The Black Rod

Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz had to do some big-time fudging of the facts to sell his runaway property taxes to the public. His latest budget calls for a 3.87 percent increase in taxes, and a promise to keep raising taxes for the indefinite future. So what, says Katz, the City of Winnipeg still has the lowest municipal property taxes among major Canadian cities. In fact, those are the exact words used in a wraparound Winnipeg Budget supplement carried by all the city's weekly newspapers, just immediately above a photo of Mayor Sam grinning from ear to ear, and beside a bar graph allegedly comparing taxes in Canada's major cities. You will note we used the word 'allegedly'. Memo to the Mayor: did you really think we wouldn't check? The Mayor's PR blitz cites the source of the comparative taxes paid in cities from coast to coast as "City of Calgary 2011 Residential Property Taxes & Utility Charges Survey", released Novem...

You don't say. Or should that be, you better not say, White Boy . Mia Rabson, the Ottawa reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press, writes that poking fun at the faux hunger striker Chief Theresa Spence "plays into the stereotypes and racism that underlie much of the struggle First Nations have had in this country for the past 140 years." Oh, and the taunts "encourage the racist thinking that has reared its ugly head in spade since Idle No More and Spence started gaining national attention." Rabson and the rest of the MSM crowd are big on smearing people with the label "racist" to silence them . Her colleague Lindor Reynolds went to Morris, Manitoba, to prove her liberal bona fides by attacking the editor of a local newspaper who gave a thumbs down to native "leaders" who make terrorist threats. Free speech be damned. The "professional journalists" have spoken. And while they speak, they sure don'...

Winnipeg city councillor Paula Havixbeck has had a target on her back since October. So her vindictive removal from the mayor's coveted executive policy committee came as no real surprise. It had just been a question of when. October, that's when the rookie councillor did the unthinkable. She stood up to council's bully twins--Mayor Sam Katz and his closest friend city CAO Phil Sheegl. Katz and Sheegl were then furiously trying to cover-up the scandal of how the company owned by Katz's business partner and other close pal Sandy Shindleman wound up with $14 million in city contracts to build four new firehalls without anybody on council knowing about it. "What's the big deal? Everybody knew," was Katz's first try to put the fire out. Everybody did know the firehalls were being built, but the name of the contractor was kept a deep, dark secret by then-deputy Fire Chief Reid Douglas, who had inexplicably gone behind counc...

You can tell in a second why the Idle No More movement isn't attracting any support (despite what the mainstream media is telling you.) The music sucks. Our condolences to the reporters who are forced to stick around listening to the ear-bleeding screeching over mind-numbing drumming that passes as the soundtrack to the mob scenes which alienate the public more with each passing day. We shall overcome our urge to puke when we hear it. An estimated 500 Idle supporters showed up at the Legislature Monday night to perform for the television cameras. That's the same number that showed up a month ago. No growth means nobody cares. The Idle crowd even dredged up Buffy St. Marie from somewhere to give their show some star appeal, except that the reaction to her presence was more "Is she still alive?" than "Wow." A smaller crowd the same day had a bigger impact up north. About 30 people threw up a blockade of what the Winnipeg...

Well, well, well....Progressive Conservative MLA Mavis Taillieu has picked up her pitchfork and torch and joined the mob trying to silence the editor of the Morris Mirror. Taillieu, who is usually invisible on every other issue under the sun, wants to be sure to be seen to be in the front ranks of those eager to stifle a journalist's right to fair comment on a controversial issue in the community. Free speech? Freedom of expression? Freedom of belief? What fool thinks that crap up ? Certainly not the caucus whip of the P.C. Party of Manitoba. She has pulled her political advertising from the newspaper because Mirror editor Reed Turcotte has refused to kowtow to the intimidation tactics of the Idle No More crowd. You know, the people who are loudly demanding their, er, constitutional rights. What did Turcotte do to stir up the mob? He offered his honest opinion on the extremists in their bunch, and printed the inconvenient truth of their "move...

  He wears feathers on his head and calls himself the Grand Chief. Meet Derek Nepinak who fancies himself as a playa on the national scene, what with the mainstream media fawning over him as he makes his, ahem, demands on the Prime Minister. Nepinak has been honing his schtick in Manitoba for over a year since being elected Big Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. You see, he had an idea. Indians have no money. You have money. So if he could get his hands on your money, that would solve the problem of Indians without money. See how simple it is? But how to extract more of your money? The answer lay in the word "extract", as in natural resources. Nepinak has been pushing the idea of something called resource revenue sharing. That's where mining companies, drilling companies, and others have to pay Indians whenever they invest millions of dollars of their own money to develop Canada's natural resources. Is it because of all...

  We splurged on some good seats. We got there early. We were excited. And in return we were given three hours and five minutes of exactly what we came for -- an enchanting evening of theatre with the premiere of an adaptation of one of the world's most famous novels, Gone With the Wind. We left MTC with goofy smiles on our faces. Yes, we were the ones with the goofy smiles Saturday night . We were thoroughly entertained. Make no mistake---this is a work in progress. But why review what isn't there when what is there is captivating on its own. The entire Gone With the Wind story is there -- from the glory days of the Old South to the horrors of the Civil War, including the burning of Atlanta, to the upheaval of the Reconstruction. And Scarlett, bewitching and cunning Scarlett O'Hara, destined to be one of the great Stage Noir temptresses. It's not story that makes theatre; it's the actors. Gone With the Wind begins and ends wi...

The Shadow has a higher public profile than he does. You couldn't pick him out of a line-up.  If his picture has ever been posted anywhere, let us know. What is known is that he's got bigger cojones than anyone at City Hall.  This year he stared down the mayor of Winnipeg and the mayor's closest friend and ally,the city's chief administrative officer, who happens to be the most powerful man in city government. By the time he got through with them, they were sitting in council chambers like frightened schoolboys in the principal's office as they watched their power to intimidate city councillors evaporate into thin air. And because of him, those councillors developed some backbone for the first time in living memory and showed they could take the reins of government away from unelected administrators if they wanted. The Black Rod's Newsmaker of the Year---city auditor Brian Whiteside. Way back as far as last January, Whiteside gave a warning th...

Imagine this scenario... Mohammed and Muhammed go to Iran, a state that sponsors terrorism around the globe, and they loudly and publicly denounce Canada. Less than two months later, an organized group creates a diversion at the Winnipeg International Airport on one of the busiest travel days of the year, possibly allowing others to test the placement and reaction of security officers. This happens only days before Christmas Eve, the holiest time of the year in the Christian religion. Later, following the disruption at the airport, Mo-Hamed, an associate of Mohammed and Muhammed, informs the members of his organization he plans "an explosive delivery" to the headquarters of Manitoba Hydro, the company that provides electricity to the province--- most importantly, perhaps, to the furnaces that heat everyones' homes in the winter. It also happens to be the organization he's had a longstanding grievance against. He is stopped by sec...