The Black Rod

The Winnipeg Police force has managed to stay under the radar of the national news organizations for over three weeks now, but once their luck runs out the results will be incendiary. How Winnipeg police conduct a missing persons investigation into the disappearance of Christine Wood will become the test case for the recently announced Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women Inquiry.  Winnipeg will be the stand-in for all police departments across Canada in similar investigations. And so far, the example is not good. Here's where we would normally give the background to the case. The known facts.  Except that the "known facts" in the disappearance of Christine Wood keep changing from week to week. And the police have been no help in keeping the public informed. In fact, they're partly responsible for the confusion. Nevertheless, here's what we know culled from various news accounts. * 21-year-old Christine Wood was in Winnipeg with her parents to accompany a...

Can supporters of The Canadian Museum for Human Rights handle the truth?  * $80 million in debt with no hope of paying it off * begging the federal government to raise its $21.7 million annual allowance by at least 50 percent  to buy more time *  a report that seems to indicate the museum's fundraising arm can't collect $24 million, or almost one in four of the $151 million dollars the Friends of the CMHR boasts it has raised. Last week the CMHR announced what should have been good news ---it settled its tax bill with the City of Winnipeg.  The museum owed $2.7 million  for this year's property taxes, much much less than the $5-to-$8 million they expected their taxes to be. The federal government, which is ultimately on the hook for what's called "payments in lieu of taxes" for federal institutions like museums, paid the $2.7 million plus arrears of $6.7 million. It then put the total - $9.4M - on the CMHR's tab. The museum is already $70 million...

Last week's release of the annual report on crime and disorder in the city put a lot of things in  a new perspective---starting with the surprise retirement of the police chief and ending with an abrasive member of the police board getting the hook. Back in March, Police Chief Devon Clunis made a stunning announcement---he was quitting.  Only 52, he was retiring after 29 years as a cop. He had been in the top job barely 3 l/2 years, though, which is why people were so surprised he was anxious to leave.    Anxious to leave. That's a polite way to say bolting for the exit.   Clunis made a big noise when he was hired as police chief.  He was literally going to change the culture of policing, he declared.  Fighting crime was so yesterday, he sneered. He was going to mobilize entire communities, heal social ills, and --- wait for it --- eliminate the root causes of crime. Well, he changed the mission statement, which is on Pa...

A leopard can't change its spots and the NDP's Nahanni Fontaine can't change her bias against white people. We got another taste of her advocacy for aboriginal apartheid in Hansard's official account of debate in the Legislature last week. Fontaine, the NDP's parachute candidate in St. John's riding, was promoting the need for native midwives and doulas for pregnant "indigenous women" in  northern Manitoba ( what about the rest of the expectant mothers? - ed.) when she --- oh, so casually --- started talking about how traumatic it was for these women to be in the care of  ...  White medical professionals.  "And so, as the minister knows, you know, indigenous women have to come to the south to have their babies. Often, they come without any supports.  They are immersed in white space." For people unfamiliar with the latest racial nomenclature, she explained: "And so, you know, for women that are here alone, and  that are immers...

The Parliamentary Press Gallery spent the weekend yukking it up with Justin Trudeau at the annual gallery dinner, demonstrating that relations between the Prime Minister and the press were back to normal, the master and his voice in sync again. Things had been a little strained a few weeks ago when Trudeau, determined to show that he was a tough guy and not to be trifled with in the House of Commons, delivered a hard elbow to a female MP's breast while manhandling an Opposition MP who wasn't moving fast enough to suit the PM. The reporters and pundits had to do quite the soft shoe to excuse Trudeau's boorishness when video of the incident contradicted his initial explanation for how his elbow smashed into her chest.  Luckily, the controversy subsided quickly and the press gallery could go back to work--- adoring the Sun King. And then, last week, damn it, up popped another matter that threatened to blemish the reign of Trudeau II. Its name---Hunter Tootoo. Hunt...

Today we expect to see Manitoba voters deliver a historic repudiation of almost 16 years of NDP government. But incoming premier Brian Pallister is dead wrong if he thinks that just giving the scoundrels the boot is enough. The wolves have had free rein on the farm too long. By the end they had convinced themselves, like all despots, that they could do no wrong.  *  Trying to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Jockey Club to patch the depleted provincial budget *  Publicly supporting a racist cabinet minister who admitted to prejudice against whites, *  Shrugging off a stomach-churning account of a woman spending her final hours of life screaming in pain on the floor of a hospital emergency ward  The NDP saw any opposition as downright evil and having to be stamped out. By controlling the levers of power, the NDP were able to slough off one major scandal after another. That doesn't mean the scandals didn't exist.  But yo...