The Black Rod

We appreciate the emails from concerned readers who have asked, where have we been?  Working diligently on Project X. Thank you for your tips. It took the train wreck known as Manitoba Hydro to get us to set things aside and get back into the arena. Manitoba Hydro has applied to the Public Utilities Board for another hike in rates. This year they're asking for a rates to go up 3.95 percent. Something about that number seemed odd. But what? It didn't take long to answer the question with a clipping from a Canadian Press story posted two-and-a-half years ago. "Manitoba Hydro's CEO says customers can expect rate increases of about 3.5 per cent a year for the foreseeable future as the Crown-owned utility builds new generating stations while export prices are soft."  ( CP, Sept. 19, 2012 ) So Hydro's minimum rate hike has climbed by almost half a percent a year.  And that's  after the plan to build Manitoba's biggest generatin...

Winnipeg Police issued a false news release Wednesday that was designed to mislead the public while simultaneously making two serving officers into scapegoats for Chief Devon Clunis. Here's how most relevant portion of the news release read: Winnipeg Police Professional Standards Investigation The Winnipeg Police Homicide Unit has been actively investigating the murder of Tina Fontaine since August, 2014. This investigation is on-going. Numerous people have been interviewed, and a number of forensic tests have been conducted.   During the course of the investigation, Homicide investigators discovered that Tina Fontaine was reported as a missing person on July 31st, 2014. Investigators also discovered that two members of the Winnipeg Police Service had contact with Ms. Fontaine on August 8th, 2014, approximately 24 hours before her disappearance.   Chief Clunis was informed of these events on September 3rd, 2014, and immediately direct...

Winnipeg 's new mayor Brian Bowman knew where to find the money for the off-leash dog park he promised his friends  in the suburbs---take it from inner city children using city pools. Bowman and his handpicked chairman of the city's finance committee, Charleswood councillor Marty Marantz,  brought a budget to city council cutting $300,000 from the aquatics recreation programs used by the children and spending $300,000 on a park where dogs can run around. They whined a lot about how tough it was to balance the budget and how they had to make tough decisions. But all along they had no intention of saving money by reducing spending on recreation services. They just raided the kids for cash for dogs. "I'd like to see it as a destination for Winnipeggers in the suburbs, to have a reason to come downtown..." was the way Bowman put it. This act alone will define Bowman's term in office.  Brian Bowman  started breaking his campaign promises...

Manitoba political pundits feel hornswoggled, hookwinked and bamboozled. For five months they've been covering the ins and outs and ups and downs of an alleged revolt of a handful of NDP cabinet ministers against Premier Greg Selinger. It was supposed to culminate Sunday in the ouster of Selinger as leader of the party when delegates to a party convention chose one or the other of two challengers for his job. Except that he won. By a narrow margin, sure.  But he won. The pundits gave out a collective gasp. This wasn't supposed to happen. Selinger was supposed to quit or be defeated. This was the worst outcome possible for the NDP -- a permanently split party and an invigorated Opposition. "So what exactly was the point of all that again?... In one sense, the Manitoba NDP are back to square one, exactly where they were six months ago." said  Curtis Brown, vice-president of pollsters Probe Research Inc. Who saw that coming? Well, we ...

Taking a page out of the Putin playbook, the Manitoba NDP government is frantically rewriting history to justify its racially-oriented takeover of the long-running women's shelter Osborne House. Through a series of strategic leaks to reporters at the Winnipeg Free Press, the NDP has created a false narrative akin to Putin's explanation of how Russia had to --- just had to --- seize Crimea from Ukraine because of all the injustices the evil Ukrainians were imposing on Russians who lived there. NDP deputy premier Eric Robinson's racist slurs against white Manitobans, which preceeded the takeover of Osborne House, have been carefully whitewashed to turn them into an 'unfortunate choice of words', rather than a deliberate racial bias.  " Robinson later apologized ," writes the Free Press, ignoring the fact he was forced by the Premier to issue a lawyered statement after telling APTN he meant exactly what he said and he woul...