The Black Rod

Stephanie Forsyth knew the jig was up when they started asking about her new marble floors counter tops and backsplash. ( h/t to someone who knows ) There's a saying in baseball.  No, it's not "There's no crying in baseball."  The saying is "Three strikes and YOU'RE OUT!" Strike One was discovering in March, 2013, that Red River College paid for $205 golf shoes, and the new tires for her car, and even her driver's licence -- which led to some repayment and a lot of red faces. (h/t CTF) Strike Two was the revelation in November, 2013, that the college covered the cost of rented tables and chairs for a party Forsyth held at her house for friends who were attending the wedding of somebody whose name is being kept secret by Red River. Forsyth paid back the cost, even though college officials said the expense was perfectly legitimate. (Once again, thanks to the Taxpayers Federation) But how to explain how marble, bought for the remodellin...

It's hard to say who should be more embarrassed by the latest mayoral election poll --- the pollsters, the press, or the funders?   The first crowd-sourced election poll in Canada turned out to be such a bust that the pollsters had to invent something new to give its funders to justify taking their money. Winnipeg's Probe Research Inc. issued a poll grading the support of the candidates for mayor, but with a 29 percent undecided response, the poll was less reliable than your daily horoscope. Ten percent undecided would be large.  Twenty percent would be huge.  But almost 30 percent is a joke, a bad joke that invalidates the alleged results. In a desperate move to keep some credibility, Probe Research invented a momentum index, claiming to measure which candidates are moving up in public opinion and which down.  When was the last time you heard of something like this?  Hint: NEVER. But they had to deliver something to the pri...

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...

The public lynching of mayoral candidate Gord Steeves last Wednesday was not only ugly, it was a frightening display of how an uncontrolled news mob will gladly abandon ethics and propriety for self-promotion. Having invented a scandal, Winnipeg's best known purported professional journalists descended on a Steeves news conference determined to stir more controversy -- even if they had to manufacture it. The most egregious faux-journalist was CJOB's news director , Richard Cloutier . CJOB, with its listenership in freefall, has decided that the way to recoup its ratings is with stunts. So they determined they would go live to the Steeves news conference where, just maybe if they were lucky, trouble would break out. The problem with going live is that you can't control the event. So when Steeves began eating up time outlining a policy proposal to improve the lives of Winnipegers, it was more than Cloutier could stand.  Cloutier disrup...

The Winnipeg Free Press appears to be gearing up for the next federal election by hiring the most strident hater of the Conservative Party they could find to join their editorial department. We're not talking about FP Editor Paul Samyn, who was the biggest shill for the Liberal Party in Ottawa when he was the newspaper's Parliamentary reporter.  See http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2006/10/fp-admits-bad-reporting-still-says.html for details. This past weekend Samyn announced that "we have a new editor responsible for the perspectives you will be reading both in print and on-line. Shannon Sampert, an expert in Canadian politics and the media, joins our newsroom from the University of Winnipeg...Shannon becomes the first woman to oversee our editorial pages. I think Dafoe would be proud ." Shannon Sampert was no stranger to The Black Rod (more about that in a minute). We more-or-less ignored her in her teaching job at the U of W, but when we learned s...

Gord Steeves has suddenly been propelled into being the frontrunner in Winnipeg's mayoral race. And it's not for something he said or did. He can thank his wife for the push. What? What are you talking about? The MSM says his campaign is finished because of a four-year-old Facebook post by his wife complaining about being harrassed by "drunk native guys." Hardly.  Because EVERYBODY KNOWS IT'S TRUE! And that means that finally somebody is talking about something that people care about. Like WHY DOWNTOWN WINNIPEG IS SUCH A SHITHOLE. Steeves' support is solidified by the trumped-up attack on him, and voters who haven't paid much, if any, attention to the campaign for mayor now know his name.  And they also know he's the only candidate they've heard saying what they want to hear -- clean up downtown. He's not jabbering about some abstract "vision" of some future city in some non-existent dreamland.  He's talkin...

The looting of Winnipeg started almost as soon as Phil Sheegl got on the city payroll. And it lasted almost until the day he quit. That's the cold truth you're left with after reading the latest audit presented to city hall, an audit of five years of real estate deals conducted by the city under Sheegl's watch. Phil Sheegl, the best friend of Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz, was hired in April, 2008, as the director of the city's department of planning, property and development. In  November, 2008, he was appointed deputy Chief Administrative Officer, and in 2011 he replaced Glen Laubenstein as CAO. Three months after Sheegl got the planning job, the city announced it was looking for real estate advisors and brokers to "assist the city with real estate transactions".  They eventually qualified five. "In the transactions where an external advisor was retained, there was no documentation explaining the rationale why an external adv...