General Dave Chomiak. What set off his bout of carpet-chewing was a demand from the Opposition for him to table his promised new gang strategy or resign. Thursday, he rolled out his gang strategy. He should have resigned instead. His much touted NEW gang strategy turned out to be a cut-and-paste job of every "new" gang strategy the NDP has trotted out in the past decade. The cornerstone of Chomiak's new strategy dates back seventy years --- a list of Public ...

A group of about 30 people marched from the North End to the Legislature yesterday. There wasn't a university egghead in the bunch. Nor could you find a single Indian Chief or Nahanni Fontaine or any of the usual hate-the-police crowd who claim to speak for native people. That's because the message the marchers brought to the politicians wasn't the message being peddled in Manitoba's universities or newspapers or by racial demagogues in the aboriginal community. It was the direct opposite of the "special report" prepared by leftwing university professors for the attention of Attorney General Dave Chomiak , which embraced the "wisdom" of members of a violent street gang who said authorities should end a crackdown on gangs and concentrate on ending poverty. The residents of the North End who made the long march didn't carry signs saying "End Poverty". Their message was "Stop the Violence." And it was directed at those same gang ...

After a lone gunman sprayed a North End wedding reception with bullets on July 25th, killing one woman and wounding a number of other guests, Winnipeg police began squeezing gang members for information. The late July attack even roused Attorney General Dave "Six Months" Chomiak to drop the Manitoba NDP's ten year moratorium on disturbing aboriginal street gangs. He began babbling about adopting a new, new , new , new , NEW gang strategy aimed at the same gangs that have thrived on his government's watch. It was all too much for six members of the Manitoba Warriors. The police had been paying special attention to the Warriors, some of whom had been guests at the wedding, raising suspicion that they had been the targets of a rival gang. This small contingent couldn't take the heat, so they went running for help to the only people still dumb enough to fall for their con---university eggheads. "So when these men approached us , saying that they wanted to convey ...

We were surprised to see Minto MLA Andrew Swan as the first out of the gate to announce he wants Gary Doer's job as leader of the Manitoba NDP and Premier of the Province. The first to step forward is always the sacrificial lamb, the least likely to succeed. We thought for sure it would be Thompson rep Steve Ashton. He hasn't got a chance of winning, but he's the North's favourite son. Even after conceding, he could always claim he was a winner for forcing northern issues on the party's agenda. Instead, Swan showed his political acumen by reaching for the Loser's ring first. Swan is a cabinet minister, the Minister of Competitiveness, Training and Trade. That job is so irrelevant he can abandon it in the middle of a recession at the drop of a hat and nobody cares. Quick....who was the Minister of Competitiveness, Training and Trade before Swan? Riiiiight. It was Scott Smith, who found the experience his ticket to obscurity. The biggest asset Swan brings to the r...

Score 1 for the CBC and 1 for City Councillor Harvey Smith. But it's only one down, and 35 to go. So applaud by all means, but not for too long. CBC-TV shamed city and provincial officials into doing something about a crack house on Simcoe Street that had been the target of a drive-by shooting last week. Initially city officials told the CBC "we called the landlord, what else can we do?" But after video of the ramshackle building and its terrified occupants, with death threats painted on the outside and gang signs inside, appeared on the supperhour news, somebody lit a fire under somebody's ass. The next day a swarm of inspectors descended on the building, and before they were through they ordered it shut down and the poor residents were told they had three days to clear out. Guess that shows what they can do--- if they want to . But the original newscast had a disturbing loose end. The community has apparently identified 35 other crack houses, booze cans, and gang ha...

The CBC is on fire. CBC-Television News broke from the pack this week, and it wasn't only its coverage of the Hillary Wilson-Cherisse Houle story. The day of ignition was Monday, the day the Winnipeg Free Press reported that murder victim Hillary Wilson had known Cherisse Houle, a prostitute also found dead on the outskirts of Winnipeg one month earlier. ( A reader has pointed out that CTV"s Stacey Ashley actually broke this detail on Sunday's 6 o'clock newscast - ed.) From then on they did something exceptionally unusual in Winnipeg--- they followed the story every single day, advancing it bit by bit throughout the week. Sure, some of the scoops were bunk. The two dead girls both testified, reported CBC, at the trials of members of an Asian gang that traded crack for sex from as many as 20 young aboriginal girls. It turned out the "gang" was six Vietnamese men in their mid-50's, half of whom were deported upon conviction. And the "mysterious van...

The answer--- Lloyd Axworthy. The question? Who will replace Gary Doer as leader of the Manitoba NDP and as Premier of Manitoba? Forget the knee-jerk professional pundits. The so-called potential candidates are either waist deep in delusion (Steve Ashton), shoulder deep in scandal (Greg Selinger) or nose deep in obscurity (Nancy Allan). Gary Doer's parting gift to his once-heralded-heir, Bill Blaikie, was a knife in the back Sicilian-style with a declaration on how out-of-touch Old Lefties (like Billy) are with the electorate. The party brass could appoint an interim Premier---nice-guy Gord Mackintosh fits the bill---to carry them over the winter while the leadership "race" steals the spotlight from the Opposition. Or they could seize the brass ring now, install his Lloydship and dare the Opposition to challenge his holiness. Axworthy is no stranger to the Manitoba Legislature.He was elected as a Liberal in Fort Rouge in the 1973 election and re-elected ...

It was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud. But Gary Doer was laughing up his sleeve every minute of it. The time: Jan. 30, 2001 The occasion: Manitoba's Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections The NDP was taking another opportunity to humiliate and torture the Tories over the scandal that cost the Conservatives the 1999 election. Leading the hectoring was Steve Ashton, then the Minister of Highways, who took aim at what he called the win-at-all costs school of ethics. ASHTON: I want to ask some questions that directly follow from some of the aspects we have seen in the last number of years in terms of elections, sort of, if one was to describe it, the lack of ethics that seems to have characterized the Conservative Party's approach in both the '95 and the '99 elections... There was a cover-up engineered by senior PC Party officials of that specific incident. I think we are going to be asking today some questions as to whether the...

Manitoba Premier Gary Doer went for a checkup this summer and got some bad news. His teflon was gone. Internal polling showed that NDP support had gone softer than jell-o. The day when his personal popularity could carry the party through times of trouble were over. The NDP has been running a stealth election campaign for over a month. We saw it, but couldn't figure out what was going on. By the new law of fixed election dates, the next election isn't until October, 2011. So how, we kept asking ourselves, could they precipitate an early election? With Doer's resignation as Premier, we now know the game. The NDP had to change its public image with or without Doer at the helm. They launched their '11 election campaign early, counting on the momentum to carry them through the dark days ahead. - Gary Doer is telling everyone he's leaving because he's been Premier for 10 years and its time to revitalize the party. Don't believe it. He's bring driven out of ...