The Black Rod

The Liberal Party plan for resurrection

2012-01-16T14:05:00.002-06:00

The Liberal Party of Canada laid out its resurrection strategy in broad strokes this past weekend. But if you depended on the national news media to tell you what it was, you would be SOL.

Like cats chasing every new tinkly ball, the "professional" reporters pounced on one debate after another (oh look, the monarchy; no, 'supporters'; no, over here, pot). But the big picture escaped them. Them, not us.

The Liberals, in short, are planning to outflank the NDP, retake Quebec, and gain a foothold in the West through B.C.

They're admitting they have no chance to win the next election, but clawing their way back to Official Opposition will be a win. Everything is geared to that goal.

Michael Ignatieff, the former leader who led the team off the cliff, spelled out the master strategy, not that the MSM was paying attention.

"We have to speak for the Canada we love, a Canada in which we think we want to stand for green energy rather than dirty oil," he declared.

THUNK.

That's the sound of the West falling off the Liberal bus forever.

There goes Alberta, and Saskatchewan, which was a backwater until it developed its oil. And even southwestern Manitoba, a province rapidly becoming the Greece of Canada, which is desperately trying to tap into that portion of the Baaken oil reserve that sideswipes the province.

"The future of this party resides in Quebec. Canada's future resides in Quebec, also," said Ignatieff in French.

Take that NDP. If the future of the Liberals lies in Quebec, they have to take the province back or they're dead.

The Party revealed even more during the caucus accountability plenary (a fancy word for Q and A.)

Edmonton MP Grant Mitchell said the Liberals had their best showing in Alberta when they stepped out of the mushy middle and took strong positions. The environment is going to be the Liberal Party's banner issue from now on, he said.

The caucus under interim leader Bob Rae staked out a Hard Left heading for the next Parliament, a position obviously designed to carve away support from the NDP.

MP Scott Brison committed the Liberals to fighting for higher tax rates. "I'm with Warren Buffet," he said. The Liberals will demand a study of the tax system, he said, with the goal "a "fairer" tax system." You don't need the Liberal Left code book to know what that means.

The Liberals embraced their failed hug-a-thug policies of yore. "We are basing our policy on prevention, not imprisonment," said a caucus rep. The Conservatives believe in locking up criminals, but that results in "less protection for the victim", he said. (Honest, we're not making it up.) "We will change that agenda," he said.

Of special interest to Manitoba, the Liberals promised to adopt the Quebec model of youth justice -- known as the revolving door.

Foreign Aid? Immigration? The Liberals plan on reversing targetted aid. They intend to increase spending in Africa just like the old days. And Michael Ignatieff promised a Canada "that does not shut the door on strangers."

Agriculture? "We're absolutely committed to supply management." What province depends on supply management more than everyone else? Oh, yeah, Quebec. And for the rest of the country? "We fought hard to retain prison farms," said Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter . (You just can't make this stuff up.)

No matter how you look at it, the Liberal platform isn't designed to win voters away from the Conservatives. Everything points to a Hard Left orientation that's aimed at NDP voters in the last election. Even the "revolutionary" policies of opening the Liberal Party to "supporters" who need not become members is intended to bleed left-leaning activists into the Liberal camp and away from the NDP.

But they may have overreached themselves with their commitment to legalize marijuana. Seen even by the MSM as a lure for young voters who don't care about politics in general, and voters in British Columbia in particular, the adoption of a pro-pot policy may be too clever by half.

It permits the Conservatives to attack the Liberals for being as soft on drugs of all sort as they are on crime. And it opens them to the charge of a "secret agenda." You can bet the Liberal Party will not have their pot policy in their next election platform; the leader retained his right to filter out policy resolutions for election campaigns.

But it's there, in the closet, waiting to be launched if the Liberals get reelected, as the Conservatives will remind parents over and over again.

Given that the NDP agrees with virtually everything the Liberals has declared to be their policy, the battle lines are drawn.

Citizen journalists are chasing two explosive new angles to the CMHR debacle.

2012-01-12T01:24:00.005-06:00

Like an avalanche, the controversy over the bankrupt Canadian Museum for Human Rights is growing exponentially, with the same ultimate conclusion. Somebody is going to be buried under the rubble.

This week alone two new fronts have opened up, either of which can blow holes in the museum's remaining reservoir of public support.

1. The CMHR, the cost of which is rapidly approaching $400 million, didn't have a project manager?

This made us sit up and take notice.

Reported first and exclusively in the blog Anybody Want A Peanut?, this revelation should send shock waves throughout Manitoba and right to Ottawa.

http://anybody-want-a-peanut.blogspot.com/2012/01/cmhr-part-1-project-management.html

Blogger Cherenkov wrote on Sunday:

"I'm not a project manager by trade, but I have worked on projects and taken project management training and I am confident in saying this: if you want your project to come in on time and on budget it needs to be properly managed. Especially if it's a large project like, oh I don't know ... just pulling something out of the air here ... the Canadian Museum for Human Rights."

"It may come as a surprise to you then, that the project management contract was only just awarded, over three years after the ground breaking ceremony. The RFP (you can still view the notice here) closed on October 24 and approximately two months later the lucky (?) winner was picked. It was supposed to be announced at the end of October but you know how things go ..."

"When I say “the project management contract”, I mean the task of overall management of the project. The scope of the RFP includes:

- Oversight over the parallel sub-projects that go into the construction of the museum and everything inside the museum, leading up to opening day.
- Coordination, risk management, reporting and resource allocation
- Tracking the status of all major components of construction, including budgets.
- Guidance and recommendations to the CMHR executive."

Guess what else didn't have a project manager?

None other than the project the proponents of the CMHR measure themselves against, that legendary boondoggle, the Sydney Opera House.

Its cost went from $7 million (Australian) when started in the Fifties to $101 million when finished 15 years later.

But the story gets curiouser. Here's what the CMHR board told Ottawa in their 2008 report to Parliament:

Program Activity 2: Accommodation

The building construction will commence at the beginning of April,  2009, for completion in 2012. By the end of calendar year 2008, the Museum  had:

Established a Board Committee-of-the-Whole to oversee the construction  project and retained an external advisor to provide expert advice on  construction and risk management;

Undertook extensive due diligence on the  proposed building design, a detailed risk mitigation strategy, and the  construction budget and schedule, resulting in the approval of the Predock  design;

Completed extensive Value Engineering to identify items that will be  modified or removed in order to reduce the construction budget without affecting  the integrity of the original design;

Developed a financial risk management  strategy to address the anticipated gap between the budget and available funds  caused by inflation during the time the Museum was being established as a  national institution;

Finalized contract details with Antoine Predock  Architects, Smith Carter Constructors and PCL (construction managers);  also retained a Project Manager, who is experienced in government capital  projects;

So if they hired a project manager in 2008, why were they looking for another one in 2011?

Was the original project manager fired? Did he or she quit?

And is the federal Auditor interested in how the federal government could spend $100 million plus millions more in operating costs on a project without a project manager who oversees the project from top to bottom to ensure money is spent properly?

Should someone nudge the MSM and set them asking questions?

2. Is the Canadian Museum for Human Rights planning a venomous spit in the eye of Canada's ethnic groups, especially the Ukrainians, that oppose the predominance of the Holocaust in the museum?

While scanning the offerings in Tuesday's podcast from The Great Canadian Talk Show

http://tgcts.com/uncategorized/jan-10-2012-violent-crime-fears-focus-of-free-press-interns-parting-blog-ctf-spotlight-on-hidden-cmhr-costs-attracts-msm-attention

We were jerked to a halt by this note:
"one of our listeners figured out the Museum’s grand opening is designed to exclude the Holodomor"

The story involved the museum's announced plans for the inaugural exhibits when (and if) the CMHR opens in 2014.

We remembered thinking that 4000 square metres was a pretty small opening exhibit in a building that has 24,000 sq.m. of exhibit space (the exact number varies from day to day, but this is in the ballpark). We didn't put two and two together.

A listener of TGCTS did.

4000 square metres is almost exactly the size of the Holocaust gallery in the museum! The Holocaust gallery is one of only two permanent galleries in the building. Canada's ethnic groups are united in opposing the plan of the CMHR board of trustees to tell Canadians and the world that a genocide against one group (the Holocaust) has more importance than the mass murders of all other ethnic groups in history.

Is that the plan? To open the CMHR with only the Holocaust gallery ready for viewing?

Somebody in Ottawa better be asking questions about how the public museum is going to be portrayed on opening day.

3. And speaking of permanent and non-permanent exhibitions, we haven't been asleep either. The Black Rod has broken the museum's speech code. The code of Doublespeak.

The proponents of the CMHR have been good students of George Orwell. The Winnipeg Free Press has turned the pigs of Orwell's Animal Farm into the heroes of the story to explain how in the museum all groups are equal, except that some are more equal than the others and that's a good thing. Editorialists and columnists are engaged in rewriting history, just like the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's '1984'. And the staff at the museum have learned to speak in Doublespeak, where permanent exhibits are temporary and temporary exhibits are permanent, depending.

They've been so good at it that they've thoroughly confused both supporters and opponents of the museum's plans to give the Holocaust "permanent" status and others "temporary but permanent" status or is that "permanent while temporary" status. This story is an example of the museum's failure to clarify the situation.

http://www.winnipegjewishreview.com/article_detail.cfm?id=1047&sec=2

But we figured out what they've been saying, so poorly.

Let's put it in terms to which people can relate.

Suppose you want to open a Performing Arts Museum. You decide that movies are the most important performing art and so the only permanent gallery in the museum will be dedicated to motion pictures.

All the rest of the performing arts will be grouped in themes. So novels will be in the Writing gallery between Shakespeare and rap. Dancing will be in the Body In Motion gallery alongside Vaudeville pratfalls and television comedians who trip a lot.

Every time you go to the Movies Gallery you will see something about movies. It might be an exhibit on screwball comedies one day, film noir another. But always about movies. This gallery is permanently about movies.

The exhibits in the other galleries will also change regularly. But if you want to study Disco dancing, for example, you can, at any time, regardless of the exhibit being presented. That's because the museum's exhibits are all saved in digital form. You can call them up on the internet, or in person in some interactive medium. In that fashion, they're permanent.

The Movies Gallery is permanent because its always about movies.

The Dancing exhibits are permanent, because they're always available in digital form.

In the same way, the Holocaust Zone in the CMHR will be permanent because it will be permanently dedicated to the Holocaust.

The rest of the museum's exhibits, including anything about the Holodomor, will also be permanent, permanently in the museum and permanently available to visitors.

At the same time, if they ever find enough money to finish the temporary gallery, the museum can have temporary exhibits on the Holocaust and the Holodomor.

In such a case, the temporary exhibit, because it, too, will be in digital form, will become part of either the permanent Holocaust gallery or a permanent addition to the Holodomor exhibit.

Whew.

And finally, speaking of codes...

Brent Bellamy is the senior design architect for Number Ten Architectural Group and the author of a pro-CMHR column for the Winnipeg Free Press. We called him on his enthusiasm for a blank cheque to complete the museum project. We also referenced his pro-museum writings under a pseudonym on an internet forum.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2012/01/from-shill-to-saint-what-week-on-cmhr.html

He spent the next day crying on the internet about being "blackroded."

"isnt 'it against some kind of blogger/forum code of ethics to call out someone's actual identity?.." he asked.

Actually, there is. It's an unwritten code where you don't publish a person's true name if they chose to comment under a pseudonym. It's a courtesy almost everyone adheres to, except for the Junior G-Men supporting Bellamy who've started accusing each other of being The Black Rod.

But we didn't break that code.

And if Bellamy had retracted as we asked him to, we wouldn't be writing this.

In fact, it was those very Bellamy boosters who identified him as Trueviking as soon as his column was printed which he acknowledged.

"Jan 3, 2012, 5:12 AM

Originally Posted by Marc B.
ED. NOTE: CORRECTED LINK
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/inspiration-comes-with-a-cost-136526313.html

Nice column TV.

thanks...the comments kept me entertained all day...like throwing a dead cow in a pool of piraña.

_______________

roccerfeller
Registered User
Nice article viking, a good read "

Twice he was identified. The first time he even thanked the poster. The moderator never admonished anyone or reminded them of " the code. "

You only lose your virginity once, TV.

How Hugh McFadyen saved the Selinger NDP from sure defeat.

2012-01-10T01:40:00.005-06:00

In politics, the only thing better than winning is winning so decisively you can rub your opponent's nose in it.

Following the crash-and-burn campaign conducted by the Manitoba Conservatives in the last provincial election, Tory honkers are redder than Rudolph's from being rubbed in the dirt so much.

One of the chief architects of the crushing defeat handed to the PC Party is the NDP's campaign director Michael Balagus. He was in Vancouver last month taking another victory lap at the expense of the hapless, helpless and hopeless Conservatives.

The scene was the annual convention of the British Columbia NDP. Balagus was on a panel discussing tactics, strategies and innovation that he and two other campaign organizers across the country used to win elections.

Balagus got to tell the story of how the NDP used their greatest asset---Conservative Party leader Hugh McFadyen---to turn almost sure defeat into their fourth victory in a row.

We now know that for months before the election call, the NDP surveyed voters, and what they heard was worse than discouraging. People thought it was time for a change of government. Not even spinning their new leader, Mr. Personality himself, Greg Selinger, as a change from the old leader, Gary Doer, made any difference. The electorate wasn't buying it, said Balagus.

So the NDP reached deep down into their bag of tricks for a "hail Mary" play. It was easy now that the dirtiest politician in Manitoba was now their leader.

In their case it meant taking the low road. The NDP hammered McFadyen with attack ads.

"We redefined change as risk," he told the audience. And that risk was electing Hugh McFadyen.

"We went early and we went hard," he said. Not everyone in the Party was happy with the direction the campaign took. "I took a lot of heat.” admitted Balagus.

As you remember, the only response from McFadyen was a firm shrug as he imitated a walking human punching bag for the entire campaign. When he finally stood up on his tippytoes and issued a lame denial that he was going to do the evil things that the NDP said he was going to do, the Dippers knew he was toast.

So they piled on. For the last 10 days of the campaign, said Balagus, that became the entire focus of the NDP message. They were "relentless," he said.

And hugely successful. Winning an election they were poised to lose. Shattering the PC Party of Manitoba into Humpty Dumpty pieces. And earning bragging rights across the country for years to come.

“If we don’t believe there’s a difference, if we don’t tell people there’s a difference, they’re not going to get it,” Balagus said in defence of the NDP's mudslinging campaign.

He could have added that the McFadyen Tories ran an entire campaign without criticizing the NDP. In short, they told the electorate there was no difference between them and the government, except that the Conservatives would run deficits longer. That's why their campaign managers aren't giving speeches to PC parties across Canada.

And why they sport red clown noses.

Balagus, meanwhile, has learned why opening Pandora's box is a risky business.

It turns out that the NDP footsoldiers weren't the only ones listening to his pearls of wisdom on how to win an election.

Within 3 weeks of his sharing his secrets, Christy Clark's B.C. Liberal Party launched an attack ad on NDP leader Adrian Dix. The thrust? They're attacking him for his job as political advisor to the NDP---in the 1990's. Dix responded by calling the ad "sad and desperate."

From Shill to Saint. What a week on the CMHR front.

2012-01-08T17:27:00.005-06:00

Winnipeg got a lesson in true philanthropy this past week. A retired pharmacist who quietly -- nay, secretly, to even his family --- saved up a million dollars, donated it this week, half to the Misericordia Health Centre Foundation and half to the Riverview Heath Centre Foundation.

Laurie Johnston did it with humility and with little fanfare. He didn't ask for a towering statue to be erected in his name, a backlit plaque, or even a framed certificate from the Premier. He did it, he said, to repay a debt to a deceased family friend who generously gave him $200 to tide him over in the weeks before he took his final pharmacy exams so long ago.

Passing it forward was payment enough for him.

People couldn't help but contrast his donation with the spectacle of a family of millionaires demanding a blank cheque from the federal government to finish building a giant monument to their deceased father under the guise of a gift to the community --- a gift nobody asked for, nobody wants to pay for, and which has turned into a gigantic money pit that's draining contributions from every true charity in the province.

A new shill for the aforesaid Canadian Museum for Human Rights popped up early in the week in the pages of the Winnipeg Free Press, the propaganda arm of the museum. Or, rather, an old shill with newfound humility.

Brent Bellamy is the senior design architect for Number Ten Architectural Group.

He's no stranger to readers of The Black Rod.

Three years ago, when construction on the doomed CMHR started, he gloated in the faces of opponents of the project.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2009/05/bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.html

"A Winnipeg architect who posts on internet message boards under the name Trueviking is an avid defender of the CMHR. He let slip the true attitude of the museum backers in this post Tuesday to a critic:

Yesterday, 06:36 PM
suck it up big boy...the party has started and there is nothing you can do about it except cry in your beer....insert red river jig here.

(...when only The Black Rod was predicting humongous cost overruns, he responded to our persistent coverage of the CMHR.)

05-16-2009, 01:01 PM Human rights museum budget already short
Yesterday, 04:33 AM
we should have two threads...one for people who want to follow the construction and discuss the evolution of this incredible project ... and one for guys who want to quote black rod, that beacon of un-biased journalism, and worry that the federal government might have to pay for meaningless cost overruns or the operation of a federal museum, god forbid."

Now that he's begging the federal government to pay for meaningless cost overruns, he's adopted a different attitude.

"Inspiration comes with a cost," summed up the headline over the article by Bellamy.

Bellamy wrote that the latest cost overruns on the project ($41 million and counting) were not surprising and were, in fact, "not uncommon for a complex building of this type."

Well, duh. The only ones professing surprise are the politicians who approved the museum and its proponents. The public, which has had plenty of experience with these charades, was predicting from the day it was announced that the cost would at least double or triple.

"The budget shortfall of the CMHR is unfortunate..." concluded Bellamy.

No, it's criminal.

The museum was built by fraud.

Its backers knew the cost they were tossing around was false, and would be used only to get the project started whereupon they would extort tens of millions more from complacent government officials.

Bellamy acknowledged that eliminating construction overruns is possible---by making the architects and engineers agree to be responsible for paying them out of their own pockets---but the result, he said, is boring buildings.

No, he said, the public needs to pay the big bucks for a fancy schmancy building "to transform Winnipeg's uninspired image abroad and cultivate a new confidence within." Cue the violins.

"A citys (sic) economy is fueled by optimism and the CMHR is a large part of Winnipeg's new confidence."

That's funny. The City felt pretty much the same for the past three years as the museum monstrosity was being built. It only came alive on the day the return of the Winnipeg Jets was announced.

But, then, the Winnipeg Free Press is engaged in rewriting history, and Bellamy is obviously part of that campaign.

"The CMHR reinforces Winnipeg's reputation as a creative city of art and culture," the architect rhapsodized delusionally.

Unless there's another city called Winnipeg on this planet, that has to be the dumbest statement made by anyone supporting the museum yet. Winnipeg's reputation throughout Canada is of murders and mayhem.

To even write "a city of art and culture" shows the vast gulf between reality and the fantasy world the Winnipeg elites live in.

"The CMHR... and its daring form contributes to a growing public appreciation for the unique architectural design that is transforming Winnipegs modern urban image."

Hey, Brent, the only thing growing is public anger at having their pockets picked to fund this money pit, and at the politicians who want to raise taxes on homeowners while turning a blind eye to their millionaire scofflaw friends who fail to pay theirs.

But, then, Bellamy managed to top even himself.

"The Sydney Opera House was 15 years late and 1,400 per cent over-budget, yet few would label it a boondoggle or white elephant. It stands as an example of what can be achieved when risks are taken. The CMHR holds the same transformative potential for Winnipeg."

Big mistake.

No.

Bi-i-i-i-i-i-g mistake.

We went to work researching the Sydney Opera House. The first thing we found was that it is legendary in planning circles as one of the Top Ten boondoggles in modern architecture history.

At a time (the late Fifties) when Australia didn't have enough schools and was suffering a housing shortage with a quarter of a million people living in huts, sheds and ramshackle homes, the government of the day decided to build an opera house.

Just like in Winnipeg, the promoters lowballed the project from the beginning, then watched the cost grow to Godzilla proportions.

They said the cost would be $7 million (Australian). By the time it was finished, it cost $101 million.

Don't do the math, we did it for you. That's about $420 million in today's Canadian dollars, or roughly where the CMHR is heading.

The difference is that the Australian government only paid $100,000 for its end. The rest was made up from a special lottery and it "only" took 16 years to pay the whole cost. (This was back before government lotteries sprang up like weeds in May.)

That's why the public outcry was muted in Sydney.

Unlike Winnipeg, the taxpayer wasn't forced to pay.

But the story gets better.

The budget for the Sydney Opera House caromed so out of control that the government (a new one) seized control of the project!

That's right. THE GOVERNMENT SEIZED CONTROL, exactly what we've been advocating.

In Sydney, the architect quit in a huff and took his plans with him, forcing the new project managers to scramble to recreate his work and watch costs skyrocket even further. They're still trying to fix the acoustics.

You can find two studies on the Sydney Opera House online from two perspectives. They reached the same conclusion.

The first, by what appears to be a student of architecture or engineering, concludes "... although the opera house put Sydney on the world map, both architecturally and culturally... from project management perspective it was a spectacular failure as a consequence of ignoring risk management."

The other, a more professional report focussed on stakeholders by authors, Dr. Paol Canonico and Dr. Jonas Söderlund, concurred: "The Sydney Opera House could probably be seen as one of the most financially disastrous construction projects in history."

But, but, but, isn't the Sydney Opera House famous?

Even Drs. Canonico and Soderlund said so.

"Today, more than being a world-class performing arts centre, the Opera House
represents Sydney and even the whole nation the same way as the Eiffel Tower represents Paris. It’s known not only for its outstanding architecture, but also for exceptional engineering and technological innovation."

The Opera House in Sydney, the main city of Australia, represents the country the same way that the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the main city of France, represents France.

And we're building a giant museum in----the ninth largest city in Canada (by population) isolated on the Prairies, a thousand miles from the largest city in Canada. You know where that's going.

You don't need experts to tell you what you know. Have you heard of the Eiffel Tower? Have you ever heard of the Sydney Opera House? 'Nuff said.

The elites like Bellamy expect you to gush and swoon at the excesses of construction of the CMHR just as they do---cost be damned.

The museum is the size of four football fields. You will enter via a 150-foot deep cavern.

The glass for the "cloud" is imported from Germany.
The steel from Poland, Belgium and the U.S.
Ramps are of alabaster from Spain.
Columns of basalt, 617 metric tonnes "quarried and cut in Inner Mongolia."

An early booster of the museum described it Pharaonic in scale. We looked it up and, yes, it means like the Pharoahs of Egypt.

We were immediately reminded of that famous poem---'Ozymandias' by Shelley.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

-30-

Correction
We got it wrong and we want to correct the record. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights was NEVER intended to be a private museum. We've reported otherwise. But Gail Asper wrote in the 10 Year Anniversary Issue (December, 2010) of a publication put out by the Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights that her daddy intended to stick it to the feds from the very beginning.

http://www.friendsofcmhr.com/resource/file/FCMHR_10YearMagazine_EN.pdf

From the publication:

MUSEUM MISCONCEPTIONS
One misconception that stands out
is how people believed we intended
this to be a private museum. The
opposite is true. Right from the
beginning, my father stated that he
only wanted to spearhead this project,
not run it or control the agenda. That’s
what The Asper Foundation does; we
initiate good ideas that may not come
to pass if we don’t get involved. But
once they’re on their feet, we move on.
Our first letter to the Right Honourable
Jean Chrétien in November 2001 proposes
this as a national, federal museum

History repeats itself, even with the Winnipeg Free Press rewriting it as fast as possible.

2011-12-31T13:21:00.004-06:00

Millionaire moocher Gail Asper is in a panic.

And when Gail Asper is in a panic, Winnipeg Free Press co-owner Bob Silver is in a panic.

And when Bob Silver is in a panic, everybody at the Winnipeg Free Press is in a panic.

No, it's not because someone has sicced the new police cadets on Winnipeg's biggest panhandler.

As we've learned only in the past 9 days, Gail Asper's pet project, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, has run out of money. Really, now. Who saw that coming?

By March 31, 2012, the fiscal year end, the unfinished museum will have received the last government money its going to get. No more dinero from the feds. And the coin from the province and the city was spent long, long ago.

Gail Asper and the Friends of the CMHR will try to cash in some of the private IOU's they're holding, but they've admitted that that won't bring in enough money to finish construction, never mind the millions needed for exhibits. They're $61 million in the hole, not counting the 2 percent of the project that hasn't even been tendered because there's no money.

Their one and only hope is that some arm of government (read the federal government) will write them a blank cheque.

That's where Bob Silver comes in. He's given his employees their marching orders -- rewrite history!

What? You thought it was something easy?

For the last week, in a barrage of features, editorials and news stories, the FP has been creating a new reality, absolving the Asper family of all responsibility for the overwhelming cost overruns while guilt-tripping Prime Minister Stephen Harper into reaching for his chequebook.

It's an exercise straight out of George Orwell's classic "1984" where the Ministry of Truth had no reluctance to turn truth into lies and lies into truth if it was necessary for the cause. Apparently the professional journalists at the Winnipeg Free Press with their professional journalist ethics and their professional journalist editors have no qualms either.

(The FP has a strange affection for Orwell's work. Last year they were writing stories turning the pigs of Orwell's 'Animal Farm' into the heroes of the story.)

What's particularly interesting is seeing bits and pieces of the truth pop up in the oddest places in the pro-museum propaganda churning out of the newspaper's Mountain Avenue headquarters, especially in the editorials.

And why not? Silver speaks directly to the oracles on the mountain while his hirelings don't.

We were intrigued by the latest editorial on Friday wherein the FP argued the CMHR was worth any price because its mission is so noble and valuable to the entire world. (Gag....ed.)

",,,when the budget for the museum soared to $315 from $265 in 2008, many private donors, including the Aspers, were prepared to withdraw their money rather than downsize and erect a red-brick warehouse for human rights." declared the Free Press.

You don't say?

Because in the real world, documented everywhere, the story is a little different.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights officially became a national museum on March 13, 2008 when amendments to the Museums Act received Royal Assent.

It wasn't until the next year, 2009, that the trustees of the CMHR confessed to $45 million in cost overruns (bringing the total cost to $310 million, not $315 million). And that was only after The Black Rod crunched the numbers and called them on it in a story we called CMHR to Politicians: We Lied. So, Whatcha Gonna Do? (Thursday, May 21, 2009).

But if the public needs any more proof that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is a publicly funded private project in all but name, the Winnipeg Free Press just supplied it.

The Aspers threatened to withdraw their money if they didn't get their way? Did they?

By what right did Gail Asper have final say about how the federal government would build a national museum? The Aspers gave up any right to dictate the size, cost, design or even colour of the CMHR more than a year earlier when the federal government formally took it over as a public facility.

The Aspers and their supporters donated to a national museum. Didn't they? That's all we've been hearing for three years, how it's a national treasure, that the government is fully behind it because it's a national project, how all of Canada supports it because it's a national museum.

Only now we read information that could only have come from the horse's mouth that the Aspers and other donors didn't give a horse's ass about the national aspect of the museum. They wanted it to be theirs and theirs alone, with the public paying the cost while having no say on what it's getting in return.

But wait, there was more in Friday's editorial.

Did Editor Margo Goodhand think we would overlook this gem:

"There was no agreement that the private fundraisers, known as the Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, would be responsible for cost overruns, but their only choice -- since Ottawa refused to increase its $100-million stake, which thus discouraged the province and city from also contributing more -- was to raise more private cash."

The Winnipeg Free Press has refused to report on how the supporters of the CMHR reassured the Senate---in order to get their approval to make it a national museum--- that the federal government would NOT be responsible for cost overruns.

Here's a segment of what was said:

Senator Cowan: This is not one of those projects where the federal government is left to pick up anything over and above the $165 million that is contributed by other parties, is it?

Ms. Sherwood: The board of trustees will be accountable for bringing this project in on budget and making decisions with respect to the building design and the contingency fund set aside that allow it to bring the project in on budget.

The Winnipeg Free Press on Dec. 23 identified the Friends as "the fundraising arm of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights," with Gail Asper as national campaign chairwoman.

The Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights Inc. is the non-profit registered charity tasked with raising funds for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, states the CMHR website. If the government isn't responsible for overruns, who do you think is?

After the first overruns were announced in 2009 the Museum issued this news release:

Museum fundraising campaign continues

“The Board of Trustees asked the Friends to continue their efforts to ensure that we build the iconic structure and world-class exhibits expected from this national and international destination and centre for learning,” said Arni Thorsteinson, Chair of the CMHR Board.

snip

“We have full confidence that Friends will meet this additional fundraising challenge, especially because we’re seeing the emergence of new interest, energy and donor capacity for this national human rights museum in provinces outside Manitoba,” said Gail Asper O.C., O.M. LL.D (Hon.).

The Winnipeg Free Press editorial writer let another bit of info slip.

"The Friends now need $60 million, an enormous burden that could delay the museum's opening for five or six years and thus create new budget problems, unless the government offers a loan or new money."

It's the second time in a week that the FP, in an editorial rather than a news story, has raised the spectre of a five or six year delay in opening the museum. That's got to be coming from someone high up.

Someone very, very worried high up. Someone downright panicky high up.

Six years? We're building a white elephant that's going to sit empty for six years--- unless the federal government writes a blank cheque? And who will be paying to heat, clean, patrol and polish the stonework for those years while the trustees travel the world soaking up museum culture?

If there's ever an argument for the federal government seizing control of the museum immediately, that's it.

It's supposed to be an ideas museum. You don't need four football fields of space inside a Tower of Babel to house ideas.

Reporter Dan Lett tested out the first rewrite of history a few days ago. The private sector fundraisers were only doing Canadians a favour; they didn't have to raise all that money for overruns; its a national museum and as such its the federal government's responsibility to cover the cost of overruns. It was all there.

But for the first time he took a shot at Gail Asper. A tiny shot. A shot-let. He said she was naive for knowing the museum would cost more than the $265 million but letting Prime Minister Stephen Harper believe it wouldn't.

Naive? Anyone else would call it deliberately deceptive, but in the Brave New World of the Free Press, Lett had to use a gentler spin.

He also called Harper naive for not knowing the cost would be greater than $265 million.

Eveyone, it seems, knew or should have known the museum was underfunded when construction started.

Everyone except the Free Press which, funnily, never once mentioned it.

We sure did. We screamed it out in story after story.

Here's what we wrote in May, 2009:

Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
It only took five days to flush the truth out of them.

We wrote, then, how the proponents of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights knew in 2004 they didn't have the money for the project. We told how they were lowballing the construction costs. And how they misled the Canadian Senate, and by extension the Canadian people, over who would cover any cost overruns.

The MSM ignored the facts.

We predicted that once construction was started, the museum board of directors would begin to admit the huge cost overruns because they would believe it was too late to stop the project.

And in April of this year:

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/04/your-taxes-go-up-as-mayor-waives-taxes.html

Monday, April 18, 2011
Your taxes go up as the mayor waives taxes for his millionaire friend, Gail Asper

You can't let the project fail now, when it's almost built, they'll wail.

It only needs a little bit more money ($10 million, $15 million, $20 million) for this magnificent building, they'll cry.

Surely. Surely, you won't let it fail at this the eleventh hour, they'll plead.

And the politicians will open your wallets, again, and throw more millions at the Aspers.

Remember. We told you so.

We told you so, Dan. And no amount of rewriting history will change the facts.

And speaking of history, how many of you remember this...

Exactly one year ago this month we were talking about another financial disaster involving--- guess who.

Here's a refresher:

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html

"We were going to get a brand new football stadium built at his own cost by a private investor who promised to cover all cost overruns. The land where the old stadium stands would be sold to the highest bidder and the money used to attack the city's infrastructure deficit. And redevelopment of that land would provide Winnipeg with annual property taxes, whereas the city collected no taxes on the old stadium."

"And after they got through with it, what have we wound up with?"

"Let's see .... a 100-percent taxpayer funded stadium at almost double the projected cost, a giveaway deal to hand over the old stadium land to someone's pal at a bargain price, and no taxes from the land even after its redeveloped, at least not for a generation or two, if ever."

"The cash-strapped Winnipeg Blue Bombers football team is saddled a debt of $85 million, which, according to the CBC, will cost them a total of $176 million over 44 years once interest is calculated."

"And let's not forget the city of Winnipeg is committed to handing over at least $40 million to the province to cover its end of the new stadium."

"The only win is for "entrepreneur" David Asper, who gets a cheque for $4 million despite failing to live up to every promise he made to his "partners" who got stuck paying for his mess."

One year later, another great big Asper family boondoggle followed by demands for another government bailout.

"It's unacceptable to abandon the project now." wailed Dan Lett.

Now seems the perfect time.

-30-

Newsmaker of the Year - It's no contest.

2011-12-30T16:41:00.006-06:00

The sun is shining on Winnipeg today in more ways than one as we announce the recipient of the coveted The Black Rod Newsmaker of the Year Award for 2011.
It wasn't even close.

He was a shoo-in. The man of the hour. If we had a laurel wreath we would crown him with it.

Mark Chipman.

He brought the Winnipeg Jets back. You don't need to say another word.
He's 50; he's co-owner of True North Sports and Entertainment; he's got a degree in economics and worked as a lawyer. Blah blah blah. Who cares?

He brought the Jets back. Now there's an accomplishment.
It's like Prometheus bringing Man fire. Or Dr. Frankenstein seeing his creation twitch and breathe for the first time.
"It's alive! It's alive!"

For the return of the Jets has brought life back to Winnipeg. Life and sunshine. And song. And confidence. And hope. Can love be far behind?

Chipman did it, and he did it without massive government subsidy or a massive ego.

With the blinding light of the return of the Jets burning off the gloom that's choked the city for-, it seems like forever, we can see the stark contrast between what truly inspires the city and the dreck the city's elites tried to sell us.

Oh, look, there's the world's ugliest structure, a giant glass piece of Trudeau, doesn't it make you proud? Uh, no. It makes us poor and nauseus.

Oh, look, Spirited Energy. Doesn't it make you excited? No, it's hokey and embarassing.

Oh, look, an airport, massively over budget and wrapped in lawsuits. Isn't it beautiful? Yeah, but--- the Jets are back!

There's another reason for being thankful for Mark Chipman. If he hadn't done the impossible, we would have been forced to go to the Dark Side to name a Newsmaker of the Year.

Where Mark Chipman is the symbol of the postive, our only other choice was the symbol of the negative.

It was Greg Selinger. the dirtiest politician in Manitoba, who won a provincial election by running the dirtiest campaign ever. But in doing so he achieved his greatest goal---turning Manitoba into a single-party state.

Selinger did more than defeat the Opposition. He eliminated it. The Progressive Conservative Party is dead. As dead as Winnipeg's hopes before the Jets came back. Not dead metaphorically. Dead in reality, as in not coming back to life.

To achieve that, Selinger had the help of P.C. leader Hugh McFadyen, who ran an election where he placed his party to the left of the NDP and disconnected from its base. Given Selinger's far left leaning, that was next to impossible, and yet McFadyen managed it.

Selinger has defanged every independent watchdog in the province. We've seen how Elections Manitoba cooperates with the NDP to coverup election fraud. The Auditor General toadies to the Party. The Ombudsman may be worse.

Remember the Hydro Whistleblower complaint to the Ombudsman? The first and only complaint under the government's vaunted whistleblower legislation? It's now three years and counting and no word from the Ombudsman's office, unless you think burying a complaint until after a provincial election is the appropriate action.

Oh, and remember how the Auditor General first tried to seize control of the Whistleblower complaint and bury it under a years-long investigation, until The Black Rod exposed a conflict of interest between her and Hydro? She declared then, that she would still investigate the whistleblower's complaints against Hydro on her own.

Yep. Still waiting.

Selinger leads the press, read the Winnipeg Free Press, around by the nose, with newspaper co-owner Bob Silver sitting on his lap, oops, we mean on his economic advisory council and using the newspaper to promote whatever government scheme is front and centre in the moment.

Spirited Energy, anyone? The Crocus Fund?

The Legislature sat only 54 days this year. And the government spent almost a billion dollars without going to the Legislature for approval. And that was with an alleged Opposition in the House. Now that the Tories have zero credibility and zero future, its clear sailing for Selinger to turn the province into social workers' socialist paradise.

Thank goodness we had a choice between the Light and the Darkness.

******************
Turning away from the Dark, The Black Rod would like to wish A Happy New Year to:

* Krista Erickson. You go girl. In your first year with Sun TV you've driven the biddies crazy. You gored a sacred cow. You made television history with the greatest number of complaints by Lefties ever. You're on the cutting edge of journalism in this country with your colleagues at Sun. And still lookin' good.

* Ezra Levant. What a refreshing breath of Western air. Every day we watch is a hoot. Fearless. And brilliant journalism. An inspiration to every Canadian not on the payroll of "the state broadcaster."

* Susan Auch. A medal-winning Olympian, you were criminally underused and underappreciated by the losing team in the last provincial election. You should have been on every election poster as an inspiration to all Manitobans. Instead they went with a grinning nobody with chemically enhanced teeth and a dangerously advancing widow's peak. Mayor Susan Auch. It has a nice ring.

* Colin Craig. You're in the front lines of the People's Opposition now. Strap your helmet on tight.

* John Harvie. As the Green Party candidate in Winnipeg North, you drained more than enough support from the NDP to deny them the seat held by Judy Wasylycia-Leis for over a decade. And you did it on an election budget of zero. We won't hold it against you that you got a Liberal elected. You are democracy in action, dude.

* Shelly Glover. The drive-by smear on you by the MSM failed miserably. The press gallery's favoured Liberals are on the trash heap and you are a rising star in Parliament.

* Vic Toews. You're living proof that there's no benefit to sucking up to the press. Don't give an inch. Challenge every lie. Watch 'em scurry under their rocks and whine.

* Lubomyr Luciuk. Guts. When the backers of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights launched an all-out assault on the Ukrainian community with wild accusations of anti-semitism to get you to shut up, you kept to the high road and refused to jump into the gutter with Gail Asper and her pals. It took a lot of guts to take the heat from that once-powerful quarter and to keep fighting for your cause without backing down as they hoped. And you did it with class, shaming your opponents in the process. Bravo.

* Menno Zacharias. It's been a joy watching you grow as a blogger. http://mennozacharias.com/

* Rae Butcher. You're a bona fide, certified citizen journalist now. And you did it without any help from the "professionals" at the Winnipeg Free Press who will apparently be tutoring bloggers at their news cafe, God help us. http://adayinthehood.blogspot.com/

- 30 -

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OUR READERS.

The CMHR tests Stephen Harper. Money for whites as aboriginals get the shaft ?

2011-12-26T18:13:00.006-06:00

There's a term they use in the boxing world when a fighter is being beaten to a pulp and his cornermen want the fight stopped to spare him further punishment.

They call it 'throwing in the towel'.

On Friday, the biggest boosters of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights threw in the towel.

Like a punch-drunk fighter, the CMHR is still swinging, refusing to give up. But the Winnipeg Free Press, the propaganda arm of the museum, admitted in an editorial that the cost overruns of the CMHR are beyond the ability of the private sector to pay. The charade is over.

The numbers are so grim that the FP refuses to publish them.

So we'll do it for them.

Before the public meeting held by the CMHR in early December, they claimed they were within $20 million of their budget. Two weeks after the meeting, they confessed that costs had actually risen another $41 million---for construction alone.

Subtotal: $ 61 Million

Even that wouldn't get you a finished building.

The CMHR said they weren't counting the costs of a 350-seat theatre and of a temporary gallery, that was going to be used for travelling exhibits and for non-permanent shows on a theme, event or issue. They ran out of money before these could be tendered, so they don't even know how much they would cost, although both are an integral part of the project.

You can add $2 million to the subtotal.

As reported in The Black Rod, the Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights reduced the amount of money they turned over for construction in 2010 by $2 million so they could use the money for future fundraising. But they didn't subtract it from the total they claimed they raised.

The 2010-2011 annual report from the CMHR says that as of March 31, 2011 they had spent $143.3 million on building the museum.
And they had $83.3 million in cash and investments on hand waiting to be spent.
But that only adds up to $226.6 million.
At that point, they were claiming publicly they had raised $285 million.

Where was the rest?

Ten million dollars was the final payment from the federal government, to be paid out this year, but the other $49 million had to be the IOU's collected by the private fundraising group, Friends of the Museum. Twenty million of that was paid out in 2011, according to a later financial statement from the CMHR, leaving $29 million outstanding. Add that ...

and you've got ...

a total of $92 million

plus the cost of untendered work, that the private sector has to either raise or collect in one year to finish the project.

Not. A. Hope. In. Hell.

And that would only pay for the building. The original budget set the price of exhibits---four years ago---at $35 million. Has that doubled since?

Can the private sector raise $127 million to $162 million to finish the museum in two years?

Not on this planet.

The Winnipeg Free Press conceded as much, but what they did next - was breathtaking.

The newspaper then dove headlong into an astonishing, headspinning exercise of rewriting history straight out of George Orwell's Ministry of Truth.

The Free Press story writes millionaire Gail Asper, and even her father, billionaire Izzy Asper, out of the history of the CMHR and inserts in their place Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

By the 'new truth', the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is Stephen Harper's project, not the Asper family's. (Honest. We're not making this up. You can't make this stuff up.) In fact, the headline on the editorial is "Mr. Harper must finish his project."

By the new reasoning, Stephen Harper "assumed complete control of the project" in 2007 when he seized it from "those who had earlier been struggling to get the project off the ground." and made it into a national museum.

He installed his own board of directors, the Free Press said, and Harper appointed his own CEO, Stu Murray,without consultation. (Uh, oh. It sure smells like somebody's getting set up for a trip under the bus.)

"Ottawa was in charge," trumpeted the editorial.

Gail Asper, the hero of the Free Press version of truth, came to the rescue of the federal government, not vice versa, by committing the private fundraising group Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, to raise $105 million of the $265 million budget.

"Last April, the Friends met their target and fulfilled their promise." the newspaper declared triumphantly. And when the budget rose to $310 million, the "fundraiser agreed to make up the difference" bless their souls. "Today," sniffed the editorial,
"they are about $20 million short of that goal, an enormous achievement."

But the museum staff "says it needs $41 million more before it can open." ( Note how subtly they've started creating distance between museum staff and the Asper-led Friends.) The cost overruns "were to be expected", says the newspaper, which interestingly never once in three years of construction predicted that there would be more than $80 million in overruns.

"The fact is it is Mr. Harper's responsibility to finish the museum by providing the last $41 million. It's Canada's museum and his reputation that are at risk, not the Asper family's."

Okay, STOP.

That's as much hysterical historical revisionism as we can stand.

Every single word in Friday's editorial was refuted in Saturday's War-And-Peace length feature story by columnist Dan Lett on the history of how the museum came to be.

He obviously didn't get the memo.

His story lays it out---how billionaire Izzy Asper wanted to memorialize the Holocaust with a museum here in Winnipeg, how he rooked the federal government into pledging $100 million for his pet project, how the Aspers hired an architect, selected the design and signed contracts before the federal government accepted the CMHR as a national museum.

* Lett forgot to mention how museum backers lied to the Senate to get that official museum status by declaring the budget of $265 million was accurate and backed by a healthy 15 percent contingency provision, and that in any event the private sector fundraisers would cover all cost overruns.

* He also forgot to mention that Gail Asper sits on the museum's board of trustees, heads the private fundraising effort, and has fought vociferously to limit the government's say on anything the museum does.

* And the fact that in 3 years she's made repeated public statements that its the private sector's responsibility to cover the increased costs of construction, not the government's.

That's Lett's share of historical revisionism.

Why would the newspaper even try to rewrite the truth in such a fashion?

At the time of the public meeting, when the museum reps studiously kept the latest cost overruns a secret, the chairman of the board of museum trustees was Arni Thorsteinson, a once-upon-a-time honoured and respected local businessman. As soon as the meeting was over and the first hints of trouble were reported, Thorsteinson bolted for the Exit.

He was long gone before the hopelessness of the CMHR's financial situation was revealed and nobody has been able to get a single word from him since.

His replacement came from within---Eric Hughes, who the Winnipeg Free Press described as a Calgary oil executive, who had been serving as vice-chairman.

What the FP carefully avoided from saying is that Eric Hughes is a close personal friend of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

They've been friends since their university days. In fact, Hughes played a big role in convincing Harper to get into politics. He handled the finances of the Canadian Alliance. He's a total Harper insider.

That's why the Free Press has decided to throw their credibility overboard. There is no other hope. They intend to whitewash the Aspers and put the blame on the failure of the museum on Harper unless he succumbs to the blackmail and writes a blank cheque for his pal.

Today the FP said there is talk of a $45 million bridge loan from the government to the museum.

A bridge loan to nowhere. A loan implies it will be repaid. There's absolutely no hope the museum backers can repay anything.

- Remember, Stu Murray was hired as CEO in large part because of his, ahem, expertise in fundraising.

- In April, the Friends of the CMHR announced the appointment of Davorka Cvitkovic as their first-ever CEO. "Dav Cvitkovic is recognized as one of the most accomplished fundraising professionals in Canada...," said John Stefaniuk, president of the Friends of the CMHR's board of directors.

- Gail Asper was the national chairman of the Friends' fundraising campaign. "Gail Asper is Canada’s best fundraiser,” said Gail Dexter Lord, co-president of Lord Cultural Resources.

After all these experts got to work, the CMHR is further in debt today than it was three years ago.

And you're going to lend money to them?

The museum lists as major contributors a dozen banks and credit unions. Why don't these financial institutions come to their rescue and loan them $45 million? The Aspers and their fellow millionaires could put their homes and summer homes and vacation homes up as collateral to backstop the loan.

Surely there's no risk the loan won't be paid back, is there?

The Harper government has much more at risk by becoming the lender of last resort than seeing a friend's nose out of joint.

If the Harper government rushes, or tiptoes or crawls, to the aid of the CMHR it will prove to all of Canada that it is a racist government.

The federal government tries to demonstrate its fiscal responsibility by criticizing aboriginal band councils for mismanaging their budgets and reacts to extreme cases by taking control of the finances through a third party manager.

But when a white organization like the CMHR demonstrates it is completely out of control of its finances, the Harper government turns a blind eye except for looking how to give them even more money to mismanage.

Why is this government treating aboriginals differently from whites? That is racism. Plain and simple.

Unless the Harper government takes control of the finances away from the CMHR, dismisses all the board of trustees, and orders a full and public investigation of how the money was spent, all the lies that were told, and who knew what and when, it deserves to be labelled as a racist, anti-aboriginal government throughout Canada.

This isn't a case of doing a favour for a pal.

If this government has principles, it must apply those principles equally regardless of race or political influence.

The cost of the CMHR has gone from $265 million to $351 million, plus untendered work, plus the cost of exhibits, plus plus plus, without any approval from the public.

At least aboriginal governments are elected.

The Harper government must stop the construction of the museum immediately until it knows for certain how much more money is needed. It must insist that the $310 million budget cannot be exceeded. The project must be finished as best it can within that $310 million, and what cannot be paid for will not be built.

That is the message that must be sent to the entire country---stay within your budgets or else pay the consequences.

What then? Then the grandiose plans of the Aspers must be thrown on the trash heap of arrogance.

The best idea we've heard yet is that the Winnipeg Convention Centre could move into the building to share space with the revamped "ideas" museum.

This would save the city hundreds of millions of dollars and recoup some of the monstrous loss we face with the current money pit.

The Harper government must act or pay the political price.

Another tax break can't save the CMHR from drowning in red ink. Neither can the MSM.

2011-12-23T16:16:00.004-06:00

As if you need more proof that the laws for the peasants don't apply to millionaires like Gail Asper and her pet project the Canadian Museum for Human Rights --- but here's some more.

We told you this week that some unknown Fairy Godmother at City Hall secretly wiped out $118,000 from the museum's property tax bill. That act saved the museum which won't, or can't, pay its taxes from being put up for tax sale in the event it fails to pay in 2012 for the third year in a row.

We've since learned that the CMHR is getting even more special treatment from the Winnipeg tax department.

The museum is the only property in the entire city that is exempt from penalties for non-payment of property taxes.

More than $50,000 in penalties should have been added to the museum's outstanding tax arrears last year, but wasn't.

The City of Winnipeg website clearly states that penalties of 1.25 percent are charged on unpaid taxes.

Plus 7.5 percent in the current year in September.

They'll have to add an amendment: except for millionaires who expect the little people to pay their share.

But a present of forty thousand dollars is next to worthless compared to the deep, deep,deep financial pit the CMHR finds itself in.

Make no mistake---the finances of the CMHR are out of control.

The museum trustees confessed Thursday that the project is another $41 million over budget. That's on top of the $45 million cost overrun they admitted to in 2009. And that's also not counting the other millions they need that they're not counting. (No, honest, we're not making that up. That's what they said.)

Winnipeg's mainstream media continues its tradition of running interference for the Asper family of moochers. No news outlet has yet pointed out that the $41 million shortfall is ON TOP of the $20 million the museum backers have failed to raise on the previous overrun. That brings the black hole up to $61 million.

And here's how the Winnipeg Free Press, the propaganda arm of the CMHR, described the museum's faulty and deceptive bookkeeping being used to keep even more costs off the books:

"This revised project budget still does not allocate funds to complete the museum's temporary gallery and theatre. These elements were not included in the $310 million budget, either."

The temporary gallery is in addition to the museum's 12 permanent zones. It was to be used for temporary and traveling exhibits which could run from 3 to 6 months and would "examine particular events, themes or issues" according to communications director Angela Cassie. The 350-seat theatre is being promoted by Tourism Winnipeg as having retractable seating.

And don't forget that while the Friends of the CMHR claims to have raised $130 million in private donations --- they now acknowledge that much of that sum is pledges over years and not cash-in-hand. That means that as much as half of that claim is in the form of IOU's that have no value until, and if, they are paid out.

In other words, add another $65 million to the money still needed to finish building the museum.

Grand total in that case: $126 million

Plus the cost of the temporary gallery and theatre.

The Friends of the CMHR managed to raise a palty $5 million in cash and IOU's in the year 2011. At that rate it will only another 25 years to build the museum.

And after it's built, they now say its going to sit empty for a year or two, at least, until they can find the money to install the fancy interactive electronic devices that are the literal guts of the place. Remember, it's an "ideas" museum with next to no artifacts of any sort. So the "ideas" are words and pictures that will be displayed electronically to people. (We're not making this up.)

But the Museum has a plan. Its going after corporate sponsorships. In fact, you too can be a piece of the museum if you're rich enough. They literally have a price list. Check it out:

Naming opportunities

Space Minimum Donation Amount Years for Naming of Space Years for Recognition (i.e. on donor 'wall')

Tower of Hope $10 million Reserved Perpetuity
Great Hall $6 million Reserved Perpetuity
Garden of Contemplation $5 million 25 Perpetuity
Theatre $5 million 25 Perpetuity
Floors 2,3 & 4 (3) $5 million 25 Perpetuity
Temporary Gallery $4 million 25 Perpetuity
Exhibition Rooms (4-L,3-Med, 2-Sm) $2 - 4 million 25 Perpetuity
Glass Elevators (2) $3 million 25 Perpetuity
Wetlands $3 million 25 Perpetuity
Lobby / ticketing $3 million 25 Perpetuity
Restaurant $2 million 25 Perpetuity
Retail store $2 million 25 Perpetuity
Lower theatre level $2 million 25 Perpetuity
Library $2 million 25 Perpetuity
Stairs in Tower (to Observatory) $2 million 25 Perpetuity
Amphitheatre – exterior $2 million 25 Perpetuity
Bridge over entrance – interior $2 million 25 Perpetuity
Upper theatre level $1.5 million 25 Perpetuity
Universal access entrance $1.5 million 25 Perpetuity
Group entrance – exterior plaza $1.5 million 25 Perpetuity
Group entrance - interior $1.5 million 25 Perpetuity
Café patio – exterior $1.5 million 25 Perpetuity
Elevator lobby areas (5) $1.5 million 25 Perpetuity
Classrooms (3) $1.5 million 25 Perpetuity
Programs various Perpetuity Perpetuity

The following is a list of naming opportunities available to $1 million donors.

The naming of the space will be for a period of up to 25 years with recognition (i.e. on the donor ‘wall’) in perpetuity.

Archival area
Artifact preparation area
Boardroom - Reserved
Classroom lobby
Earth garden
Exterior pathway segments (6-10)
Lounges & terraces - interior & exterior (5)
Native grass areas (9)
Office floor levels (3)
Ramp segments (approx. 25)
Training room
Wedge Pond
VIP waiting room

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Naming opportunities for endowed funds will be offered in perpetuity.
But you have to act fast. Some prime spots are already spoken for.

Hence:
John & Bonnie Buhler Hall - Museum's grand hall with an estimated capacity of 650 persons

Stuart Clark Garden of Contemplation with towering glass walls, basalt columns and gently flowing streams - ideal for cocktail gatherings

We're going for The Black Rod doorknob to the Exit.

*************
Professional Reporters At Work
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights carefully orchestrated the release of the news that is another $41 million in the hole. As predicted, they waited until just before Christmas weekend to provide the figure knowing that all city newsrooms are decimated by staff taking time off for the holidays. They needn't have bothered being sneaky. The mainstream reporters in the city did, as usual, as little as possible to report the news.

A comment left on a news website Thursday said Premier Greg Selinger told CBC Radio that morning that he was prepared to channel more money into the CMHR. We watched the television news for that clip, in vain.

But host Janet Stewart did say they did a year-end interview with Selinger, but it was too long to play and viewers should see the whole thing on their website. Yeah, that'll happen.

CTV didn't have a word about the museum's wonky budgetting. What's a third of a billion dollars wasted, eh, Gord?

The Winnipeg Free Press, official museum touters, promoted the museum story on Page One with the Headline "Museum vows to find cash".

The blurb read: "A day after Ottawa said no bailout is coming, the new interim chair is confident national donors and corporate sponsorships will help make up the shortfall." No mention of a $41 million cost overrun.

If you turned to the story, on Page Five, you would see a big headline "Museum's new cash strategy" and the lead "The new interim chairman of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is confident the institution can make up a funding shortfall without receiving another dime from Ottawa." Eight paragraphs in you read that "It's been speculated the CMHR.. .may need another $45 million to complete."

The newspaper never actually spelled it out, that the cost of construction had risen by $41 million. In a sidebar to the main story they danced around the figure. The lead to that story was how the museum was encouraging fundraising. They said the total cost of "building and contents" had risen to $351 million.

Wrong. That number is for building alone. But the FP never lets facts get in the way of their stories.

They then used smaller figures to hide the $41 million shock.

* "Unanticipated challenges" increased the base building budget to $25 million.
* The cost of exhibit design was up $9 million.
* An additional $7 million "associated with creating software programs" are now included. "Those costs were previously captured within the operating budget".

WHAT?

Talk about burying the lead.

The CMHR was hiding $7 million in costs in the operating budget? When was that known? Was that even legal? Don't count on the Winnipeg Free Press to answer those questions.

None of this was revealed at the annual public meeting the museum was obligated by law to hold at the beginning of December. Front and centre at that meeting was Arni Thorsteinson, chairman of the museum's board of trustees. He never said a word about the $41 million shortfall. He did, though, resign almost immediately after the meeting and by now he's run halfway across Saskatchewan to avoid questions.

Also at that meeting was museum CEO Stu Murray who was equally silent about the out of control finances.

Murray appeared on CJOB's Richard Cloutier show Friday. For the first time ever when discussing the CMHR, Cloutier set aside his usual obsequiousness and put on his "I'm a tough reporter" voice.

He then proceeded to conduct an interview about as tough as Kermit the Frog interviewing Miss Piggy.

Stu Murray, who was once a thinking, feeling human being, answered robotically, spewing the party line in neatly practised and memorized clumps of blather.

Why did he once say that the final budget for the CMHR would be $310 million? "At that time the number was accurate." Huh? It was right before it was wrong? That's your answer for misleading the public, Stu? Cloutier didn't press him.

Should people believe the new number? "The board feels it's a number that's not going to move." Not until they add the cost of the temporary gallery and theatre, which were never mentioned by Cloutier.

Cloutier raised the point that to the public it looks like elites spending tax money. Murray said the CMHR got used furniture from Manitoba Hydro when the utility moved into it's new downtown building. No, honest, that was his answer. We're not making this up or exaggerating.

CJOB then took calls, sort of. Cloutier proceeded to condescend, then insult anyone who was against spending more on the museum. "Turn up your hearing aid," he sneered at one caller, telling him to watch Teletoons on TV. "Perhaps that's where you should be."

When one caller told Cloutier he got "snowed" by Murray, there was dead silence on air before Cloutier defensively and contemptuously changed the subject and cut the caller off. Talk about elitism. No wonder OB's audience is dropping like a stone. Perhaps the management should consider that Cloutier is bored with his job and a change of hosts is overdue.

"Mickey and Goofy could have done a better interview" one caller managed to say before anyone could hit the kill switch.

**********
Finally, as they say, leave 'em laughing.

We've been saving this comment off the Free Press website following the public meeting held by the CMHR. It puts the slap in kneeslapping funny. Best comment of the year. And it ties in because it refers, obliquely, to the unfunded theatre planned for the rights museum.

ErikW
8:57 AM on 12/7/2011
"Museum CEO Stuart Murray said they have plans for live, interactive exhibits. He conjured up an example -- an actor portraying Louis Riel giving his last speech in a Regina courtroom before he was hanged." ---------------------------- I hate to nitpick, but if I'm watching an actor give a speech it's not interactive, it's passive. Or will I be allowed to operate the gallows?

The solution to CMHR spending orgy is Gail Asper's worst nightmare

2011-12-21T13:02:00.003-06:00

Who writes The Black Rod? Kreskin?

With the facade of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights crumbling around the ears of its backers, we found ourselves recalling the warnings we issued in months and even years past.

"Remember, THEY HAVE NO MONEY. The scam is to get enough to keep construction going until later this year, say during the provincial election, when they will admit they're skint, and throw themselves on the mercy of the politicians."

We wrote that about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights last April---eight months ago.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/04/your-taxes-go-up-as-mayor-waives-taxes.html

Not impressed? Look at what we wrote in July, 2009:
"In fact, we estimate that without huge infusions of new cash almost immediately, they will run out of money in the spring of 2011."
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2009/07/jeff-browaty-civic-weasel-number-one.html

It looks now that on both counts we were spot on.
******************

By the Spring of 2011 the trustees of the CMHR were staring into a financial abyss. The government money taps would be turned off in another year. Those vaunted millions in private donations had turned out to be a steamer trunk full of IOU's. They were collecting dimes on the dollar on their pledges and very soon the cash flow would barely cover CEO Stu Murray's trips around the country.

With a $20 million hole in the budget on top of the cash shortage, their options were limited. To their surprise, the federal government was serious about cutting spending to trim the deficit. The province was facing an election in the fall and not willing to cozy up to Gail Asper who was spearheading a smear campaign against Canada's Ukrainian community. That left only Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz, safely re-elected and controlling millions of taxpayer dollars.

In hindsight, we can now see the origin of the frantic manoeuvering last March by Katz to get city council to approve a kickback of $3.6 million in future property tax revenue to the CMHR. This wasn't an above-board "gesture" of support to a wildly out-of-control infrastructure project.

Instead, it has every appearance of a politician doing the bidding of a millionaire friend over the best interests of the citizens of Winnipeg.

And we can tell you today that the largesse of City Hall didn't end there.

As reported exclusively in The Black Rod, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights hasn't paid its full property taxes for two years running. If next June 30 they failed to pay their 2012 taxes, the CMHR would go up for tax sale unless the trustees paid the entire outstanding bill at one swoop.

But, then, Christmas came early for Gail Asper and the museum.

On July 21st, 2011, somebody at City Hall quietly wrote off $118,000 of the museum's tax bill.

The outstanding bill was a shade over $443,000 plus penalties of almost $36,000 for non-payment in 2010. The city charges 1.25 percent per month on unpaid tax bills.

Somehow, prime riverfront property independently assessed at $7 million, at least, lost value.

Without a word to the public, somebody cut $118,000 off the CMHR's unpaid tax bill.

The same day as receiving the writeoff, the museum made a payment of $98,538. The effect was to buy time. They can now default on their 2012 taxes without fear of going on the list of tax sale properties.

As we wrote just this past July:

"You can see why the millionaires backing the CMHR can't be bothered paying their city taxes."
"They're counting on Sam Katz and Justin Swandel to turn a blind eye for their buddies while insisting the little people have to pay more taxes."

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/07/who-didnt-pay-their-taxes-again.html

**************
The Trustees of the CMHR managed to keep a lid on their financial woes from Spring to Fall. The first crack in the official story came in November in a puff piece on Gail Asper in the Toronto Star. For the first time ever there was a mention that the museum wouldn't open until perhaps 2014. There was no attribution for the date, so we dismissed it as speculation.

But a month later, the museum held its first ever public meeting, and the cracks became chasms.

They confirmed the museum opening had been postponed for a year from April, 2013, to sometime in 2014. Even that turned out to be a moving target, as later statements from communications director Angela Cassie said they were hoping it would open in 2014, but a later date was possible.

The reason for the one year postponement?

Well, that, too, varied with the day, if not the hour.

At first Cassie said it was to give the museum time to train its staff to deal with emotional visitors. But eventually, the truth sneaked out----they were soon to be broke. They didn't have the money to fit up the museum.

Hell, they could hardly count on enough money to finish building it--- exactly as predicted in The Black Rod.

Even the Winnipeg Free Press, the propaganda arm of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, reluctantly conceded the facts in their Saturday editorial:

"Large gifts, moreover, are usually awarded over a limited time period,say $1 million over 10 years. As a result, the museum's capital campaign is not only behind by $20 million, there are millions of other dollars that can't be spent or banked because they haven't started to flow."

You don't say? Or should we say, you never before said.

The newspaper's confession means, simply, that all those photos of a grinning Gail Asper announcing some huge, ahem, donation without once pointing out that the, ahem, donation was a tenth of the stated value per year were bogus.

False.

Propaganda, not news.

Thankfully, those photo ops have dwindled to almost zero, just like the museum's bank account.

But the Free Press had a solution to the museum's financial woes --- the federal government should just give the CMHR a blank cheque.

See how simple it is, when it comes to the pet projects of millionaires ?

We, too, have a solution and it, too, involves the federal government.

We're not the only ones to reach the same conclusion.

Put the Canadian Museum for Human Rights under third party management.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper ordered the Attawapiskat Indian Reserve put under third party management because conditions were unacceptable given the $90 million plus Ottawa has spent on the reserve since 2007.

Well, that's exactly what the federal government has spent on the CMHR since 2007 and the results are just as unacceptable.

Why are the white boys (and girl) being treated more favourably than the natives?

Nobody knows how much the museum is going to cost -- if it's ever finished. They've already spent more than $200 million on construction and nobody can even guess at what the final cost will be. Hell, they can't even tell you what year it will open.

As of today, the rough plan is to finish building the structure in 2012, then let it sit empty for a year or two, or more, until they figure out how to pay for the state-of-the-art bells and whistles that will make up the exhibits. Once you've crossed out 'government', nobody knows where the money will come from.

Nobody really knows how much money the Friends of the Museum have raised either.
Nobody knows what caveats are attached to the alleged donations.
Nobody knows how the pledges are structured---over how many years, for example. Nobody knows what number of pledges have defaulted in the current tough economic climate.

A third party manager should dismiss the museum's board of directors and conduct a full, forensic audit to reveal exactly how the CMHR has spent the money its received.

Apart from concrete, steel and glass, let's see ... there's sending museum CEO Stu Murray on a junket to China, giving out bursaries to the University of Winnipeg's Adventures in Global Citizenship Institute for a three-week course they created, partnering in putting on a documentary film festival in Montreal and, oh, co-sponsoring with Amnesty International the screening in Ottawa of a documentary about gay rights in Cameroon.

Yes, that's right, gay rights in Cameroon.

Given that the Friends of the Museum hands out charitable tax credits for donations, a third party manager should demand full access to the donors' list and publish any restrictions attached to any donations. That's called transparency.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights was built on lies and it's time for the federal government to step in and clean house.

The board of trustees cannot be trusted any further.

The museum backers are playing their two last cards to duck the blame for the fiasco while keeping their hands on the taxpayers' wallets.

It's a national museum, and as such, the federal government has a responsibility to pay whatever it costs to build and maintain it, they say.

And nobody could have guessed the final bill. All previous figures provided to the public were only estimates.

Lies, both.

Before the Senate gave approval for the federal government to take over the construction of the CMHR after it proved too expensive as Izzy Asper's private project, one Senator asked the right questions of the witnesses called in support of the move, including Patrick O'Reilly, Director, Implementation Strategy, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and Rina Pantalony, Legal Counsel, Canadian Heritage.

As reported exclusively in The Black Rod:

(transcript slightly amended here for brevity)

Senator Jim Munson (Acting Chair) in the chair.

The primary purpose of Bill C-42 is to create a new national museum for  human rights. It is to be called the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. As  provided by clause 1 through clause 4 of the bill, it will be established as an  independent Crown corporation through amendments to the Museums Act.

Senator Cowan: (Addressing Lyn Elliot Sherwood, Executive Director,  Heritage Group, Canadian Heritage )
On the page of your presentation entitled  ``Background,'' it talks about $165 million having come from various sources  other than the federal government and $100 million coming from the federal  government. On the next page you say that the budget to build and fit up  the museum, including exhibition development, would be capped at $265  million.

These projects have a tendency to run over the expected costs. Who  will pick up the tab if the costs exceed $265 million?

Ms. Sherwood: It is the responsibility of the board to develop an approach  to the building plan that includes a generous contingency provision designed to  stay within the budget. A number of steps can be taken in planning for a  construction project with detailed design, development and costing prior  to the letting of construction contracts that enable a board to accurately  assess whether the project can come in on budget.

Senator Cowan:  Does the $265 million include a contingency provision?
Ms. Sherwood: Yes, it  does.

Senator Cowan: This is not one of those projects where the  federal government is left to pick up anything over and above the $165 million  that is contributed by other parties, is it?

Ms. Sherwood: The total  budget is $265 million. You are putting your finger on a very real risk  in the current environment, which is the impact of inflation on construction  budgets. That has been factored into planning and is one of the reasons  for the urgency of this bill because at the moment the purchasing power of that  $265 million is being eroded at the rate of between $800,000 and $1.5 million  per month.

Senator Cowan: I am not being critical of this project.
However,  someone has to hold it at the end of the day.

Ms. Sherwood: The board  of trustees will be accountable for bringing this project in on budget  and making decisions with respect to the building design and the contingency  fund set aside that allow it to bring the project in on budget.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2009/05/cmhr-to-politicians-we-lied-so-whatcha.html

The answers provided the Senate were concise and clear.

The budget would be capped at $265 million. Steps would be taken to "assess whether the project can come in on budget." Construction inflation had been factored into the planning as was a "generous" contingency. And, most importantly, "the board of trustees WILL BE accountable for bringing this project in on budget."

There was no talk of an "estimated" budget that could balloon out of control and which the federal government would have to pay.

After we detected in 2009 that the CMHR was grossly over budget, we called for them to produce a "drop dead" figure---a construction cost that would be final and fixed. It took a while, but they finally coughed it up. Here's what we wrote at the time:

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2009/08/cmhr-wont-be-able-to-revise-this.html

Friday, August 14, 2009
CMHR won't be able to revise this history

He ducked. He dodged. He weaved. But in the end, he coughed up.

A drop-dead number. On the record. In stone.

CJOB radio host Geoff Currier sparred Thursday morning with Arni Thorsteinson, chairman of the board of trustees for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and with Gail Asper, chairman of the fundraising campaign by the Friends of the museum.

It was carefully choreographed with scripted questions and absolutely no fielding of calls from the public. But in an uncharacteristic display of journalism, Currier wouldn't let Thorsteinson get away without answering if the museum project had a "ceiling," a cost that wouldn't be exceeded no matter what.

"We're at that point now," Thorsteinson finally said. "We've got our final budget. We're highly confident that we will complete the project at that cost."

That cost: $310 million. Write it down. Print it out. Paint it on the wall.

Because Thorsteinson and Gail Asper must be held to account to that number. No excuses. No more moving finish line.

Well, guess what.
Two years later they're trying to rewrite history.
$310 million was only another estimate, they say.
Projects like this are complex and nobody can guess what they'll cost in the end, they protest.
Especially not the taxpayer footing the bill.

Oh, and Arni Thorsteinson mysteriously resigned last week. He's not around anymore to discuss the firm assurance he gave the public that the cost of the CMHR was "final."

The argument that the federal government is responsible for funding the CMHR whatever the cost because the museum is a national facility is a joke, right?

******************

The CMHR was always, and is still, the Asper Family's pet project. It was intended to be a private museum centred on the Holocaust until costs grew out of control. There was never any desire from the public for a human rights museum. Ever. It was imposed on the public and everyone knows it.

Today, we can compare what the public truly wants, with what is being rammed down their throats by Gail Asper and her political pals.

The Jets are back.

* The CMHR trustees claim that 6600 people have donated to the museum.
The Winnipeg Jets sell out 15,000 seats every game.

* The CMHR claims its raised $130 million, although we now see that's a bogus figure. A huge proportion of that number is pledges of money in the future. To date, they may actually have collected half, if that.

The Jets, by comparison, would rake in $22 million a year if you're using only the lowest season ticket price, and double that, $44 million, at an average season price. And they're sold out for the next three years, with 15,000 more people ready and willing to snap up tickets if they go on sale.

* One is something people want---and will gladly pay for. The other is a pet project of elitist millionaires, something that people don't want and which they have to be forced to pay for.

*********************

The Winnipeg Free Press has floated a figure for the latest cost overrun -- $45 million but its attributed only to unnamed "sources". The Friends of the CMHR already can't raise the $20 million outstanding on the last overrun. Add $45 million to that and you've entered the Twilight Zone.

The feds have said they're not upping their contribution. Period. The province is looking at a billion dollar deficit and is not likely to slip in another $40-50-60 million. And the city doesn't have that kind of money.

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it should.

We've witnessed this sequence of events before -- the sudden collapse of a careful coverup, politicians in the know running for cover, a rash of resignations of senior executives, a Ponzi-like scam to use bogus figures to trick new investors into signing cheques to bail out previous investors, a small cabal of elitists out to change the world and stick the taxpayer with the bill...

Crocus, anyone?

Deciphering the secrets of the CMHR's first public meeting

2011-12-09T18:59:00.004-06:00

This week the Canadian Museum for Human Rights held its first public meeting but it took a few days before the various accounts coalesced into a semi-coherent reflection of what was said and, more to the point, what the public was not told.

Like, for example, the true cost of the Asper family money pit, pegged for the last couple of years at $310 million.

Angela Cassie, the, ahem, "communications director" for the museum, said, to quote the Winnipeg Sun, "planners are “reforecasting” the cost projection and plan to “confirm an exact number on that in the next couple of weeks”."

WHOOP. WHOOP. WHOOP. Sound the alarm.

The museum "planners" are going to reveal the newly-revised cost of the half-built museum sometime around, oh, let's see, Christmas? When there's hardly a reporter working? And when nobody will be around to comment? Oh, that's not suspicious at all.

And, just so you know, 'reforecasting' is a real word.

What's it mean?

We asked city councillor Ross Eadie.

"It means 'Holy shxx. Do you fxxxing know what the real fxxxing bill is going to fxxxing be? We're fxxxed'." Uh, thanks Ross.

We went instead to the accounting world where we learned that another term for 'reforecasting' is budget flexing. Don't you just love that? Budget flexing---aka revising the projected expense based on knowing what things will actually cost.

And you can bet the farm that costs aren't going down. A sure sign was that museum CEO Stu Murray didn't give the audience his usual reassurance that the CMHR will be built "on time and on budget." That's at least, in part, because it won't be on time. The opening is being delayed by a year to 2014, which will make it two years late and way, way over budget.

How much over budget this time? You can start your guesses at $3.6 million.

Remember back in April and the panicky vote at city council to kick back precisely $3.63 million in future property taxes to the CMHR? Nobody every explained where that exact figure came from? Or why the rush to pass the kickback with no public notice?

But guess where that $3.6 million showed up? In the last annual report from the CMHR under the heading "Construction Project: Budget."

"The Museum developed a financial Risk Mitigation Strategy in 2010-2011. Significant progress related to risk mitigation includes an additional commitment from the City of Winnipeg of $3.6 million..."

Translation: Sam Katz agreed to pay off up to $3.6 million cost overruns without telling the public.

Which explains a comment made by a giggly Gail Asper when she was interviewed by Winnipeg Free Press reporter Geoff Kirbyson in July.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html

He asked if the cost of construction could go up even higher than $310 million.

"I can't really say," answered Gail Asper. "I certainly hope not. There's contingency funds..."

And this after years of hearing Stu Murray swear with one hand on his heart and the other on a stack of bibles that the project wouldn't cost a penny more than $310 million. Something was up even then.

The museum talking heads used to dismiss concerns about cost by reciting a mantra quoting the percentage tendered and supposedly fixed. The CMHR annual report states: At March 31, 2011, the construction of the building is 50 percent complete and 95 percent of the building costs have been tendered and confirmed. In 2011-2012, the remaining five percent of the building costs will be tendered and the budgets for the exhibition fit-up, fabrication and installation will be finalized.

You can bet that costs didn't suddenly shoot up in the two weeks between the annual report and city council's tax giveaway.

They were misleading the public as early as April.
Do you think they've stopped now?

And the museum seems to be on a wobbly financial footing. Is this why the opening has been delayed a year? Because they can't afford to finish the building in time?
The annual report carries this intriguing sentence in discussing risk mitigation:

"Efforts continue to confirm other sources of funding to ensure capital cash flow needs are met."

So they're having cash flow problems? That's never good.

Angela Cassie told a television interviewer that the real reason for the year-long delay in opening is to train staff on how to respond to emotional (read angry) visitors. Up to now the response has been to accuse anyone who challenges the Asper vision of anti-semitism. The CMHR tried another tactic at its public meeting -- it restricted questions to 15 minutes of the two hour presentation.

Some of those questions centred on the museum's plans to elevate the Holocaust over all other mass murders in the world by setting aside one of the museum's 12 "zones" exclusively for the study of the murder of Europe's Jews by the Nazis.

The latest reason floated by supporters of the museum is that the Holocaust is the most completely documented genocide in history. This replaces the previous excuse for special treatment for the Holocaust, that the very concept of human rights flowed from the organized murder of Jews in the early Forties.

Canada's Ukrainian community has led the objection to giving the Holocaust special status in a national museum dedicated to the promotion of the human rights of all Canada's ethnic groups. They proposed the Holocaust be incorporated into a single thematic gallery which would tell the stories of all historic genocides including the death of millions of Ukrainians at the hands of Russian Communists. The response has been a virulent campaign by museum supporters to smear the Ukrainians as anti-semites, capped by the invention by one academic of an imaginary demand to eliminate any permanent reference of the Holocaust at the CMHR.

Well, so much for encouraging dialogue, eh, Stu?

But the Ukrainians haven't backed down, and the CMHR is trying a new tack---spin.

Angela Cassie told the Jewish Post that the museum's 12 original galleries have now been re-labelled as "clusters" each on a theme. Three of those galleries will be one cluster that examines genocides.

There will be an “examining the Holocaust” gallery, she said. If she was quoted accurately in the Jewish Post, this same gallery will have a "thematic approach" and will include, as the Post paraphrased it, 'some attention' to the Armenian genocide and the Holodomor, the mass murder by starvation of Ukrainians by Russian Communists.

Will this appease the Ukrainian community organizations? Its hard to say since this "remedy" wasn't discussed in the open Q&A session of the public meeting. But what was written next in the Jewish Post won't be overlooked. Whether this came from Angela Cassie or was an aside by the author we don't know because it isn't clear in the reading. What it says is sure to provoke an angry response.

"...the Holodomor (the Ukrainian genocide perpetrated by Joseph Stalin, although to what extent the Holodomor can be seen as a deliberate genocide aimed at the Ukrainian people is a matter of debate. Some historians argue that the Ukrainians were simply the largest group to suffer among a number of different ethnic groups that fell victim to Stalinist policies of forced collectivization."

You've heard of Holocaust deniers. Now it's Holodomor deniers?

The deaths of millions of Ukrainians is to be dismissed as not a true genocide but a technicality of a failed economic policy? Oh yeah, that's going to go over well.

About as well as what we'll tell you next about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

You won't believe what you're going to read.

Manitoba Tory politics: the people who blew the election do it again

2011-11-30T15:40:00.005-06:00

The Walking Dead is a popular television show about small groups of people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world overrun with zombies.

The Walking Dead is also the story of the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives, a zombie political party pretending it's alive in a world overrun by the NDP following an apocalyptic election.

You know how this plays out. The people will be okay in the long run.
The zombies? They're dead already, they just don't know it.

The Tory walking dead had a ghoulish meeting this weekend to rehash the debacle known as the last provincial election. Everyone with anything to do with their disastrous campaign met to discuss what went wrong and what went -- well, wrong. Because nothing went right.

But, wouldn't you know it, that's not how the people behind the campaign see it.

They've slapped on Hugh McFadyen's crazy happy-face, the one he wore thoughout the march off the cliff, and they've proclaimed the election a success, except for the fact that they lost. They had enough votes to win any other election but this one, they're telling anyone who will listen. So the fact that the Conservatives have lost four elections in a row, shedding five seats in the process, is seen as just a minor aberration, barely worth mentioning.

And then, the people who made every wrong move possible in the October election proceeded to do everything wrong again.

The Tories had the option of acting quickly to pick themselves up off the floor and hit the reset button.

Have no illusions; the Party has been fatally injured by the McFadyen experiment of taking the Party to the left of the NDP as we explained here
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/11/some-people-havent-yet-realized-that.html

But a speedy repudiation of the 2011 campaign would have allowed them to return to the Legislature with at least some self respect.

- They should have immediately given the heave-ho to the braintrust that designed, approved and ran the last campaign.
- They should have issued a public apology for abandoning conservative principles in a cynical gamble for votes.
- They should have declared they will return to those principles and stand or fall on them in elections to come.

Instead, they took the weasely way out. They postponed any leadership convention to next October, 11 months away. In a four year election cycle, they've conceded 25 percent of it to the NDP during which they will be rudderless. For nearly a whole humiliating year the public face of the PC Party will be the man the public didn't want as Premier. And the official policies the Opposition will be endorsing will be the policies rejected by the public at large and which are too far left of the base of the Party.

How will Hugh McFadyen debate the next budget? Will he attack the NDP for spending too much when he campaigned on spending like a drunken sailor? Or will he accuse them of spending too little because he campaigned on spending more for longer.

He has, in short, zero credibility on budget matters. And he's the official spokesman for the Conservatives.

The Opposition is supposed to be seen as a government in waiting. But the caucus of the Tory Party has demonstrated it is not ready for prime time. A government has to act in a time of crisis. The Tory Party is in crisis, but the caucus doesn't have the balls to take control of the situation, to seize the reins, elect one of their own as interim leader and tell the backroom to get their act together. How can they lead a government if they can't even lead their party?

Of course one reason for the lengthy delay of the leadership convention is the hope that someone will come riding over the horizon to fill the position.

As it is, three names have been floated for the leadership. There's sitting MLA Heather Stefanson who, under any other circumstances, would make an excellent choice. But she will have to explain why she ran for office on the McFadyen campaign and whether she endorses it still. And we'll see how much McFadyen allows her to speak in the Legislature or if he will continue to be a one-man show.

The only one openly campaigning for the job is former politician Brian Pallister. But he was in Manitoba during the last campaign and apparently said nothing to the contrary. He's since badmouthed the campaign, but leadership is getting ahead of public opinion, not following in its wake.

And then there's the little problem he has of credibility. We tore a strip off him in 2006 when he wanted to run for Manitoba Tory leader to replace Stu Murray and to run he was willing to force a $500,000 byelection for the federal seat he had just won.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2006/02/pallisters-culture-of-entitlement.html
Is an ethically challenged leader what the Conservatives want?

MP Rod Bruinooge should ask himself that same question. He's in Pallister's 2006 position---just elected to Ottawa and considering a jump to provincial politics. Is he willing to pay the $500,000 cost of a byelection out of his own pocket or does he think this is a price the public should pay for his personal ambitions.

Bruinooge is still the giant-killer--the man who defeated the unbeatable Manitoba Liberal Reg Alcock even after jumping into the race on short notice after Hugh McFadyen ran away in fear from the Conservative nomination. In 3 elections since, he's put a lock on his riding, Winnipeg South-Centre, but he ran last spring to represent his constituents and that's what he should do.

On paper he looks good. He's young, he's tech savvy, he could run in a Winnipeg seat, he's Metis, he's got a track record of doing the impossible.

But quitting after less than a year into a new term in Parliament would be a betrayal of the trust voters put into him. Wanting to spend more time with his wife and family in Manitoba is completely understandable, but the way to do that is to serve his term in Ottawa, announce he's not running in the next federal election and campaign for his replacement. He could retire from Parliament in 2015, run for a seat in the Manitoba Legislature and pick up from there. To run now would be the wrong message to an already cynical electorate.

*************

The Conservative Party continues to get advice from pundits, all of it as appalling as it is useless.

The latest to wade in is the Winnipeg Free Press editorial writer who concluded Tuesday "The Tories have time to grow".

Choosing a new leader next October, wrote Staff Writer, "leaves the party three years to strengthen and expand its base..."

"That's plenty of time" for a party that's as popular as the Conservatives, Staff Writer said. They might even have won the last election "except for two things: the collapse of the Liberal party and the disastrous Tory campaign..."

Note to Staff Writer:
The Liberal Party hasn't been a factor in provincial elections since 1988. The Conservatives doubled their vote in many ridings and still got creamed. The Liberals didn't collapse; they don't exist and neither does the future for the Conservative Party. The disastrous McFadyen campaign took care of that. He wiped the slate clean; the next election will be fought on the NDP record starting in 2011 and likely with a new NDP leader to replace Premier Greg Selinger (unless he wants to collect an old-age pension and a salary from the Legislature at the same time).

"Leader Hugh McFadyen also lost credibility with his pledge to continue running a fiscal deficit until 2018, four years longer than the NDP were promising to end it. "

Hey, Staff Writer, that's still the official policy of the Conservative Party of Manitoba and the man with no credibility is still the official voice of the party.

"He is the best person in the legislature to challenge the government and hold it accountable."

The Legislature sat a mere 57 days in 2011 -- with Hugh McFadyen's approval. That's some accountability.

The Free Press gives this advice: The new leader will need to expand the party's urban appeal (duh) and its support in northern Manitoba, but it is not too tall an order (even though it sure was in October).

"Voters will toss out a really bad or corrupt government, but not necessarily, particularly if there isn't a reasonable alternative."

We just had an election and not even the Conservatives said the NDP was really bad or horribly corrupt. So how are they going to win? Tell us again.

The Tory campaign song in 2011 was the Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO.

They've got to reach way, way back for their next one---Dusty Springfield's smash Wishin' and Hopin'.

It reached Number One in 1964, the same year the Zombies had their first hit.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has a new villain---Christianity

2011-11-28T18:29:00.003-06:00

For a brief moment, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights dropped its public mask and revealed its true agenda.

The national moneypit's biggest shill, CEO Stuart Murray, travels the country to put a happy face on the private Holocaust museum that was foisted on the public as the first "national museum" built in 40 years. Its backers, the Asper Family, realized they couldn't afford it without a pipeline into the public purse, so they tweaked the idea by folding the concrete Holocaust museum into a vague, undefined promotion of "human rights" in order to win a "national" patina for the project.

Murray still can't exactly define what the $310 million CMHR will be, other than it will have two permanent exhibits---one for the Holocaust and the other for Canada's alleged mistreatment of its natives.

Here's how a professor described the museum's mandate in a lecture at the Fort Garry Hotel in October:

"Murray emphasized the museum’s inclusivity and that it invited open-ended critical dialogue and debate on the part of visitors. Implicit throughout his talk was that educating about human rights was about respecting individual differences and differences based on group identities, and getting people not simply to tolerate differences in others but to respect and to value those differences."

Get it? Stu Murray is going around telling people the museum won't be pushing any absolutes. It will, instead, invite differences of opinion and treat all opinions as worthy of discussion.

That's the public face of the CMHR. In private, among friends, it shows its true face.

The University of Manitoba recently held a conference on immigration to Canada. Its theme was "positioning the rights of immigrants and refugees into the human rights agenda around the world." Among the speakers was Armando Perla, curator for the CMHR who would, the convention was promised, be telling " stories of some of the more than 700,000 refugees offered protection in Canada since the Second World, and of those denied entry, including war resisters, queer refugees and Romani refugees from Eastern Europe."

The Winnipeg Free Press, the propaganda arm of the CMHR, reported his address briefly:

Government slammed door on refugees
Museum curator remembers those who weren't allowed into Canada
By: Carol Sanders
11/4/2011
"While Canada's proudly welcomed 700,000 refugees since the Second World War it has silently kept the door shut on certain groups over the years, says the curator of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights."
"It has been a little bit quiet about the people we don't allow," Armando Perla told a conference at the University of Manitoba Thursday.

But Perla was the the setup for another speaker, immigration lawyer David Matas who launched into a political attack on the Conservative government in Ottawa.

"If history's taught the world anything, it's that human rights and refugee protection go hand in hand, said lawyer David Matas.

"If you say no to refugees, you're saying yes to the violation of human rights," he said...

snip

When Jews in Hitler's Germany and other parts of Europe were in danger, countries like Canada and the U.S. wouldn't take them, said Matas...The Nazis could see that the world didn't care about what happened to the Jews, and that sent the signal they could get away with genocide, said Matas. Doing nothing for refugees eventually resulted in the slaughter of six million people, he added.

When countries don't act, they're complicit in refugee persecution, he said.

"Today we shake our heads. It was obvious the Jews needed protection from the Nazis." That kind of hindsight hasn't improved the vision of countries that champion human rights today, said Matas.

-snip-

Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently condemned plans to hold a summit in Sri Lanka because of the country's human rights record. But Canada has failed to offer protection to Tamil refugees who fled Sri Lanka, said Matas.

His punchline...

"The message to the Sri Lankan government is 'Go ahead and mistreat the Tamil minority -- we don't care,' " said Matas

Now this politicization of a university conference could be overlooked if Matas was simply a private lawyer.

But the FP failed to mention his deep and influential connection to the CMHR.

Matas was on the controversial Content Advisory Committee which was established in January 2009 to travel the country and consult Canadians.

“We are eager to begin a dialogue with the public on their expectations for the Museum,” said then CEO Patrick O’Reilly on the formation of the CAC. “Canadians have interesting stories and unique perspectives on human rights, and we look forward to including these in the Museum.”

The museum had already, almost a year earlier, sent the government a report from its Ministerial Advisory Committee containing a table on how Canadians ranked the subjects they wanted addressed in the museum. Aboriginal issues was at the top with 16 percent, then Genocide with 14.8 percent, then women, internments, war, and the Holocaust sixth with 7 percent.

By the time the Content Advisory Committee got through with it, the priorities of the CMHR reflected a very different Canada.

The Holocaust was now at the top of the list and worthy of its very own gallery. The rest of the world's genocides were deposited in a grab-bag gallery that could be labelled Other.

So a curator for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and a member of the Content Advisory Committee show up at a conference to attack the federal government and its immigration policies. Hmmmm.

You know, that looks a lot like taking sides rather than listening to all points of view.

No wonder. Listening to all sides sounds so good in a speech, but that's the exact opposite of what the museum's supporters believe in. Whenever they get a chance, like the U of M conference on immigration, they prove they are as biased as anyone.

And the bias is the standard left-wing, anti-conservative lean you would expect from a prominent backer of the Liberal Party like Gail Asper.

The real purpose of the CMHR is to serve as a left-wing think tank that will attack conservative principles and policies under the cloak of non-partisan concern for human rights.

They have demonstrated absolutely no commitment to a diversity of opinion on any issue, nor will they.

When the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, backed by a variety of ethnic organizations across Canada, challenged the primacy of the Holocaust in genocide exhibits at the CMHR, the backers of the museum didn't engage in discussion. They invented vile accusations of anti-semitism and accused the Ukrainian community of being Nazi sympathizers to shut them up.

Last week was the fourth annual National Holodomor Awareness Week, when Ukrainians remember the mass starvation of their countrymen in the Thirties by Communists in Russia.

The UCC believes the genocidal polices of the Communists deserve equal attention to the genocidal policies of the Nazis in a "national museum" that's funded by all Canadians.

The Asper-led museum proponents believe otherwise, but, with their slanderous accusations of anti-semitism failing to scare off their challengers, they've made a few changes to their argument.

They used to argue that it was the Holocaust that sparked the human rights movement in the world. It was such a proven fact, they said, there was no need to debate it, Stu Murray notwithstanding.

But then scholars started coming forward to challenge their version of the truth. We wrote about one such comment:

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/04/shut-their-mouths-first-legacy-of.html

He's not alone.

John Lukas is a well-respected American historian with more than 30 books to his credit, among them The Hitler of History (1997). In Chapter 6, The Jews: Tragedy and Mystery, he wrote:

"That the cruelties visited upon the Jews in Europe were due to Hitler was obvious enough both during and after the war, so that no special attention was directed to their causal and effective connection by profession or popular historians for a relatively long time. Of course, documentary materials became available only gradually after 1945 (though more rapidly than after any previous great war), but there was more to this. There seemed to be no general, or popular, interest in the Holocaust for many years---indeed, for about two decades. The very word "Holocaust" did not begin to appear in American (or English) usage until the late 1960s."

Instead of stimulating debate and discussion the way Stu Murray would have us believe the CMHR intends, the Asper-led museum proponents launched a vicious attack on anyone who dared to present facts contrary to the CMHR world view.

But there appears to be some softening of their position. Note this story on the CBC website about a film showing at the Rady Jewish Community Centre this month.

Winnipeg's Tarbut festival celebrates the gamut of Jewish culture
Posted by Alison Gillmor, CBC reviewer

The film "The Rescuers" makes a persuasive argument that because the Holocaust is so meticulously documented and studied, it can demonstrate how genocide operates.

-snip-

The film also addresses a question that keeps coming up in Winnipeg with the opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights: Why a permanent Holocaust exhibition? The Rescuers makes a persuasive argument that because the Holocaust is so meticulously documented and studied, it can demonstrate how genocide operates.

The argument was echoed in a lecture delivered at the Fort Garry Hotel by Lionel Steiman, a Professor of History at the University of Manitoba and one of the signatories to a letter that accused Ukrainian critics of the CMHR of being anti-semites and Nazi sympathizers.

"There is a consensus among experts that the Holocaust is the most thoroughly documented and exhaustively studied mass atrocity in history."

If that was all of it, they would have a pretty good argument for highlighting the Jewish Holocaust--- in a gallery dedicated to the study of genocides throughout history.

But Steinman included a sinister twist.

"The problem is that to provide even a minimal understanding of how this vast process evolved would require far more time and space than CMHR could possibly give to it. It would have to convey at least some idea of the Christian roots of Jew hatred, and how it permeated European culture high and low; it would have to show that what we condemn as “antisemitism” was not a “prejudice” but the common sense of people everywhere, openly expressed at all levels of society everywhere."

"Antisemitism was a necessary cause of the Holocaust. CMHR’s initial plan for a Holocaust gallery didn’t mention antisemitism, and would have considered the persecution of Jews only in Germany— where only 5% of Jewish Holocaust victims came from. Fortunately gallery designers have moved beyond this, possibly in response to a critique from Dr. Catherine Chatterley, Winnipeg’s foremost academic authority on the Holocaust. They have now re-framed their Holocaust presentation so as to provide necessary historical background, and ensure that the “lessons” they draw are related to actual particularities of Holocaust experience."

Apart from the unintentional comedy of referencing Catherine Chatterly, Winnipeg's self-appointed "foremost academic authority on the Holocaust", the professor reveals a disturbing shift in the museum's approach to the Holocaust.

He says they now intend to highlight the historic anti-semitism of Christianity as the root cause of the Holocaust.

So let's get this straight.

The taxpayer is paying for a museum that divides Canada's ethnic communities, opposes free speech, provides cover for Liberal attacks on the government, and now blames Christianity for the Holocaust.

Well Merry Christmas to you, too.

Holla homies. The police chief in Murderpeg has a plan.

2011-11-24T19:11:00.002-06:00

So you're the police chief in Murderpeg.

Four years after you got the job, the city is setting a record in the number of homicides, StatsCan has named us the most violent city in Canada, and Pollyanna the Mayor is fighting with the national airline that says downtown is too dangerous to bunk its crews overnight.

The murder rate would be double if it wasn't for the skill of the medical professionals who keep saving the lives of the daily victim of a shooting or stabbing. The Rock Machine is fighting the Hell's Angels while street gangs have overrun half the city. And a spree killer is still on the loose a year after he gunned down one man outside a house, one man inside a house and gut-shot a teenaged girl on the street for no reason except to see her die. (She lived.)

Wouldn't you know it, the uppity politicians and public started asking what you were going to do about it. Apparently a helicopter that keeps communities awake half the night isn't enough.

So late last week, Winnipeg Police Chief Keith McCaskill released The Roadmap, A Strategic Plan for 2012-2014.

Written in impenetrable bureaucratese, padded out with pictures and pages of blather about vision and mission statements and touchy/ feely platitudes, the 48-page report outlines how the police service hopes to operate over the next three years leading up to the next civic election. The buzz word du jour is apparently 'relationships.'

Some of it's been reported, some hasn't and almost none of it has been discussed.

McCaskill begins his "relationship" with the citizens of Winnipeg by telling them they're stupid, they don't know what they're talking about, and their fears about crime are the result of their boneheaded "perceptions", not reality. Way to go, Keith.

"Street disorder in Winnipeg's downtown core and the high crime rate areas negatively impacts our citizens perception of personal safety. Some causes of street disorder include behaviours such as urban camping, aggressive panhandling, fighting, open drug sales and graffiti."

"Although overall violent crime is decreasing, many Winnipeggers perceive that violent crime is on the rise, and believe it poses the greatest danger to their safety and security."

Nevertheless, forced to pander to the public, McCaskill promised more foot patrols, plus bicycle patrols. But the real story was in the small print.

He intends, he wrote, to add 500 hours of each. Sounds good, until you realize policemen work in pairs.

That translates to two police officers walking a beat for 250 hours a year, or, at the rate of an eight-hour day, roughly one month. Ditto for the bicycle cops.

Should we slot the pledge of a month of beat cops under perception of crime fighting or reality?

McCaskill's violent crime strategy includes the goal of the crime of assault by 9 percent over 3 years, muggings by 3 percent and sexual assault by 3 percent. How did they arrive at the exact figure of 3 percent over 3 years? Who knows.

But before mocking the police, read what we wrote in The Black Rod four months ago when we detected that something good was happening on the crime front and we challenged the MSM -- find out what was behind it ?

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/07/raise-glasss-some-good-news-about-crime.html

The MSM "journalists" did their usual, and waited for a press conference. We, meanwhile, noticed that crimes such as muggings were down 4 percent or more in some parts of town in one year. That makes McCaskill's goals seem modest.

The Chief of Police is also promising to make downtown safer (or seem safer) by boosting the number of police you'll see during "major events." Does that mean all Jets games?

On the flip side, McCaskill says the police service will reduce the personnel assigned to parades and escorts. In the same vein, they will be reassessing their participation on boards and committees to see which "partnerships" are still useful and which are not. Expect some noses to be out of joint over those decisions.

Buried deep, deep, deep in the report is this gem:

Develop and implement a community-based crime prevention and reporting mechanism for citizens

Translation: In high crime areas McCaskill wants to replicate Powerline, the community tip line that activists in Point Douglas credit for clearing crack houses out of the neighbourhood.

For McCaskill's role in setting up the first Powerline, see here:

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2010/08/sams-and-judys-crime-fighting-chatter.html

The crime strategy is big on proactive, intelligence-based policing. McCaskill sees a big role for Crimestat. Here's how retired Deputy Chief Menno Zacharias, who helped set the program up initially, described it's function:

http://mennozacharias.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/using-crimestat-to-best-advantage/
"For the casual observer, Crimestat is simply a website that displays crime statistics and crime maps. For police, it’s significance is far greater. Crimestat is a management and accountability strategy that directs police commanders to concentrate on emerging crime issues and trends in the area under their command. It forces them to track criminal activity in their area, identify emerging crime trends, develop effective tactics, and deploy resources quickly to deal with emerging trends in their early stages before they develop into a full blown crime spree. Lastly, there is follow-up and assessment by the executive. This is the accountability feature of the process that ensures everyone (commanders in particular) have their eyes ‘focused on the ball’, the ball being crime prevention and crime reduction."

The Winnipeg police service has not been using Crimestat to its fullest, but McCaskill has seen the light, belatedly. He plans on hiring and training crime analysts to
"Implement Intelligence led, Evidence-based, Predictive Policing Models."

The report contains a section headlined Innovation and Technology in which McCaskill writes:

"Advances in technology can be employed for a variety of uses, including analysis of breath samples taken from impaired drivers, and retrieval of real-time information on criminals and their activities. The Service is planning and budgeting to stay on top of the latest technological trends affecting numerous facets, including disclosure and how we conduct investigations. Staying current is not easy, and often very expensive."

Blah, blah, blah.

What's missing? Any mention of SECURITY CAMERAS in high crime areas.

Apparently that technology hasn't made its way into the police brains yet. Maybe that's why they're setting another crime record in Winnipeg--- for the most unsolved homicides in a single year.

The McCaskill report also raises a few issues that presage much butting of heads in the future.

Let's start with the most contentious.

* The Service will introduce education-based discipline as an alternative to traditional punitive discipline. (Page 30)

This is much like the policy of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority when dealing with doctors. They now encourage doctors to come forward without fear of discipline or prosecution whenever there's a serious incident, including a death. The idea is to find out what went wrong and correct the mistake in future without destroying the reputation of the highly-trained doctor. It both protects the morale of the institution and improves service, although its done behind closed doors.

As for applying the same principle to police --- hoo boy. Is this going to raise a ruckus. Already there are elements of the community (read Marxist sociology professors and their ilk) who accuse the police of widespread coverups of police wrongdoing. The existing LERA process is condemned as not working due to the paucity of successful complaints. Oh, and the NDP government is trying as hard as it can to send a policeman to prison, any police officer will do, to send a message to their social worker constituency that they agree that police are the bad guys and criminals are poor victims of society.

And now even fewer police will be punished? Watch the fireworks fly.

* Under the heading Develop Crime Prevention Partnership Program, the report suggests the police will:

"Work with partners to address problems in multi-unit residences."

So far, so good. But then, further in, they elaborate on the partnership.

Strategy:
The Crime Free Multi-housing program will give apartment owners and managers the power to evict or deny residency to those residents who partake in criminal or nuisance activities.

Oh yeah? You think so? Provincial authorities might have a different view of the rights of tenants to stay.

And the homelessness initiative that the NDP backs strongly is based on inserting troublesome transients into housing that would otherwise be troublefree.

Good luck bucking that pressure group, even in the name of public safety. The NDP was willing to see people killed and maimed by car thieves every year rather than risk angering the aboriginal lobby by taking the (mostly aboriginal) juveniles into custody for their own safety if nothing else.

And lastly, there's the elephant in the room.

* McCaskill outlines a model built on accountability. He even names the senior officers who will be held responsible for achieving the goals of the strategic plan.

"The principle of authority and accountability is one of the most
important concepts necessary to ensure everyone within the
organization understands what decisions they can make, and what
direction they can give. Without clearly defined levels of authority,
members and supervisors can become unsure of what they can or
cannot do.Working in an environment such as this causes
paralysis in decision-making and a lack of confidence. Additionally, it
opens the process up for excessive discussion, compromise and
momentum loss. Recognizing that authority must be clearly stated and delegated, accountability is the control mechanism that is designed to prevent insufficient decisionmaking and/or abuse of authority."

Currently ,the Chief of Police reports to the Chief Administration Officer of the City of Winnipeg, writes McCaskill. But in the wings is a new creation of the provincial government---the Police Services Act which threatens to muddle the lines of authority and accountability and undo elements of the plan.

"The Act defines provisions relating to how the Chief of Police will report to a Police Board, how investigations involving police conduct will be handled, and other issues associated with training and equipment."

"... A number of regulations are currently being developed and may have a substantial impact on how policing is done in Manitoba."

McCaskill is too much of a team player to criticize the provincial government, so instead he throws out a red flag so he can say later, 'well, I warned you there might be trouble.'

The police board, already stuffed with people antagonistic to the force, will be an alternate line of authority and accountability and the public will suffer for it.

The good, the bad and the ugly of McCaskill's strategic plan. You decide which is which.

The new crime strategy: McCaskill comes to the party late.

2011-11-23T10:57:00.002-06:00

More than a year ago, in a blog post, retired Deputy Chief Menno Zacharias ripped back the curtain from some of the most secret inner workings of the Winnipeg Police Service.

What he wrote was astonishing---and never more relevant than today, on the heels of Police Chief Keith McCaskill's much anticipated crime strategy.

Perhaps shocked at breaching the blue code of silence, Zacharias later refused to give more details and never returned to the point despite our best prodding. The mainstream media ignored his comments entirely.

To put his observations in context you need to know that it's been 15 years since New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his hand-picked police commissioner Bill Bratton wrote the book on fighting crime in the big city. Proving that their method wasn't a fluke, Bratton later moved right across the country to Los Angeles and recreated his success in reducing the crime rate by phenomenal amounts.

Giuliani and Bratton designed a system based on detecting crime trends in neighbourhoods early (through a computer analysis they called Compstat), intervening quickly before the trends could spread, and making police commanders responsible for devising solutions in their areas. This was supplemented by a "broken windows" philosophy of not tolerating social crimes (graffiti, panhandling, prostitution, street drug dealing, squeegee men) which undermine a community's character and create an atmosphere where more serious crimes will be committed.

When he was first elected in 2006, Mayor Sam Katz declared he was committed to the crime fighting methods of Giuliani and Bratton, and he soon found a fervent ally in Menno Zacharias. When Zacharias retired in 2008 upon the selection of McCaskill as Chief, Katz made a point of telling the press that he had worked closely with the deputy.

"On a personal note, Menno Zacharias was very instrumental in setting up CrimeStat, was a major ally and help to make that a reality, believed in it," the mayor said. "I personally thank him for that, and I wish him all the best in his future." (CBC News)

But it wasn't until two years later that we got a hint of what was going on within the police department when he retired--- and afterward

Zacharias wrote:

http://mennozacharias.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/using-crimestat-to-best-advantage/

"Crimestat was designed to be a tool to track crime in our city’s neighbourhoods. It does that very well. The process has a proven record in helping to combat crime throughout major cities in North America. In order for it to be effective the tool must be used in the manner it was designed to be used. All players in the system must understand and execute their roles. Division Commanders must stay on top of crime in their area, identify trends and devise effective tactics to deal with them. The Police Executive must be fully engaged and ensure the resource is used as intended."

"The executive of the Winnipeg Police Service does not appear to understand or appreciate the capabilities of Crimestat and that could explain why they have largely turned their backs on it. A key aspect of the Crimestat process centers on accountability. The Executive needs to hold Division Commanders accountable. Accountability is exercised most visibly during Crimestat meetings. That cannot happen if the Executive does not attend Crimestat meetings. Residents of Winnipeg have a vested interest in the overall safety of all neighbourhoods."

"Winnipeggers need Crimestat to work."

McCaskill, it turned out, had a different philosophy to policing---the social work model. He wasn't focused on fighting crime; his priority he said repeatedly, was in listening to the community and working with them on solutions.

The "community" told McCaskill they wanted more police in their neighbourhoods and they wanted the police to fight the gangs, remove the drug dealers and prostitutes, stop the random shootings and arsons, and put an end to the graffiti marring their homes and garages. In other words, stop talking and start fighting crime.

After three years of "listening" and seeing his "holistic", social worker approach to crime fail miserably, McCaskill cobbled together a crime strategy to get the public off his back.

Wouldn't you know it, the core of his crime strategy is detecting crime trends early, intervening quickly, and holding police commanders accountable.

Nobody in the MSM asked him why he wasted three years before adopting the successful model that Zacharias had been spearheading way back when.

Or whether (and how) he had forced his top commanders to buy-in.

Or if they have.

Next: The McCaskill crime strategy under a microscope. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Some people haven't yet realized that the Manitoba PC Party is dead

2011-11-03T16:38:00.005-05:00

They say a chicken with its head cut off can run the length of a football field.

Which brings us to the depressing news that former MP Brian Pallister is again musing about running to be leader of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party.

Ugh. What a disturbing sight. And yet, how apropos. Reach into the political graveyard for a someone to lead a party headed directly there.

Obviously some people haven't yet realized that the Tory Party is dead.

We don't say that rhetorically. We mean dead. Devoid of life. With no future---even if it continues to lurch forward for months or even years. After all, the Liberal Party of Manitoba continued to exist as a zombie party for almost 20 years until all that was left in 2011 was a disembodied head which just keeps rolling along.

The backroom geniuses who brought you Hugh McFadyen and the election debacle of '11 think the Party can be revived with a leadership convention. If you can graft a new head on the robust body you can turn the clock back and start fresh, goes the thinking.

Uhh... No.

Hugh McFadyen took care of that. His legacy is a party so discombobulated that a) it's impossible to pick a leader, b) the party is in such a mess it's impossible to lead, and c) the only road open for the poor sucker who gets to be called the leader is off a cliff. Thank you Hugh.

Let's start with the leadership.

The Conservative Party must have a leader from Winnipeg.

That's a cold, hard fact. More than half the population of the province lives in Winnipeg. If you want to be the government, you must have an intimate knowledge of the place where most people live and work. It doesn't get any simpler than this.

The Conservatives were elected in only four seats in Winnipeg and all three are clustered in the extreme south end of the city.

One seat, Fort Whyte, is held by Hugh McFadyen. Been there, done that, it was a disaster.

Another, Charleswood, is held by Myrna Driedger. First elected in a byelection in 1998, she's been around the Legislature too long to be a fresh face. Bonnie Mitchelson of River East has been around since 1986. McFadyen ran a one-man show and didn't allow any of his colleagues to shine, undercutting any patina of public confidence they might bring.

That leaves Heather Stefanson in Tuxedo. She too won a byelection, in 2000, replacing, of all people, former Tory Party leader Gary Filmon. At 41 she's the right age to represent a new generation in a reborn party. Although she's been an MLA only two years less than Myrna Driedger, most of her term has been in an age when the mainstream media has ignored the Legislature, making her fairly unknown to the public and therefore a new face, a new voice.

But did we say she's from Tuxedo? The bastion of wealth and privilege. The riding name alone alienates voters in the rest of Winnipeg. Good luck with translating that to support.

The alternative is a leader without a seat in the Legislature. There's nothing like leading the Opposition from the visitors' gallery to get people to take you seriously. Fighting for a seat with schoolchildren dragged to the Legislature as a lesson in civics. Tweeting questions to caucus members who actually sit in the House.

Unable to sit on committees. Begging reporters to quote you. Four years of humiliation, that's the ticket.

And, believe it or not, it gets better. The Conservatives might elect someone as discredited as Brian Pallister or Gord Steeves. You want to fuel public cynicism? Put these two in the race.

Pallister, you might recall, ran for election as a Member of Parliament, took his seat in a minority Conservative government, quit in 2006 to run for leader of the provincial PC's, leaving his party with even a thinner hold on power in Ottawa and forcing a costly and unnecessary byelection because he eventually decided not even to contest the Manitoba leadership.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2006/01/will-manitoba-tories-make-betrayal.html

Steeves ran for election as a city councillor in 2010, took his seat on council for a year, quit to run as a Conservative candidate for MLA in 2011, forcing a costly and unnecessary byelection as the voters rejected him. Yeah, that will rejuvenate the Conservative Party, a cheap conceited politician who plays the electorate for suckers for his own advantage.

Apart from the impossibility of picking a leader, there's the question of who wants the job anyway? What's the new leader going to tell the public? "Ha, ha, just kidding. You know all that stuff we said during the last election---you know, how we were going to outspend the NDP and go deeper into debt because deficits are good---well, we didn't mean it. Or we don't mean it now. Although we might mean it if you elect us because we did promise it."

Caucus members have already posted on their Facebook pages how much they support Hugh McFadyen and how grateful they are for his leadership in the 2011 election campaign. So how are they going to repudiate everything he said when the next election rolls around?

The Conservatives have just handed the NDP the keys to the treasury for the forseeable future. Newly elected Premier Greg Selinger can now spend the $1.3 billion the NDP promised to spend, plus hundreds of millions the Conservatives promised to spend. What, are the Conservatives now going to oppose the very spending they promised? Good job, Hughie.

Then, we get to c) on the list of Hugh's legacy---the future or lack thereof.

The Party embraced the future in 2007, but when it arrived four years later -- with the very Jets the Tories told us to dream we could get back -- Hugh McFadyen had moved on: into the past. He ran a campaign straight out of the Seventies, a promise a day under the overarching theme of spend, spend, spend, borrow, borrow, borrow.

Hugh McFadyen and the backroom boys are furiously spinning the results of the 2011 election. As the cliche goes, the operation was a success but the patient died.

In any other election, winning 44 percent of the popular vote would mean victory, they'll tell you. The Conservatives were only 7000 votes behind the NDP, they say. The campaign was a hit; the internal pollsters predicted 32 seats, so who knew? Next time, right?

What everyone knows is that the Conservatives lost the election and failed to win a single seat more than they had before the writ was dropped.

What's more, the complete confusion over where the Conservatives stand and what they stand for means that even if the public turns against the NDP over the coming four years, the Tories won't win the 10 seats they need to regain government. They haven't taken a seat from the NDP in three successive elections and have given up five.

By the next election, Greg Selinger will be 64. Unless he intends to be a Premier collecting an old-age pension, he will hand off the leadership of the NDP by then to a new generation and the NDP can present themselves as a renewed and refreshed government for reelection.

Any new leader of the Conservatives comes in knowing he or she is looking at four years in the wilderness followed by at least four more in limbo. In other words, the Tories are electing a caretaker leader, not a potential Premier, someone who will spend the next four years twisting this way and that to repudiate the 2011 election platform, while staring into the abyss.

And let's not overlook the wild card. Sooner or later someone from the Liberal Party in Manitoba is going to realize the golden opportunity just sitting there for the taking. Change the leader, change the name, a clean break with the dying federal party and a small shift to the right (not hard with the Conservatives staked out to the left of the NDP) and you start bleeding off voters from the Tories. What's your guess? We say conservatively 20 percent of the Tory vote would move.

Bleak as the picture is, the PC Party in Manitoba has one, and only one, chance to resuscitate its fortunes.

It's daring. It's bold (and not the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce way). And it's foolproof.

The Party has to.......

Oh, did you think we would give the solution away for free?

Uh uh. Or at least not yet.

The solution is time sensitive, and unless someone buys it first we will offer it up without cost sometime around the next provincial election when the magic formula loses its potency.

In the meantime, we offer a number of options:

* the Conservatives can buy it exclusively
* the Conservatives can buy first refusal, with half their money back if they don't like what they read
* in such a case, the solution will be up for sale to anyone else for half price, which will likely make it worthless to the Tory backroom because the secret will be out.
* any other political party can buy it to keep it out of the hands of the Conservatives.
* you wait, three or four years, and read it for free in The Black Rod and say "Hey, that would have worked."

If you were a headless chicken, what would you do?

The police department's Halloween reassurance newser flops.

2011-10-22T17:01:00.003-05:00

The Winnipeg police tried communicating with the public Friday and, as usual, failed miserably.

They called a news conference to reassure the citizens of the city that the October Spree Killer who shot three people this time last year, was not shooting people at random. The shootings, said the police, might be (hint, hint, are extremely likely to be) connected to drug dealing in the North End.

So take it easy, folks, went the official message. You don't need to worry that you or your kids (one of the shooter's victims was only 13) are going to be shot down in cold blood without warning.

That might sound comforting to Winnipeg city detectives who don't actually live in Winnipeg, or to mainstream media reporters from the suburbs.

But people who actually walk the streets where the shootings took place can see right through the police bafflegab.

First, a brief recap of the shootings:

* Thomas Beardy was killed outside a home on Dufferin Avenue. In a charitable act, he was delivering hamburger to a friend with children to feed.

* Ian MacDonald was killed in his home on Boyd Avenue. He was shot down when he answered a knock at the door.

* A 13-year-old girl was nearly killed when shot in the stomach while walking with friends through the housing development on Stella Walk. CTV reporter Caroline Barghout revealed Friday that neighbours say the family living in the suite that the girl was passing had gang connections.

The houses on Dufferin and Boyd were tied "to the drug subculture in the North End" said a police spokesman. The homes were "specifically targeted", he said, adding that the people who were killed may not have been the intended targets.

How generous of him to make that distinction.

Except that, in other words, it means that the men were shot at random, just like the teenage girl. Well, so much, for reassurance.

But it gets worse. The shooter was a obviously a psychopath, without conscience or fear.

After pumping a few shots into a crowd of teenagers, he calmly hopped on his getaway vehicle, a bike, and rode away. Then, with the shriek of police and ambulance sirens still in the air and the streets crawling with police only a few blocks away, he ambushed Thomas Beardy on the steps of a house on Dufferin.

As frenzied police scoured the streets of the North End looking to stop any aboriginal youth of the suspect's age (late teen to mid-20's), the killer waited 35 minutes then walked up to a house in a nice neighbourhood on Boyd Avenue, knocked, and shot whoever answered.

He wasn't scared of being arrested or stopped. He was focused on killing.

And he's still out there.

Reassured, yet?

Now the police say the houses had drug connections of some sort. We have to guess that detectives didn't find any drugs in the homes where the men were killed or they would have told us. No crack in Thomas Beardy's pockets. No flourishing crop of pot plants in Ian MacDonald's basement. (Although we had heard rumours about MacDonald and referenced them five months ago---
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/05/is-north-end-spree-killer-back-at-work.html).

So what are they saying, actually? That the killer had a list of drug houses to hit? That he was intending to shoot as many people as he could in one night in as many drug houses as he could reach before getting scooped? That he had been ripped off and was blowing off steam by blowing away people who crossed his path?

We note the police made no mention of surveillance video from a community centre across the street from 261 Stella Walk where the 13-year-old girl was shot. We guess that means there either was no video or it failed to catch the killer.

The police cleared up one point from the tangle of misinformation surrounding the case.

There had been a suggestion that the killer picked up a female accomplice prior to the shooting on Boyd. Police now say they are looking for an aboriginal man and woman who were in the vicinity of the shooting but as witnesses, not suspects.

They even gave a description of the clothes the pair wore. Wow. Maybe somebody will remember who wore what ONE YEAR AGO and call police with their names.

Why can't police figure out that if you want the public's help in finding someone you need to provide a description within hours or a day at most. You see that's when people are reading about the crime and following the news on TV and they might actually recognize who you're talking about. Asking for help ONE YEAR LATER is about as useful as calling police about a drug house on Dufferin Avenue.

Far from reassuring, the police news conference simply reminded people there is a mad dog killer on the loose in Winnipeg and the police are nowhere near making an arrest.

Spilling the beans on Selinger. Where he comes from. Where he's going.

2011-10-07T06:55:00.004-05:00

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/10/spilling-beans-on-selinger-where-he.html

Nobody knows a man better than his best friend.

So, for an understanding of the character of the man elected to be the Premier of Manitoba, we turn to a most reliable source, a person who calls Greg Selinger his mentor and his close friend for over 35 years.

Tom Simms is executive director of the Community Education Development Association (CEDA), one of those made-up leftwing groups whose only purpose in the community is to promote the leftwing agenda of the regional leftwing political party. Oh, and it gets its funding from the government and any do-gooder organization, like the United Way, that it can tap into.

Shortly after the NDP took office and Selinger was installed as Manitoba's Finance Minister, Simms gave an extremely unguarded interview to an American fellow traveller. (That's not a euphemism; he says in his preamble he was literally travelling across Canada doing interviews with his fellow community organizers.)

The interview with Simms is online:

http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers2000/beckwith/simms.htm

Talking with Troublemakers: Interviews with Canadian Community Organizers

Dave Beckwith
Center for Community Change
2000-2001

In Fall of 2000, Dave Beckwith and his family traveled nearly coast to coast in Canada, interviewing community organizers about their work.

Simms, speaking with one of his own, talked freely about his debt to Selinger for teaching him the tactics he's used throughout his career as a community organzier. In doing so, he spilled the beans on a variety of dirty tricks he and the NDP were involved with in Winnipeg.

* He told how the Left seized control of the Assiniboine Credit Union and uses it to fund their projects.

* He told how the Crocus Investment Fund used tax-deductible donations to fund the work of NDP community organizers.

* He told how he forced the Christmas Cheer Board to kowtow to him when they refused to join his anti-corporation agenda and tried, instead, to get the most value for their public donations

* He told how he threatened to smear the United Way with a false claim of racism unless they backed away from supporting the Christmas Cheer Board

* He told how instrumental Greg Selinger was in making the United Way a part of the leftwing backup plan to support social activists in case of a change of government

* He told how the NDP used a professional American radical to disrupt the Manitoba Legislature, and

* He told how the NDP collaborates with social activists in a public charade in which they both agree on a course of action, the activists pretend to pressure the government, and the government pretends to bow to the community's wishes.

Throughout the interview, Simms promoted Greg Selinger as the master and himself as the student. He even proposed arranging an interview with Selinger for the project. Dive straight into this rare and revealing interview with a true Selinger insider:

"When I graduated they hired me and so I’ve really kept in touch over the years with this individual. Actually that would be a great interview if you could ever get it. Greg Selinger, who is now the finance minister in the provincial government of Manitoba, he's the second most powerful person in the province of Manitoba right now. But he's an excellent organizer, and we could if you're interested, I could try and put a call through. He’s got a whole entourage now, but he just got elected like last year and he's really been my mentor over the years, I did my master's degree and there is no community development program at the school, so it took an organizer to really make it work. So I wrote up all these green courses and I basically focused everything on community development and he was my advisor here, too. "

"... So over the years we've kept a pretty close relationship and kind of feed off each other in terms of strategizing and knowledge around community development, community organizing, so that's how I kind of got into it...."

Q. Greg was at CEDA?

A. "Greg was at what ultimately was to become CEDA. We've known each other for 25 years out of that, and I was kind of following in his footsteps, he was the executive director. You see a lot of people come and go, kind of keep your spirit in this organizing. Like when 5 years ago we got half our funding cut, he was right there and we were strategizing together and there's just a life long bond around this thing. Now he's got this big job, but he'll come down here, he was here last month. What an interesting guy, it was this hot afternoon, he's got to wear suits now, but he comes over on his bike from the Leg sweating away on his bike!"

"One of the interesting things I think now, we see how we can try and shape this province...I've always believed and he knows it, too, in terms of trying to achieve change we need the organizers pressuring the politicians, so even though I think this guy is a great guy, I understand that he's got different kinds of strengths and roles now and he needs pressure from the streets in order for us to really achieve certain things. So we've seen with this new government a lot of our community organizers have been hired for government."

snip

"We're actually the driving force in the community to shape government policy because there's a vacuum there, that leadership is missing."

snip

"Do you know the story of, this may not be true but I've been telling it for so long that by now, Franklin D. Roosevelt was forming a new deal. The brain trust came in and they were all men, they came in and laid a big memo on his desk. He would only read the top page of any memo, everybody knew it, and he wanted a big fat case, but you better make a good case on the front page or he'd never read it. He looked at it and he says, well boys, you’ve convinced me. Now go out and put pressure on me. And it's true, the smart politicians understand that, that there's all these other pressures. And they need somebody to balance it. So that's where I have kind of positioned myself..."

snip

"One of the things that I think we were able to do is say, hey, look, there's already resources at the table, right? CEDA with our staffing, and that’s dedicated, and we pay for the operation of the building and stuff. The north end community Development Corporation is housed in this building... and then MCC bought the building and has provided staff support. So there's dollars there. SEED Winnipeg kicks in staffing right now. We were able to get some funding from United Way for some staffing. There's a labour investment fund called the Crocus fund which has seconded a staff person."

Q. So how much hell gets raised? ... One of the things I'm interested in is the United Way, does that tend to damper down or do they have a hands off policy?

A. "Well for years we were the lunatic fringe of United Way. They didn't want to know what we were doing and I didn't want them to know, you know! You know, they kind of just left us alone and you know, they would call you in and--- not you, but the Board. I guess we’ve got so much credibility and we're rooted in the community like we just blow them off and say, this and this, oh, well, okay!"

Q. And that actually happened, you had a controversy and a campaign and they called you in and told you to...what was it?

A. "Well, we wanted to challenge this charity approach. And so, a big thing in this town around Christmas is the corporate community gets together, and the media, and they get Christmas hampers going, eh."

"And, you know, people need those immediate needs met, but it just kind of reinforces the residual welfare state. I mean, the corporate types don't look at the taxes they're avoiding or the programs that they oppose and all that. The United Way can be corporate proud."

" So we organized this counter campaign called the Christmas Local Investment Towards Employment campaign, so the acronym was LITE, Christmas LITE campaign... What we did, what we talked about is that a million dollars is raised in this town, but all the purchases are made at all these big corporate Wal-marts and all this kind of stuff but really there's a million dollars being raised in the name of poor people but it's all these corporate entities that are getting the perks, all the toys and all this kind of stuff. So in terms of bringing that into our local economic development strategy we started with one initiative that was to expand an aboriginal worker co-op, a grocery store. Of course it's all local people. It kind of started out when Neechi approached the Christmas Cheer board and said look, we'd like you to purchase your goods from our store. It's a two for one deal, you get the hampers out to the people and you're supporting local jobs."

"And the cheer board said, naw, we ain't going to do it, your prices are too high! Well I mean, these guys are dealing with big corporate wholesalers and all this kind of stuff to get the best deal. So they came back and we were pissed off, eh, so we said well screw it, we'll organize a counter campaign and we organized this Christmas LITE campaign."

" We said look, all the money you donate to the Christmas LITE campaign will be used to purchase food and goods at Neechi foods. The Christmas Cheer Board hated us. Actually it was a good war, and we, in turn, will go donate these goods to the Christmas cheer board, because we don't want to..."

Beckwith: Bring it all down!

"We don't want to distribute any hampers, eh?"

"You could just feel the tension; we had the media there and all that. There was actually an interesting story where a fairly progressive reporter from a religious paper here interviewed the head of the cheer board who just was saying that we were scam artists and, you know, how dare we, and we're not going to buy, you know, from this loser. Tough bananas was what the guy said!"

"And so this woman publicly said that, verbatim. You could see that they so betrayed themselves you know, Christian types, and this guy looks like the real asshole in this article, eh? She ended off the article saying thank goodness these people with Christmas Lite aren't going to back down and that they're going to move forward and tough bananas to the Cheer Board, eh?"

" So United Way sees all this get played out in the newspaper and so they haul me in. They say, they lay down the basics. What is this? What's going on here, and I just said, well you know, the co-chair… We knew this was going to happen so we got sort of high profile people to legitimize the thing along with community people. I says you know, the co-chair of the Christmas Lite campaign is with the United Church...So there's this aboriginal person who was the highest-ranking officer of the United Church; he had just sort of finished the gig, and he lived in Winnipeg so we got him to co-chair the thing and then we had another aboriginal woman co-chairing. So we said you know, laying out who's involved with it and then talking about this charity model you know, you were hitting them where they were not able to defend it."

"... I said, that's what's happening, if you don't like it, tough! You know, it seems like the community is responding to this thing and they backed off."

snip

"One of the things that we're working with the government on, that Selinger understands quite well is, when the Tories were in power they were slashing programs and slashing advocacy groups like crazy, and the United Way was there. Really, there is more voice still around in United Way for funding this thing. So we're saying in terms of simple long term strategies, we think the Winnipeg United Way is one institution to look at for the longer term sustainability thing, so that when the government swings there is a resource base there."

"You know I remember we brought up Shel Trapp from Chicago, and he said how can you organize when you're getting funds from United Way, but here it works. I know some images of the United Way is that it's corporate you know, but I think Selinger played a good role of developing some really good credibility. And you know what, action speaks louder than words and when they see all this stuff happening, how can they turn their face."

snip

"We organized this coalition called Choices; A Coalition for Social Justice. We organized the coalition in 1991. The right wing Tory government got elected in 1990 and basically we were organizing sort of a counter force to the government, it was very political..."

snip

"I remember one of the times around the labor bill where we organized the community filibuster. This guy from the States, he was great, he was the lead organizer on it. They had a provision in the bill where that if people were lined up to present they had to keep the committee open and there was no provision for breaks so they literally had to run the thing round the clock. We would be lining up people like all night, people there in sleeping bags. The other thing that we found out was that they didn't have any provisions for time limits on the presentations so we would have guys go on for 4 hours and these guys would be just listening to this thing."

Beckwith: And that's how you survived the Tory government.

"Well we got some people who are now in government who are from our coalition."

snip

" You want to talk about the personal... we took over the largest credit union in Winnipeg. We set up this group called the Draining of the Assiniboine. There's a nine-person board and they got elected every 2 years and over a two-year period we took over the entire board. I sit on the board right now still and that was very instrumental in getting loans out for SEED Winnipeg. We started about the same time we started Choices in 92 I think. I think there is an example of a social action strategy to help support the building of a community economic development program."

Q. I'm interested in what your experience has been with other kinds of organizing strategies, other kinds of organizing approaches or networks or training centers?

A. I think in terms of organizing strategy, you know, I was, I still am, I love the Alinsky kind of style of organizing. Like I say, I like a good fight and I like raising hell, but---and Selinger and I would talk a lot about that---it's like Alinsky would come into a community and leave... like you might get some really good action going around some issues but where are you 10 years after once he goes? And some of the stuff we need to do is organizing long term."

snip

"I mean one of the things that really helped me move in my organizing skills was a book that Lee Staples put together with ACORN called Roots to Power."

The once-mighty community activist group ACORN disbanded in 2010 after employees got caught on video advising conservative community activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp on how to avoid paying taxes. Funding, which had continued despite years of convictions and allegations of ACORN voter registration frauds, dried up, forcing them out of business. In 2008 alone, election officials in a single state rejected 400,000 bogus voter registrations collected by an ACORN registration drive.

Alinsky is Saul Alinsky, whose book Rules for Radicals is the Holy Bible for "community organizers." Anyone who watched the 2011 provincial election and saw how Tory leader Hugh McFadyen was eviscerated need only turn to one of Alinsky's basic principles to understand how Selinger applied what he learned.

Wrote Alinsky:

"The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that the organizer should always regard as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and “frozen.” By this I mean that in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil."

When choosing a target, he said, "it must be a personification, not something general and abstract...It is not possible to develop the necessary hostility against say, City Hall, which after all is a concrete, physical, inanimate structure or against a corporation which has no soul or identity..."

The leader of the CIO labour organization in the 1930's never attacked General Motors, but always its president, wrote Alinsky.

Even when you could find the NDP strategy in a 40-year-old book, and posted on the Internet, the useless Conservative war room couldn't figure out what was happening to them. And people still wonder why they lost....

Election Notes

2011-10-05T19:28:00.003-05:00

It didn't take long for Manitobans to discover what a vile human being they elected as Premier of the province.

Hugh McFadyen, the hapless leader of the soundly trounced Conservative Party, had just begun his concession speech. He was thanking his "team" for running a great campaign, when, to everyone's astonishment, Premier-elect Greg Selinger tromped into NDP election headquarters to deliver his victory speech.

The television stations immediately cut away from McFadyen to focus on Selinger. But the act of deliberately disrespecting a Party leader on election night was so blatant it shocked the election night hosts on every channel.

Sun TV's Krista Erickson and Charles Adler were visibly stunned at what they were seeing. Guest pundit Tom Brodbeck labelled it "classless." On CBC, host Janet Stewart was noticeably upset and at a loss for words to describe the unprecedented slight to McFadyen. Her co-host, poli-sci prof Paul Thomas launched a rambling defence of Selinger, imagining some unfortunate timing mixup.

Nonsense. Unless he's gone totally senile, Thomas has been around long enough to know that party leaders are glued to their TV screens and hang on every word of an opponent's concession speech.

Selinger's grand entrance was no mistake. It was intended to deliberately rub McFadyen's nose in the dirt. And to send a thuggish message -- this is what to expect if you cross the NDP in the next four years.

Selinger's crass performance even managed to divert the TV reporters from the surprise announcement by Hugh McFadyen that this was quitting as leader of the PC's.
At last Hughie did something right. Except that it was 28 days too late.

To the very end, McFadyen had no clue what a complete disaster he's been as leader of his party. McFadyen will go down in the books as the worst Opposition leader in the past 50 years, worse even than his gutless predecessor, Stu Murray, who held the title before him.

Wearing the same pasted-on smile he carried throughout the election period, McFadyen, before the cameras cut away to Selinger, was actually praising the campaign that ended his political career.
It was, he gushed, a "great campaign" and he couldn't imagine a better one. He even named the architects--- Don Plett, Jonathan Lyon, Marni Larkin, Ken Lee, Jonathan Scarth, "I'm proud of this campaign," he beamed, proving that neither he nor his "team" had a single political instinct between them and that the entire tone-deaf entourage should be tossed out the Exit door together.

Its hard to imagine a worse election campaign than the one devised by the Conservative brain trust. These geniuses lost the election on Day One, the day they announced they were abandoning all the Conservative Party principles and becoming the NDP Mark II. They would, henceforth, spend more money than the NDP, spend faster, spend longer and take the province deeper into debt, they declared proudly.

They would, they said, make the Conservative Party indistinguishable from the NDP. That, without a doubt, would make the public flock to their fearless leader, Hugh McFadyen.

Their differences with NDP policy was minor, they told the public. Crime? More police dogs was the answer. Health? More everything, just like the NDP promised. Taxes? No worries. They would cut taxes and make it up by borrowing more money, just like the NDP.

This, of course, came as no surprise to readers of The Black Rod. We explained five years ago that McFadyen was openly engaged in turning the Conservative Party of Manitoba into the Liberals.
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2006/08/hundred-days-of-hughie.html

He was attracting Liberals as candidates, he was relying on Liberal advisors, and, federally, he was backing turncoat Tories who jumped to the Liberal Party. It took him five years, but he finally achieved his goal, only to discover the Liberal Party brand was dead in Canada.

We never imagined he would take the party even further left and become the NDP in all but name.

The damage done by McFadyen and his team isn't just a temporary setback. The Manitoba P.C. Party is leaderless and rudderless. Hey, it's just like the federal Liberal Party. Way to go Hughie.

Krista Erickson sent a shiver down our backs when she mused that maybe the PC's would consider Slimebag Gord Steeves for leader. Why not? He's a Liberal and a cheap slimy politician, exactly what the Conservative brain trust finds attractive.
Steeves, you'll remember, lied to the electorate in St. Vital by pretending he wanted to represent them in City Council, when all along he was planning to dump them and run for provincial office.

He's cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars for a by-election in November, and the only saving grace is that voters rejected him soundly in the provincial election. Who says there wasn't any good news.

Asked after his defeat if he would consider running for the city council seat he quit, he wouldn't say no. Once you've stuck your snout into the public trough its hard to stop. Gord Steeves---a slimebag to the end. Why does anyone wonder why people don't vote?

Here, meanwhile, is some food for thought.
Based on the election results in Wednesday's Winnipeg Free Press (Page B6) we learned:

* Fewer than 7000 votes separated the NDP and Conservatives. You read that right. The NDP got fewer than 7000 more votes than the Tories in the province. Remember that the next time Greg Selinger claims he speaks for the province on anything.

* The Conservatives got 29,000 more votes than in 2007.

* The NDP got 6600 less.

* The Liberal vote dropped by a shade more than 20,000. Subtract leader Jon Gerrard's 4742 votes in River Heights and the Liberals average less than 500 votes per riding. Will somebody please put a stake in the heart of this vampire.

* The Green Party almost doubled their vote, from 5586 to 10,571. Before you start throwing confetti, that averages to less than 100 votes per riding.

Manitoba election: and the winner is ...

2011-09-26T01:17:00.001-05:00

Well? How was it?

How was what?

The election, of course.

But, but, but....isn't election day, like, 10 days from now?

Nope. Voting started yesterday (Sept. 24) and continues non-stop, except for one break of 48 hours, until Oct. 4. That means you can vote for 8 out of the next 10 days. The election is officially over, dude.

Then, who's going to win?

Have you noticed that this is the first election since the cavemen that there was no poll of voter preferences? So The Black Rod did its own polling and discovered that the election is neck-and-neck between Don't Vote and Spoil Your Ballot.

It hardly matters, because the winner will be the NDP---either the NDP under Greg Selinger or the NDP 2.0 under Hugh McFadyen. The Conservative Party decided to sit this one out.

Selinger is the dirtiest politician in Manitoba, linked to every scandal in the past 12 years from the NDP election fraud in 1999 to the Crocus ponzi scheme to the phony deficit figures released just before the election call.

He took his party into the gutter with him. Even incumbents like Gord Macintosh, who was respected by friend and foe alike and who was trusted enough by the public to be the man the NDP sent in to clean up troubled cabinet portfolios, was forced to campaign on lies and vitriol aimed at the half of the province that doesn't support the NDP.

McFadyen's NDP, on the other hand, reached into the gutter to bring in candidates like Gord Steeves, the poster boy for voter cynicism. Steeves lied to voters when he ran only last October to be elected as a city councillor when he knew all along he was going to abandon the position to run for MLA. He even whined about the law that forced him to quit city council to run provincially; he wanted to be assured he had a job to return to if he lost, and lose he should. He was, in the words of another slimeball, entitled to his entitlements.

Selinger's NDP has run out of ideas. Like him, its stuck in the Seventies--- big government financed by big deficits funding megaprojects to create the illusion of growth.

McFadyen's NDP thinks the Original NDP is doing a good job, but could do better if it only spent more money for longer, running deficits for 7 years instead of three. McFadyen doesn't object to anything the NDP is doing, except for building a power line on the wrong side of the province. He would just do everything the NDP plans to do, but more of it, plus more stuff. And, he assures us, it will be paid for by the Money Fairy.

Both the Original NDP and Hugh McFadyen's hybrid party have announced they plan to spend $1.3 billion over the next four years, on top of the half billion dollar deficits they'll run each year. Some choice, eh.

Selinger knows that all he has to do is keep McFadyen's NDP from winning 10 seats. His campaign is geared solely to winning his base. Hence the endless attack ads. He doesn't care who they alienate, as long as they get the Original NDP base to the polls to hold at least one of those 10 seats.

He knows the popularity of the NDP has waned badly in Winnipeg. The Party might have been popping champagne out East, but here they were drinking hemlock after the last federal election. On the heels of the trouncing given the NDP candidate for mayor, the NDP lost her former safe seat in Winnipeg North twice in a row (byelection, then election) as well as another "safe" seat, Transcona. The vaunted union voter delivery "machine" isn't delivering like it used to.

McFadyen has abandoned his base--- that's the men and women who support the Conservative Party for its values like fiscal prudence--- in order to attract women in south Winnipeg. Taking Conservative Party voters for granted, he'll do anything and say anything and obviously promise anything to pry seats back from the NDP.

At least he's stopped trying to be "one of the guys". He's not ashamed to wear a suit this election. Oh, and he's been told to be nice, not attack anyone, and smile, smile, smile all the time. He obviously missed the study that came out last March that said women aren't attracted to men who smile a lot.

http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2011/05/24/happy-guys-finish-last-says-new-study-on-sexual-attractiveness/

The best campaign of the election was run by someone who's not even a candidate, Dave Angus, president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.

Angus travelled the province pitching the Chamber's campaign called Manitoba Bold. Innovative and exciting, Manitoba Bold was the spark missing from the dreary campaigns of Selinger and McFadyen.

"We believe that to achieve this we can’t tinker our way to success. The Chamber believes it’s time to be BOLD and focus on growing our economy, creating jobs and leveraging our strengths through a strategic, focused and results driven approach." Manitoba Chamber of Commerce news release

Ranging from revitalizing the agriculture sector of Manitoba to fostering an entire industry of creative arts and artists to stimulate the imaginations of youth, Manitoba Bold was exactly the sort of positive, future-oriented vision Manitoba voters wanted to see.

"Leaders need to spend the time necessary to bring people on side with bold ideas and to move forward and stand on principle. People will respect that," Angus told the Winnipeg Free Press. You dreamer.

In many ways the Manitoba Bold campaign resembled Hugh McFadyen's abandoned 2007 election run for office on the theme "If we can dream it, we can do it."

But the Angus plan depended on the presence of "leaders."

When McFadyen's wildest dream, the return of the Winnipeg Jets, came true this year, he had abandoned dreaming for pandering. And Selinger's dream is a Soviet-style planned economy but without any of that newfangled obscene dance music.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/09/ndp-proves-its-party-of-prudes.html

With no poll of the intentions of Manitoba voters to guide pundits, we've had to resort to the only thing available---a national poll of voter support for the national parties.

An Angus Reid Public Opinion poll for the Toronto Star and La Presse was released Saturday. It shows 39 percent of voters (and leaners) supporting the Conservatives, 29 percent the NDP, and 21 percent the Liberal Party.

"The Conservatives remain the most popular party for both genders (Men 43%, Women 36%). Respondents aged 18-to-34 pick the NDP first (38%), while those aged 35-to-54 and those over the age of 55 prefer the Tories (42% and 48% respectively)."

"Three parties—the Conservatives, the NDP and the Greens—are holding on to at least four-in-five voters who supported them in the May 2011 election. The retention rate is lower for the Bloc (75%) and the Liberals (70%)."

The latter figure offers no hope for McFadyen. The addition of all the Liberal votes to the Conservative tally in the 2007 Manitoba election wouldn't have changed a single riding. There just aren't enough Liberals left in Manitoba to make a difference.

So, its back to our choice.

We'll let science decide.

Heads Don't Vote, tails Spoil Your Ballot.

And the coin is up....it's spinning....spinning...

-30-

The NDP's long history of election campaign dishonesty

2011-09-19T10:19:00.001-05:00

So the NDP got caught cheating in the provincial election.

Gee, what else is new?

When grinning Greg Selinger, Manitoba's dirtiest politician, joined Winnipeg Jets co-owner Mark Chipman to announce a mentoring program for high school students, it wasn't the first time the NDP broke the law during this campaign. And it wasn't an accident.

Manitoba's Election Financing Act prohibits governments from publishing or advertising any information about its programs or activities starting 90 days before an election.

The Winnipeg Jets/mentoring breach only made the news because Liberal leader Jon Gerrard officially complained to Elections Manitoba. But if the mainstream media had done their research, they would have known that Local Government Minister Ron Lemieux is already being investigated for breaking the same law in mid-August.

Lemieux handed a government cheque for $15,000 to the Landmark Friendship Festival for organizers to buy new playground equipment. He even generously posted a photo of himself presenting the cheque on the blog mysteinbach.ca. http://www.mysteinbach.ca/blogs/2431.html

That's publishing by any definition. And, although he might have been the first to break the election financing act, two other cabinet ministers were right behind him, breaking the intent if not the letter of the law.

Winnipeg Free Press reporter Mary Agnes Welch commented about the deception on her barely-read newspaper-approved blog Gripe Juice. On Aug.31, a staffer in the NDP media office phoned the Free Press newsroom to offer a tour of a new birthing centre in St. Vital.

"That’s an obvious attempt to do an end run around the very election spending legislation the NDP overhauled with great fanfare a few years ago." she wrote.

" By calling us up and offering a tour of the birthing centre, the NDP aren’t publishing or advertising. They’re getting the Freep (and CTV, who were also on the tour) to do it for them. Making matters worse, two NDP cabinet ministers – Health Minister Theresa Oswald and Education Minister Nancy Allan – were on the tour. Both represent south Winnipeg ridings the Tories are targeting."

"A cheesy start to an election that technically hasn’t even begun." she concluded.

The FP did ask the question at the time in as sidebar to their story about the tour (complete with picture of the two cabinet ministers).

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/third-choice-for-expectant-moms-128867468.html

"Tour or election-law violation?"

"WAS it a way of skirting the province's election laws or just a tour of a health facility that just happens to be coming into operation days before the official start of the election campaign?"

"Oswald denied she was doing anything to run afoul of the act."

"This is a tour," said Oswald, as she left the centre Wednesday.

"I didn't announce anything new. Joan (Dawkins, executive director of the Women's Health Clinic) wanted the media to come in and didn't want to hold up the births. I didn't ask for this arrangement.

"We had our formal announcements on this months ago."

Allan added "they wanted to get us in there before the babies and midwives."

They forgot to mention that their colleague Labour Minister Jennifer Howard used to be the executive director of the Women's Health Clinic. Funny how she wasn't invited on the media tour.

Two weeks after the, ahem, "non-political" media tour for reporters and NDP ministers only, unelected Premier Greg Selinger was sharing a news conference with Mark Chipman and he, too, was denying it was a government announcement. Responding to critics, the NDP said it was an election promise, not a government announcement.

Now that is a blatant lie. The smoking gun is right here in the government's own news releases.

http://news.gov.mb.ca/news/index.html?item=10240

Manitoba Youth Corps to Provide Mentorship, Job Opportunities For More Than 2,800 Young Manitobans

11/23/10

"Province’s Unprecedented Focus on Youth Opportunities Will Benefit All Manitobans: Selinger"

"A new provincial initiative known as the Manitoba Youth Corps will connect 2,500 high-school students to mentorship and job opportunities and create an additional 345 new job spots over the next three years, Premier Greg Selinger announced today at Tec Voc High School."

snip

"The $6.7-million program will launch in September 2011..., the premier said."

So Greg Selinger is present at an announcement about a mentorship program in -- when? -- September, 2011. Coincidence?

In short, the NDP under Greg Selinger has been planning for 10 months to break the law. They knew in November, 2010 when the next provincial election was to be held. And yet they planned to start their vaunted mentorship in the blackout period, regardless.

Selinger feels he is above the law. The NDP cheated their way to power in 1999 and managed to keep the scandal secret for a decade. You can read here the details and how then Finance Minister Greg Selinger engaged in the cover-up:

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2009/06/elections-manitoba-sinks-in-ndps-rebate.html

The day before Mentorgate broke, we wrote in The Black Rod:

Manitoba election Day 10: McFadyen draws first blood

"It's too early to say if this is the game changer, but the NDP's phony deficit figures could turn into just the integrity issue that tips the election."

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/09/manitoba-election-day-10-mcfadyen-draws.html

Between releasing phony deficit numbers to openly breaking Manitoba's election financing laws, the whiff of scandal is spreading from the NDP.

But MSM reporters are slow to catch on. During the last leaders debate, "professional journalists" asked tough questions like “By the way, your teeth are really white. Really, really good looking. Have you got them whitened at all?" (Richard Cloutier, CJOB, to Tory leader Hugh McFadyen.)

Before leaving the issue of NDP dishonesty, we have to thank our readers who continually prove the internet adage "everybody knows something."

Last time we wrote how the NDP snookered the news media by giving them an NDP ringer to verify the hardship story of nurses allegedly fired by the heartless Conservatives in the Nineties. It turns out the former nurse who gave her sob story was none other than NDP school trustee Suzanne Hrynyk, who wasn't identified as such by either the NDP or the reporters who quoted her.

Well, after our story was posted, we got more information on sweet Suzanne, starting with the fact she's a current member of the board of directors of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority!

And who appoints members to the WRHA board, you ask? Why, the Minister of Health. Just another fact the NDP, um, forgot to tell you.

A clue in The Black Rod may be Bob Wilson's last hope

2011-09-18T15:33:00.000-05:00

Bob Wilson's last hope of exoneration lies with a memory stirred up by The Black Rod.

The former MLA has been fighting for 30 years to clear his name after being convicted on a drug-smuggling conspiracy rap that sent him to prison for 7 years.

Last January we told Wilson's story on the heels of the arrest of Ian (Whitey) Macdonald, Wilson's former friend and the kingpin of the pot smuggling ring that brought Wilson to the attention of the RCMP.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/01/bob-wilson-moment-in-sun.html

Before he could be extradicted to Manitoba, Macdonald managed to break out of jail in Florida, leaving Wilson to take the fall. Thirty years later he was tracked down, arrested and returned to Winnipeg on the original drug charges.

We said then that elements of the Manitoba Justice department weren't happy to see him surface because it put them in an uncomfortable position regarding Wilson's claim that he was innocent and wrongly convicted.

We never expected that our story would wind up playing a crucial role in Wilson's generation-long battle for vindication.

The 77-year-old Wilson had just been released from hospital in Vancouver following a bad fall when he learned Macdonald had betrayed him again. In January, Whitey, told a television interviewer that Wilson was not part of any drug smuggling; six months later, after arranging a plea bargain whereby he pleaded out in exchange for a sentence of house arrest, Whitey implicated Wilson.

According to an "agreed statement of facts", Wilson, Macdonald and William Wright, Whitey's local drug contact, met at Wilson's home where they discussed a deal to fly 500 pounds of marijuana into Manitoba.

Wilson was devastated. He had counted on Macdonald as the ace that would prove his innocence. And time is running out. Wilson is 77. Macdonald is 72 and stricken with prostate cancer among other ailments. Other potential witnesses are equally old and likely to die soon.

Bob Wilson expected Macdonald's testimony would be the slam dunk evidence he needed to convince Ottawa officials to grant him a new trial. But if Manitoba Justice expected Wilson to give up they just don't understand his tenacity.

Which is where The Black Rod comes in.

In our January story we explained how the Crown tried to paint Wilson as the Mr. Big Moneybags behind Macdonald's drug ring, the man who financed the deals and lived large on the illicit profits. It was an image radically different from the man people knew. We wrote:

"Wilson was the quintessential Winnipegger---save-a-dime and stretch-a-dollar. At the time he was being wiretapped for allegedly financing drug deals, he was selling warehouse clearance blue jeans out of his office in the Legislature and worrying he didn't have the sizes to fit the secretaries who were buying from him."

It was a fortuitous comment, as we soon learned. Someone brought The Black Rod to Wilson's attention, and he was ecstatic---he had forgotten the blue jeans, but now that his memory was refreshed HE HAD FOUND HIS ALIBI.

At the exact time that Macdonald and his drug contact Wright were meeting downstairs, Wilson was on the second floor of his house on the phone, talking to a friend ABOUT THE BLUE JEANS.

Wilson's phonecalls were being tapped and his house was under surveillance by police parked in a car. The police record says Wilson was talking to an UF---unknown female. But Wilson knows exactly who he was speaking with. She was never called as a witness.

And it now begs the question if the RCMP knew her identity, questioned her and failed to disclose her evidence to the defence. Even if they didn't, they certainly know who she is now because Wilson will tell them.

He believes she can provide him with the alibi to refute Macdonald's claim that he talked drug smuggling with Wilson. The RCMP have a record of the the timing of the call and a record of when Wright left the Wilson home. If the former overlaps the latter, then Wilson could not be talking to Wright as he talked with his female caller.

But Wilson hasn't got the resources to follow up on his lead. He can't force the RCMP to give him tapes of the call. He has no lawyer to pressure the police and he has no money to hire a lawyer.

Exoneration might be within reach, but in this case his reach exceeds his grasp.

The election forecast for the NDP. Chilly with chance of showers.

2011-09-16T12:50:00.000-05:00

In less than a week, the election forecast for the NDP has turned from sunny and mild to unsettled with a chance of revulsion.

It's getting cooler. The winds have shifted. Radar is picking up clouds on the horizon.

Is there a storm coming? Or will it just blow over? It's too soon to tell.

But, unexpectedly, a theme is developing within the election campaign--- can you trust the NDP?

And in the eye of the growing tempest is unelected Premier Greg Selinger, the dirtiest politician in Manitoba, whose re-election campaign boils down to scaring voters with attack ads that paint Conservative leader Hugh McFadyen as the Boogieman.

No lie is too great to throw at McFadyen, but it's those very lies that are backfiring in the face of the NDP.

It started last Saturday with a letter to the editor of the Winnipeg Free Press from Len Bateman, the former chairman of Manitoba Hydro. Selinger has consistently declared that the Conservatives have a secret plan to privatize Hydro. Bateman pointed out there's actually a law in Manitoba that Hydro can't be sold without a public referendum.

"This should quash one of the fear-mongering attacks by government on the opposition parties," wrote Bateman.

It didn't. Selinger just kept repeating the lie.

A few days later, the Winnipeg Free Press revealed that police have recommended criminal charges be laid in connection with the 2008 death of Brian Sinclair, a wheelchair-bound man whose dead body was noticed 34 hours after he came to the Health Sciences Centre emergency room with a non-life-threatening bladder infection.

The NDP has managed to stall an inquest into Sinclair's death for 3 years to keep the secrets of its malfunctioning health care system under wraps until after the election. Justice officials went into overdrive to try and discredit the Sinclair charges story.

A careful reading of the denials shows the police saying they haven't formally submitted a report to the Crown --- yet --- not that they won't be recommending criminal charges. Anyone familiar with the process knows that reports like this are first completed, then circulated among the principals involved for comment and corrections, before being officially presented. Someone got the draft report and leaked the explosive recommendations to the FP.

The day after the Sinclair story broke, the most ardent NDP defender, FP columnist Dan Lett, had to concede in print that the NDP has been misleading the public on the provincial deficit. Greg Selinger has claimed the deficit for the 2010 fiscal year is $247 million less than forecast. Lett now admits that critics were right when they said the NDP is hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses off the books of government spending.

Then, with the week winding to a close, Will Tishinski, a former vice-president of Manitoba Hydro, revealed in the Winnipeg Sun that the provision in the Hydro Act that prevents any sale of Manitoba Hydro without the public's approval in a referendum was inserted "in 2001 when Greg Selinger was the minister responsible for Hydro."

"It effectively blocks any attempt to privatize. Selinger knows this, and yet he persists in deceiving Manitobans by accusing Hugh McFadyen of planning to privatize Hydro." said Tishinski.

And why not? Selinger has nothing else to sell the public. And it's just so easy to deceive the news media.

When Selinger announced this week the NDP would hire 2000 more nurses, he repeated the Big Lie that the Tories fired a thousand nurses in the Nineties. He trotted out one of those alleged nurses to attack Hugh McFadyen. Global News obligingly reported her angry words over a font identifying her---Suzanne Hrynyk.

But the Global News reporter failed to Google the name Suzanne Hrynyk.

If she had, she would have learned that Hrynyk is not only an NDP-affiliated trustee in Winnipeg School Division, Ward 3, she is the division chairman.

So the NDP provided an NDP politician to verify the claim of an NDP politician and the reporter swallowed it whole.

Telling the truth is hard. Lying is so easy.

Ask Greg Selinger, the dirtiest politician in Manitoba.

Manitoba election Day 10: McFadyen draws first blood

2011-09-15T07:54:00.005-05:00

Ten days into the Manitoba election campaign, neither party can claim to have momentum.

But Conservative Party leader Hugh McFadyen has drawn first blood.

Or, more accurately, Winnipeg Sun columnist Tom Brodbeck drew first blood and McFadyen is riding piggyback on Brodbeck's work.

Still, when even NDP apologist Dan Lett has to admit, grudgingly and reluctantly, in the Winnipeg Free Press that he was wrong, and Brodbeck and McFadyen were right, it's time to call in the cut man.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/muddying-the-waters-on-budgets-129865583.html

It's too early to say if this is the game changer, but the NDP's phony deficit figures could turn into just the integrity issue that tips the election.

Unelected Premier Greg Selinger thought he was being clever when he delayed officially calling the provincial election until after his government released the final accounting of the 2010-11 budget on Friday, Sept. 2.

The public accounts allegedly showed that Manitoba ended the 2010 fiscal year with a deficit of $298 million, which was a whopping $247 million less than the government forecasted. Selinger preened at being such a fantastic money manager, especially on the eve of an election.

He never expected anyone to actually read the report any further than the summary, especially over the September long weekend.

And he was almost right. Nobody did---except for the Sun's Brodbeck, who either plodded through pages of numbing numbers or was handed a treasure map by somebody and followed it straight to the money pit.

"NDP cooking the books to conceal real deficit" read the Sun's Saturday headline.

The province prepares two sets of books to explain its budgets. There is the operating budget, which details the revenues the government receives and all the money the government spends.

Then there is the summary budget which is a record of all provincial finances, including Crown Corporations that allegedly operate at arms-length from government.

Since 2008 the NDP, with the knowledge and connivance of Manitoba auditor Carol Bellringer, has been hiding loans and advances to Crown organizations by simply calling them "assets" in the books, and not spending.

As well as disguising these expenditures, the NDP has been able to use surpluses from Manitoba Hydro and MPI to cover deficits in the operating budget. Together, this has allowed the government to claim lower deficits than they actually incurred, lower by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The NDP winced, then shrugged off the Sun story. They bet it had no traction. Budget stories are a storm of numbers that nobody can understand and few voters will spend the time to read.

When, four days later, Tory leader McFadyen, in a scrum, belatedly raised the matter of the NDP's "fudging" the budget numbers, the usual NDP apologists rushed to put out the fire.

"Provincial budget not doctored: auditor/ Deficit figures above board despite allegations", read the headline in the Winnipeg Free Press over a story by Mia Rabson and Bruce Owen.

"Auditor general Carol Bellringer dismisses Tory suggestions the Selinger government doctored its financial books in order to hide a larger deficit," they wrote.

"Anyone who aspires to be premier should have enough sense to respect the auditor general when she weighs in on such an important matter. Disputing Bellringer's statement is a triumph of partisanship over dignity." sniffed FP columnist and NDP defender Dan Lett.

But the story stayed alive on the blogosphere. Brodbeck, on his blog Raise a Little Hell, reported how Bellringer walked him through the books and showed him the way the government hides its deficits. Bruce Owen, on his little-read newspaper-sanctioned blog, revisited the issue with former Conservative finance minister Eric Stefanson:

"The smoking gun for the Tories is on page 4, Details and Reconciliation to Core Government Results. The blood on the floor is money moved from Manitoba Hydro ($150 million) and the Workers Compensation Board ($64.1 million) into the summary budget...They really are not part of the core government,” Stefanson said of the Crowns. “They really are funded by ratepayers.”

"Without that $191.8 million, the deficit is actually almost $490 million, Stefanson said."

"Stefanson’s second point was on another page, Loans and Advances. In particular, loans and advances to Crown organizations and enterprises like Manitoba’s post secondary institutions. '

"The money, roughly $400 million, will only be repaid to government through future appropriations, according a note at the bottom of page 114 of the Summary Financial Statements."

On Thursday, the pressure of truth finally cracked the defence wide open.

"Tory charge of NDP fudging needs closer examination" declared the headline over a rapidly backpeddling column by Dan Lett.

"In an election, it's not necessary to be right when launching an attack on your competitor. In most instances, being not entirely wrong is good enough."

"Such is the case with the lingering allegations from the Progressive Conservatives that the NDP government deliberately hid hundreds of millions in expenses and liabilities to make its current deficit position look better. Although balance sheets and accounting are pretty dry stuff, this particular issue is a key theme of the Tory campaign."

...
"It is, however, an instance where those making the allegation are, at most, not entirely wrong."
...
"It is true that only using the summary budget allows a government to use revenues from Crown corporations like Manitoba Hydro to hide a spending problem on the core side."
...

"The other reason auditors don't like core budgets is they usually exclude certain liabilities and costs to make the bottom line look better. This is what the Tories have seized upon."

"McFadyen and some allies, including former Tory finance minister Eric Stefanson and U of M economist John McCallum, argue Selinger deliberately misled Manitobans by not properly recording cash in from Crown corporations and outgoing loans and other advances in the core budget. A note in the public accounts confirmed these exceptions. If they are added in, the operating deficit would be $190 million higher."

"McFadyen's numbers are essentially correct..."

Desperate to give the NDP a fig leaf to hide behind, Lett clutches at another interview with, guess who, Carol Bellringer who says that all governments use accounting tricks to hide deficits.

Aha, blares Lett, remember that Gary Filmon, Greg Selinger's bete noir, used his "rainy day fund" to "muddy the waters." The rat.

But, forced to concede that "McFadyen may have a point", Lett concludes that the NDP don't have to explain to anyone why they're misleading the public on the deficits they're running.

The onus, he declared, is on McFadyen.

That is the Winnipeg Free Press way of reporting the, ahem, truth.

Black Rod Potpourri: Ghosts, a rescue, a spanking or two, and, oh gee, a city hall boondoggle

2011-09-11T10:32:00.002-05:00

Whither Liberals?

We've been asked why we don't write anything about the Liberal Party in our provincial election coverage.

Oh, c'mon. The what?

There hasn't been a viable Liberal Party in Manitoba since the Swinging Sixties (that's more than FORTY YEARS AGO), and that includes the wacko election of 1988 when it became the official opposition under Sharon Carstairs with 20 MLA's, most of whom were shocked to find they had actually won their seat. One winner wanted to know if becoming an MLA meant he had to quit his job at Consumer Distributing.

The Liberals haven't elected enough members to the Manitoba Legislature to rank as an official party since 1995---that's merely 16 years ago. They should run as the Ghost of the Liberal Party.

In the last provincial election they got a whopping 12 percent of the popular vote. The news media continues to pretend there is a Liberal Party in Manitoba because the don't want to admit the truth. It's like being too polite to tell your senile grandfather nobody is listening to his stories anymore.

Creaky old Jon Gerrard holds news conferences where he promises to do this and do that if elected, but everybody knows he's never going to form a government, ever, so pity the poor reporters forced to waste their time nodding at his pronouncements.

If the Liberals poll above 20 percent, they might be a news story on how voters are so disgusted at the choice for government they are parking their votes with the Grits. Until then, you have to wonder if anybody in the Liberal Party of Manitoba has noticed that their federal Liberal counterparts were eviscerated in the last federal election only four months ago. Trotting out federal rejects like Justin Trudeau and Bob Rae is just sad and pathetic.

And the Green Party? Oh, God. The Green Party is to provincial politics what Natalie Pollock was to mayoral politics.

******************
Bellringer to the Rescue

Provincial Auditor General Carol Bellringer had to ride to the rescue of the NDP again.

Sharp-eyed columnist Tom Brodbeck noticed that the NDP was offloading spending in the latest public accounts to lower their reported deficit for 2010. Loans and advances to Crown corporations are counted as government assets instead of government spending, which is how the figures would be reported in the private sector.

Bellringer provided a completely incomprehensible explanation to the Winnipeg Free Press as to why the NDP accounting is okey-doke with her. Two by-lined reporters couldn't explain what the hell she was talking about. But isn't that why you hire auditors?

Offloading expenses to wholly owned entities as a way to boost the profit numbers is exactly what Enron did until somebody started asking questions.

And their auditors said it was perfectly fine practice, too.

Bellringer has a long history of pulling the NDP out of scandal. Just run a Google search for ' O'Learygate The Black Rod.' We reported how Bellringer gave her seal of approval to the Seven Oaks School Division which produced two sets of books to explain how they lost $300,000 on a secret land development that they undertook with government money. In one set they admitted they spent $300,000 (and counting) more than they made on the deal; in the other they said that if they sold the land they already bought and paid for to themselves for an inflated price, they would make an inflated profit. (Honest, we can't make this stuff up.) When a sharp-eyed resident spotted the school division engaging in land speculation, the NDP education minister blew him off, tipped off the school board which then backdated all their paperwork, and the NDP called in Bellringer to say everything was above board.

******************
Bend Over

The former chairman of Manitoba Hydro applied his likkin' stick to unelected Premier Greg Selinger on Saturday.

Selinger and the NDP have run out of ideas to run an election on, and their whole campaign hinges on the scare tactic of constantly accusing Tory leader Hugh McFadyen of planning to sell Manitoba Hydro.

Hydro ex-chairman and CEO Len Bateman had enough. He wrote a scathing letter to the editor of the Winnipeg Free Press:

"Does the government understand the legislation that governs the operation of Manitoba Hydro? It appears from its statements about privatizing Mantioba Hydro that Premier Greg Selinger is making that it does not."

Bateman went on to cite the law that says Hydro can't be privatized without a referendum.

"This should quash one of the fear-mongering attacks by government on the opposition parties," said Bateman.

But Bateman should also take McFadyen to the woodshed. It appears the Tories have found preparing for an election was too hard, so they've decided to wing it. Otherwise they would have known about it and wouldn't have had to rely on Bateman to defend them.

****************
More Incompetence at City Hall. Or, as the public calls it, the usual.

Let's see. A report to city hall released Friday says more and more often buses are passing up passengers because they're overcrowded. Winnipeg Transit has been converting its fleet to low-floor buses. That's meant replacing high-floor buses that have 50 seats with low-floor buses that have only 39 seats. And, they could have added, you lose another five seats every time a Godzilla-sized stroller gets on, which is pretty much every trip.

So 15 people either can't find a seat or can't even get on board, every time a bus shows up on a "busy route."

Ridership has risen 20 percent since 2002, the report said, which means even more people are being inconvenienced today than ever.

Pure genius by the transit planners. City councillors are considering buying more buses, which, the bureaucrats promise, won't cost more money because the fares will cover the cost of drivers and fuel.

Uh huh.

Sort of like the new stadium and the Disraeli Bridge ?

City spokeswoman Alissa Clark released a blathering statement that lectured bus riders to be patient and wait for another bus that will be along sometime or other.

In other words, the usual.

'the world's worst campaign' vs 'the world's worst campaigner.'

2011-09-08T16:20:00.002-05:00

The election has been called. The battle lines are drawn.

It's 'the world's worst campaign' vs 'the world's worst campaigner.'

Heaven help us.

The Manitoba NDP under unelected Premier Greg Selinger is running a Seinfeld campaign--- it's about nothing.

Selinger revealed the five priorities of the NDP campaign on Tuesday:

improving health care,

expanding jobs, education and training opportunities,
keeping living costs affordable,
making communities safer, and
maintaining Manitoba Hydro as a publicly owned entity.

This in direct contrast with the campaign being run by the Progressive Conservative Party under leader Hugh McFadyen, which promises
improved health care;
more jobs, education and training;
keeping the cost of living low;
making communities safer; and
keeping Manitoba Hydro a public utility.

Of course the NDP can't run on their record. They're running from their record.

What would they campaign on? Eliminating hallway medicine? Reducing the number of doctors in each emergency ward (those emergency wards that aren't closed half the year) to one, resulting in waits of five, six, or seven hours for "emergency" patients? The number of people who died waiting for care in emergency wards? Brian Sinclair and how the NDP delayed the inquest into his preventable death until after the election? The perpetual nursing shortage?

Or maybe the ten people who were killed by car thieves because the NDP refused to act to stop the epidemic of auto theft because of the racial background of the thieves. Or their great success with a "holistic" approach to gangs, which, after 10 years, has Manitoba under siege by more gangs and more violent gangs than ever before?

Or their record on reducing poverty. Aren't we the child poverty capital of Canada, again? Aren't more people using food banks than ever before? Don't forget their five-year pilot project to attack the root causes of poverty in Centennial neighbourhood, which involved getting people out of poverty by getting them deeper into debt for energy efficient furnaces. (We're not making this up.)

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2008/12/winnipeg-foundation-attacking-root.html

No, the record is out. So the NDP have honed in on the P.C.'s weakest link---Hugh McFadyen. Their campaign consists of hate ads attacking McFadyen relentlessly, in- between attacking former Premier Gary Filmon who hasn't been a factor in Manitoba politics for 12 years.

The Tories, meanwhile, have had four years to anticipate the NDP attacks and strategize on how to counter them. It seems that four years wasn't enough for the P.C. election team, because they have -- nothing.

Zip.

Who's the P.C. brain trust? Goofy and Pluto?

Probably the same people who picked Hugh McFadyen as leader, the man who runs from every fight he's ever faced.

McFadyen is possibly the only person in the country who could make the NDP the fiscally conservative party in the election, who could promise to OUTSPEND the NDP, who could run a campaign pledging to put the province DEEPER INTO DEBT than the NDP.

Pure genius.

McFadyen could have defused the NDP lies about his non-existent plan to sell Manitoba Hydro months ago by pointing out that the NDP has ALREADY begun to privatize Hydro assets by selling off part-ownership of every new dam it builds.

But, no. Not a word from Hughie, except for the daily denial. He won't even let other people defend him.

The NDP has spent the summer accusing McFadyen of being complicit in the firing of 1000 nurses during the Filmon administration. Winnipeg Sun columnist Tom Brodbeck destroyed this argument 10 months ago in a blog post headlined NDP misfires on attack ads.

Brodbeck did the heavy lifting and all McFadyen had to do was distribute that blog post to voters. He didn't, he hasn't, and we'll put money that he won't.

Hey Hugh, ask the Blue Bombers -- YOU DON'T WIN PLAYING DEFENCE.

And it gets worse for the bumbling Tories, if that's possible.

During his latest hate-Hugh session, Wednesday, Selinger accused the Tory leader of "wanting to raise the rates Manitobans pay for electricity to market rates" (if the Winnipeg Free Press paraphrased him correctly.)

Did not. Did not, whined McFadyen.

Except that a Google search popped up another answer in 0.08 seconds.

Manitoba Hydro rates: McFadyen gets it | PolicyFrog
policyfrog.wordpress.com/2008/.../manitoba-hydro-rates-mcfadyen-gets-it/
You +1'd this publicly. UndoJan 29, 2008 – Credit to Tory Leader Hugh McFadyen, who said on CJOB this morning his party is open to the idea of moving to market rates for hydro power in Manitoba, ... 2 Comments on “Manitoba Hydro rates: McFadyen gets it” ...

http://policyfrog.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/manitoba-hydro-rates-mcfadyen-gets-it/

Manitoba Hydro rates: McFadyen gets it
Credit to Tory Leader Hugh McFadyen, who said on CJOB this morning his party is open to the idea of moving to market rates for hydro power in Manitoba, provided the increases were matched by reductions to personal and corporate taxes.

McFadyen drew the comparison to Alberta, where oil and gas is sold at market rates and the provincial government uses royalties to keep taxes low.

Hear! Hear!

Unfortunately, CJOB's audio vault only goes back 3 weeks so we can't give you the exact quote.

In the meantime, between denial and defence, McFadyen's pathetic election campaign staggers on. Instead of the bold vision (If we can dream it, we can do it) he campaigned on in 2007, he's rolling out a barrage of penny promises each day.

On crime? Why a promise to breed police dog puppies. Who doesn't like puppies?

The murder rate at new highs? Promise ankle bracelets for sex offenders. Sex offenders. Boo.

Gangs out of control? Promise to fund 30 police officers (who are already working and getting paid.) And hire 15 more for a "special firearms enforcement unit". Nothing like watching a politician, who used to be lawyer (ptui), micro-manage the police department to give you confidence.

Money tight? McFadyen will pay you $100 a child per month until they reach 12. And he'll pay off a portion of your home repairs with a home-reno tax credit.

Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente had a name for that kind of campaigning in her piece today about the Liberals in Ontario -- micropandering.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/the-liberals-ontario-sunshine-lollipops-and-dopey-ideas/article2157246/

Micropandering from a candidate whose first instinct is always to run from a fight, who is unable to defend himself from the attacks of his opponents, who gives his opponents the ammo to fire at him and his colleagues, and who makes his opponents look good by comparison.

This may be the shortest campaign period permissible, but it's going to be a long, long election.

Voter cynicism in Manitoba? Oh Pshaw

2011-09-02T19:17:00.001-05:00

Politicians are always crying crocodile tears over voter cynicism, but the next time one does slap him upside the head and direct him (or her) to the spectacle we saw Thursday here in Manitoba.

In the only have-not province in Western Canada, in a province that's going in the hole to the tune of almost half a billion dollars a year in deficit spending, in the highest taxed province west of Quebec, two politicians running for election were trying to outdo each other with new multi-million dollar spending promises.

Its hard to say who the winner was. The loser was easy to identify---you and us.

Hugh McFadyen, leader of the NDP (Added) Party (formerly known as the Progressive Conservative Party before McFadyen abandoned all conservative principles), rolled out the most expensive proposal du jour.

He promised to extend the $100 a month child allowance per kid past the federal cut-off age of 12. At 90,000 eligible children in Manitoba, that would cost $9 million a month, $108 million a year.

At a time when every other political jurisdiction in the world is looking at ways to cut costs and reduce entitlements, McFadyen is adding entitlements that he can pay for only by borrowing another hundred million dollars a year.

But at least you can tell what he's spending the money on----bribing voters.

You can't say the same with the promise by NDP leader Greg Selinger to spend $24 million over four years on....what?

It appears he's spending the money on --wait for it -- a headline.

"Selinger promises $24 million for healthcare/for training/ for health care training/ for advance training/ for advanced training of health care professionals." Pick one. We've seen or heard each of them.

But none of the news stories actually say how the money will be spent. In fact, the Global News story showed Selinger sitting down with a room full of health care professionals and the description: Selinger met with doctors; nurses; and paramedics Thursday to find out how to best spend the $6-million a year.

Say what? Selinger announced $24 million in spending over four years and doesn't know how to spend the money? He's only now asking what the money can go towards? Is this how the NDP runs its health care system?

We had to read and re-read the NDP press release to finally hone in on what the NDP's plans for the money are. As best we can determine, it is to increase the training of paramedics and nurse practioners to take on more of a role in treating patients.

So the choice facing voters is this:

One party, they're deceptively calling themselves Conservatives but you can call them NDP (Added), wants to increase the deficit, go deeper into debt, add an unnecessary entitlement program, expand the bureaucracy and intrude further into the private lives of Manitobans.

The other party, call them the Original NDP, wants to borrow millions of dollars although they're not sure how they will spend the money, to fund a vague idea that they can use non-doctors to do the job of doctors, to convince the public that the shortage of doctors is not a real problem in the NDP health care system.

Now why would voters be cynical?

NDP proves it's the party of prudes

2011-09-01T11:12:00.002-05:00

CBC Manitoba, in collaboration with the NDP, tried a drive-by smear of the Conservatives Wednesday but wound up only proving that the New Democrats are the party of prudes.

CBC "reporter" Sean Kavanaugh engaged in the worst form of "gotcha" journalism on a day when the Conservatives made real news at the release of their economic platform. They announced they've abandoned two decades of balanced budget prudence to adopt the NDP program of running deficits for years in a province that already has the second-lowest unemployment rate in the country. The NDP plans four years of huge deficits; the Conservatives have doubled that, promising eight years.

The CBC "scoop"? The Conservatives played a catchy dance-inducing No. 1 hit song at a pre-election rally earlier in the week.

Yep. That's it. That's what counts as "journalism" at the taxpayer-funded CBC.

They hyped the story by declaring the Conservatives were "being rapped" for the song "that contains suggestive lyrics."

The song is Party Rock Anthem by the group LMFAO. It was No. 1 on the Billboard charts for six weeks this summer, getting knocked out of top spot by Katy Perry's hit Last Friday Night.

Sample lyrics:

Party rock is in the house tonight Everybody just have a good time And we gonna make you lose your mind Everybody just have a good time

In the club party rock, lookin' for your girl? She on my jock Nonstop when we in the spot, booty movin' weight like she on the block Where the drank? I gots to know, tight jeans, tattoo 'cause I'm rock 'n' roll Half black, half white, domino, game the money, op-a-doe

The NDP were left gasping for air and fanning their inflamed faces.

And what about all that rapping of the Conservatives. Well, it seems, the only rapping came from NDP sourpuss Nancy Allan. Yes, that Nancy Allan whose husband works in the newsroom of CBC Manitoba.

Hmmm. Guess where the story "tip" came from.

In a scene straight out of Footloose, the joyless Nancy Allan said the Conservatives should be ashamed of themselves for dancing to the devil's beat.

Kavanaugh then had to flesh the story out with man-in-the-street interviews that consisted of him telling people about the song, playing them the LMFAO video, explaining the origin of the name of the band, showing them the lyrics on his laptop and pointing out the lyrics he wanted them to condemn. Whew. So much for spontaneity.

And for the credibility of the CBC.

Greg Selinger unveils the twin pillars of the NDP's re-election campaign

2011-08-31T15:11:00.004-05:00

In front of a handpicked audience Tuesday, unelected Premier Greg Selinger pulled back the curtain on the twin pillars of the NDP's re-election campaign---Hate and Hype.

Selinger spewed unadulterated vitriol at his opponent, Progressive Conservative leader Hugh McFadyen, accusing him of every sin conceivable to a hardcore socialist.

NDP propaganda has been peddling lies all summer that McFadyen plans to poison Lake Winnipeg, to fire doctors and nurses and kill babies, and, most horrific of all, to sell Manitoba Hydro [also known as a.) depending on science not politics to make water policy, b.) supporting balanced budgets, and c.) a myth invented out of whole cloth by the NDP.]

The NDP leader was spitting venom as he viciously attacked McFadyen and painted himself as the saviour of Manitoba who is bravely fighting off the rightwing barbarian hordes. But it's the intensity of his hate that's notable. It's not just a politician disagreeing with policy; it's sheer deranged animus, a deep-seated hatred which leaves a sour taste in everyone except the true believers.

For someone who paints himself as all that stands between your children's future and the evil plans of the demonic Conservatives, he leaves listeners with the unsettling question: would you trust your child alone in the same room as this hate-filled Cassandra?

When he wasn't expressing his loathing of Hugh McFadyen, Selinger was trying his best to breathe life into a tepid "vision" of NDP Manitoba to come.

"The normal we've had for the last decade is something to build," he said. ZZZZZZZZZZ.

More of the same, he promised. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

He encouraged supporters, as one newspaper tortuously put it, "to maintain and improve on the basics: health care, education, infrastructure and fighting crime." ZZZZZZZZZZ.

Did someone mention crime? After 12 years of NDP government, the province is the murder capital of Canada with street gangs running unchecked and violent crime reaching unheard of levels and depths of depravity.

Selinger's plan? More social workers.

"We want neighbourhoods where people feel safe," he said. "It's not just about being tough on crime. It's about being tough on the causes of crime, which is why this government will invest in young people, in education, in recreation and in job opportunities — those kinds of things that give people a sense of hope, a sense of the future and the opportunity to achieve that."

Selinger tried to hype Manitoba's economy under the NDP. It was like listening to the finance minister of Greece.

Everything is super as long as you can keep propping up the economy by borrowing money at near-zero rates. But when, like Greece, the free ride ends and bankers realize you've been living the high life on borrowed money, it's a painful bus ride to bankruptcy court. He has one convert, though---P.C. leader Hugh McFadyen who has abandoned balanced budgets and now promises to spend more than the NDP.

Unfortunately for Selinger, a new report card on Manitoba's economic health was released a day earlier by the Manitoba Employers Council, which describes itself as "the largest collective of individual employers and employer associations in Manitoba."

They didn't grade the province under the NDP, but reading the report shows the government for the past decade would be lucky to get a D at best.

Manitoba is dead last in almost every category measured.
* We have the lowest average weekly earnings among the western provinces (Ontario to B.C.).

* We have less money to spend after taxes (personal disposable income). Even though disposable income didn't drop in Manitoba in the recession of 2009 as it did in the other provinces, we STILL had less money to spend after taxes than workers did in those provinces.

* The labour force is growing slower than any of the other western provinces.

* The NDP has stifled entrepreneurial spirit in Manitoba. The measure of entrepreneurial intensity (businesses per 1000 population) in Manitoba is 69, unchanged in 10 years. The Canadian average is 79.

And when it comes to taxes, it will make you cry.

Get this. For a family of four earning $30,000, every other western province cut taxes over the last decade except Manitoba where that family pays $282 MORE than it would have in 2001.

But it's worse than that. The report states:

"Personal income tax paid, for this low income family, declined 100 per cent in BC, 100 per cent in Alberta, 100 per cent in Saskatchewan, and 129 per cent in Ontario, but increased 128 per cent in Manitoba. (see figure 14)"

Declined 100 percent means they pay NO PROVINCIAL INCOME TAXES. Zero.

The picture isn't better as you go up the pay scale.

At $60,000 that family of four pays $523 less in Manitoba than it would ten years ago. But it would pay $2,749 less in Saskatchewan, $1745 less than in B.C. and $1680 less in Ontario. In Alberta that family only gets a benefit of $520 less than it would pay in 2001.

And yes, the picture is worse than you think. In Manitoba that family pays $3042 in personal income taxes. In Alberta, the next highest province, it pays $1677.

It's the same at every tax bracket.

Brutally high taxes are sucking the life out of the provincial economy leaving it on life support from federal government transfer payments and equalization.

Now that's scary.

Hugh McFadyen's dream plan to win the '11 election

2011-08-30T14:13:00.000-05:00

On May 31, 2011, Winnipeg entrepreneur Mark Chipman handed the provincial election to Hugh McFadyen.

"Here," he (may have) said, "take it. Carry it over the goal line. Show 'em what a winner looks like."

"Echh," replied McFadyen, "Keep it. I don't want it."

And with that, McFadyen, the hapless leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, showed he doesn't have a single political instinct anywhere in his body.

On May 31, 2011, Mark Chipman announced that NHL hockey had returned to Winnipeg. The Jets were back. The news electrified the province. It should have had Hugh McFadyen doing cartwheels at Portage and Main. He should have bought every billboard in town to carry his face smiling ear-to-ear and the message "I told you so" to every voter in the province.

Because McFadyen was the only politician who even dreamed that the return of the Jets was a possibility.

It's right there on the record. It had been the centrepoint of his 2007 provincial election campaign. And it cost him the election.

Four years ago McFadyen ran on a bold theme: if we can dream it, we can do it. And the biggest dream in Winnipeg, certainly, was to have the Jets back.

So he put on a Jets jersey and held a news conference in the Arena to reveal his platform, with the return of the Jets as the perfect example of dreaming big to take Manitoba out of the ranks of the also-rans and into the winners circle in the 21st century.

But the idea was so outlandish, that instead of inspiring the electorate, McFadyen became the object of unrestricted derision. For just a sample of how brutal the reaction was even to the idea that the Jets would return to Winnipeg, read what we wrote at the time.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2007/05/hughie-hughie-and-je-eh-ehts.html

Leading the attack on McFadyen was the NDP in government.

"And I'm gonna eliminate winter next year," sneered then-Premier Gary Doer, with his successor Greg Selinger at his side.

And then....it happened. The Jets were back! You can't say that too many times. And just as McFadyen had predicted, it transformed Winnipeg and Manitoba. A perfect example is this column in the Winnipeg Sun by Greg Dicrese.

http://www.winnipegsun.com/2011/08/29/the-sweet-summer-of-the-jets

"The Jets’ return, however, plunged a syringe of adrenalin into the heart of our city’s sagging psyche."

"Suddenly, it was as if our tired and jaded eyes snapped open to gaze upon the city in a new and confident light."

"That sense of being sidelined and second rate when compared to other cities with NHL teams was lifted. A feeling of pride washed over the ‘Peg as we rejoined one of our country’s most important national conversations: The Hot Stove Lounge."

"I’ve heard people say the NHL needed us. I’ve heard these rational reptiles say the city was doing fine, thank-you-very-much, without the Jets’ return to validate it."

"Yadda, yadda, yadda."

"All I know is Winnipeg looks and, more importantly, feels different this summer with the NHL back. And it’s something I didn’t feel when those professional boosters of our city cheered about Ikea coming."

Now any politician with a sliver of political instinct would know enough to grab on to the good news and run with it. McFadyen, instead, stood back and invited Mark Chipman to take the bows.

Unelected Premier Greg Selinger, meanwhile, elbowed Chipman aside at every opportunity to get his own mug into every picture. McFadyen, as he's been throughout his years as Opposition leader, was invisible.

So when we heard that the Conservatives had, ahem, "leaked" their own election platform to the news media on Monday, we couldn't wait to see it. It had to contain something even more spectacular than the return of the Jets, didn't it?

We could never have imagined in our wildest dreams what we found.

In a word: ugh.

Instead of the bold, exciting challenge of the 2007 campaign, Hugh McFadyen was offering voters the promise that Manitoba is going to have an NDP government for the next four years---whether it's the NDP under Greg Selinger or the NDP under Hugh McFadyen.

Because, yes, it turns out Hughie's big dream is to turn the P.C.Party into NDP 2.0.

He's simply adopted the entire NDP philosophy: Spend Spend Spend.

But he's replaced Tax Tax Tax with Borrow Borrow Borrow.

While the rest of the world is trying to get out of debt, Hugh McFadyen has promised to get Manitoba deeper and deeper into the soup.

After years of accusing the NDP of spending like drunken sailors, the Manitoba Conservatives have pulled out the credit card, ordered a round for the house and told the bartender to keep 'em coming.

The NDP, worried about voter reaction to running deficits, claimed they would have a balanced budget in four years. Hugh McFadyen says deficits are your friend, why limit them. Why stop at 4 years when you can run a full eight years of borrowing at ever increasing interest rates? Pile up that debt now, don't wait.

The federal government has a child allowance? We'll have one too.
The home reno tax credit was a big success? We'll have one too.

Ottawa offers a fitness tax credit? Hell, we will too.
The provincial sales tax raises too much revenue? We'll stop collecting it for this, that, and the other thing and make up the difference by borrowing money.

We'll spend money paving backlanes in Winnipeg, because that's a provincial priority.

And we'll create a local government infrastructure fund because you can't have enough bureaucracy.

Oh, and doesn't everyone deserve a cottage at the beach? We'll extend the "$700 property tax credit to cottage owners to make cottage ownership more affordable."

In 2007 the Tory campaign was "if we can dream it, we can do it."

In 2011, it's "money's cheap; borrow your face off. Buy what you want now and stick your kids with the bill, the ungrateful little bastards. Tell 'em to shut up or you'll leave the cottage to someone else."

The CMHR pulls an Oliver Twist: Please sirs, we want some more - - money.

2011-08-29T15:28:00.001-05:00

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has informed the federal government in no uncertain terms that it can't pay its tax bills to the City of Winnipeg.

And the CMHR says in its latest annual report that it will have no money to cover its utility bills once it opens.

From the 2010-2011 annual report:

"The Museum will be seeking the government's approval to augment the operating funds already committed by an amount sufficient to cover the required property tax (PILT) payments and to address ongoing pressures of inflation in operating, maintenance and capital repairs."

Translation: The CMHR has a plan.

The government should give it more money to pay its outstanding bills.

Much more than the $21.7 million a year that's budgeted.

Then everything will be alright.

oh, and if the museum doesn't pay its tax bill in 2012 for the third year running it goes up for a tax sale.

In Winnipeg that means the City takes ownership of the property unless the taxes and penalties are paid in full within a year. Does Salisbury House need another restaurant?

And the museum's electricity bill alone is expected to be huge. The CMHR is already signalling to the government, and the public, that its not your father's kind of museum. It runs on electricity.

"The CMHR is a new kind of museum; an "idea" and "dialogue" museum that relies heavily on technology to deliver the stories, videos and digital "artifacts" that visitors will engage with both on site and from around the world. The Museum's unique IT requirements have necessitated greater investment than anticipated in earlier estimates. In 2010- 2011, the Museum invested in network equipment — the first of the required information technology infrastructure. Further expenditures for servers and storage are planned for future years."

Oh, and it looks like the CMHR won't be able to raise the money needed to finish building the "iconic" structure. Can the government help with that too?

Two years ago the museum board of trustees confessed they were $45 million short on the construction funding. Since they claim the private fundraising arm of the museum, Friends of the CMHR, has raised pledges of another $10 million, leaving them still $35 million in the glue with two years to the opening date.

Their chance of raising that money is equal to Gaddafi's chance of resuming power in Libya. But there's always hope, isn't there? Here's how the CMHR annual report presents that hope as of March 31, 2011:

"The Friends of the CMHR has committed to raising the additional $45 million, in addition to its original contribution, from the public and private sectors."

See? The "private" sector will raise money from the public sector, aka governments and government agencies like Manitoba Hydro. They'll get the money from taxpayers, then Sam Katz and Greg Selinger can claim the funding from "private" donors justifies even more spending from the public coffers.

Among the red flags in the annual report is the suggestion that CMHR CEO Stuart Murray did his best to mislead the federal cabinet about the museum's plans and exhibits.

The issue arose when the Ukrainian Community complained that the CMHR was actually a Holocaust museum in disguise, with the rest of Canada's ethnic groups being relegated to second class status by having their stories relegated to a 'Mass Atrocities' gallery which lumped all the world's genocides and mass murders in together while the Holocaust story got its own exclusive gallery.

Federal Heritage Minister James Moore was questioned on this point in April by Winnipeg Free Press columnist Dan Lett, who wrote:

"(Moore) said he had been told no final decisions on museum content had been made and that no one subject would be getting permanent status. "There will be no permanent exhibits," Moore said. "That was very clear from Stuart Murray and the board."

The Jewish Post followed up on the Lett story and carried this note:

"However, on April 11 after Lett’s article had been published, Moore’s acting communications director James Maunder told The Globe and Mail: “No final decisions have been made on any permanent exhibits, or if there will be any.”[emphasis added (in the original)]."

And yet, the CMHR '10-'11 annual report says final decisions had already been taken.

"Over the past fiscal year multi-departmental teams — in-house human rights experts and exhibit designers — compiled and then translated this extraordinary raft of research, scholarship and public input into distinct exhibit-design plans. These meticulously crafted plans will now ultimately serve as the blueprints that fabricators will use to bring the Museum's inaugural exhibits to life."

"Included in these new blueprints are detailed 3D models that map out where in the Museum each exhibit will be built and specify the materials to be used. With this critical foundation in place, elevation work, graphic design, information visualization and media and technology design can now commence, setting the stage for the exhibit construction and carpentry that will begin next year."

Was the board deliberately misleading Parliament? It wouldn't be the first time.

The CMHR even rewrites history in its report to hide the fact. It wrote:

"Prior to spring of 2008, cost estimates for the Museum building were based on a very preliminary design. From spring 2008 onwards, engineers and consultants were engaged to advance the Predock design so that more accurate cost estimating could be achieved."

****
"On February 11, 2008, the Government of Canada introduced legislation in Parliament to create the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the bill was passed by a unanimous decision of the Canadian Parliament. The amendments to the Museums Act received Royal Assent in the early spring of 2008 and came into force by Order in Council on August 10, 2008."

What the CMHR board left out was reported in The Black Rod in May, 2009, in a story headlined "CMHR to Politicians: We Lied. So, Whatcha Gonna Do?"

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2009/05/cmhr-to-politicians-we-lied-so-whatcha.html

It turns out that in March, 2008, the promoters of the museum appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights prior to getting the Senate's approval for the project. Present was Patrick O'Reilly, Director, Implementation Strategy, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, who sat with Lyn Elliot Sherwood, Executive Director, Heritage Group, Canadian Heritage, as she answered Senator's questions, including this one:

Senator Cowan: This is not one of those projects where the federal government is left to pick up anything over and above the $165 million that is contributed by other parties, is it?

     Ms. Sherwood: The total budget is $265 million. You are putting your  finger on a very real risk in the current environment, which is the impact of  inflation on construction budgets. That has been factored into planning and is  one of the reasons for the urgency of this bill because at the moment the  purchasing power of that $265 million is being eroded at the rate of between  $800,000 and $1.5 million per month.

     Senator Cowan: I am not being critical of this project. However,  someone has to hold it at the end of the day.

Ms. Sherwood: The board of trustees will be accountable for  bringing this project in on budget and making decisions with respect to  the building design and the contingency fund set aside that allow it to bring  the project in on budget.

March was a month after February when " the Government of Canada introduced legislation in Parliament to create the Canadian Museum for Human Rights." When questioned by the Senators, there was no mention that the budget for the CMHR was an estimate based on a very preliminary design. Just the opposite. The Senate was told this was a firm figure which contained a hefty contingency that would ensure the government wouldn't be asked for more money, not that you would know from the alternate version of the truth now being peddled by Gail Asper and her ilk.

But the CMHR says they are trying to keep expenses in check. They're holding board meetings via conference call to "minimize costs and maximize value" and coordinating exhibit project meetings via Skype.

Oh, and fifty percent of the water used in the Museum’s toilets will be rainwater collected on site.

What happens in a year like this when there is no rainwater is a proposition to make you shudder. Sort of like the museum's accounting.

Are Tiffany Skye's gang links the clue to her disappearance and death

2011-08-27T18:31:00.002-05:00

It's becoming another of those defining stories of Winnipeg.

A young girl leaves home and disappears. She's either never seen again or her body is eventually discovered in the river or in some secluded location. Pleas for help to nail down her last movements go unanswered. She's usually aboriginal.

This week it's the story of 17-year-old Tiffany Skye. RCMP say she was last known to be alive on Monday, August 8, 2011. Five days later, Saturday, Aug. 13, her body was recovered from the Red River near Lockport.

Police quickly determined who she was but an autopsy Aug. 16 failed to disclose a cause of death. Read that again.

She didn't drown. Which means they don't know how she died and how she wound up in the river.

Police then began adding some of the mystery to her disappearance.

They waited at least 10 days after she was found to release her identity to the press. They didn't give out her name until five days after she was buried. When they did, they gave out details of her last known whereabouts that were so obtuse they made no sense.

"Tiffany Skye was last reported to have been in the area of the Forks or Downtown Winnipeg on the afternoon or evening of Monday, August 8, 2011."

Huh? She was either here or there sometime after 12 noon? What the hell are you talking about?

The first mystery is why police can't communiciate with people.

It took Tiffany's mother to do the job of the police and to provide an intelligible answer to when Tiffany was last known to be alive.

She told the Winnipeg Sun that "(o)ne of her other daughters got a text message from Tiffany the night she went missing saying she was out with her “bros”.

So the RCMP know the exact hour that Tiffany (or somebody using her cell phone and pretending to be her) texted her sister. Can't they use technology to determine the location of the phone?

We'll leave the technological questions to them. But it's the reference to her "bros" that may help dispel some of the mystery surrounding Tiffany's disappearance and death.

Two years before her disappearance, Tiffany Skye was a member of Bebo, a social networking website popular with Winnipeg gang members and their associates.

Her site profile is titled Fuck A Bitch.

Her personal information begins:

Me, Myself, and I
　　　　'' Tiffany maureen Skye
is the name..
　　　i♥nOrthSide fUk tha west.

Northside is one of the violent aboriginal street gangs plaguing Winnipeg and 15-year-old Tiffany (as she was then) was pledging her support.

It ends:

I keep it G and that's a Promise.

I may be a Bitch, but at least  I'm

Honest.

I keep it G means I keep it Gangsta.

Tiffany's mother said her daughter was in a foster home from the time she was an infant until her mid-teens. That means she left the foster home when she was 15 or 16, exactly the time she was professing her allegiance to thug life.

Her connections to the aboriginal gang world go deeper still. Her brother is Isaac Skye, or Isaac Skye-Young as he once wrote it. He was 36 in 2010 when Tiffany last posted on Bebo.

He also had a Bebo page.
His profile declares his colour preference:
"black and red and white all ip colors".

And he wrote glowingly about NSIP---Northside Indian Posse.

He posted his artwork (below)

And homemade posters.

Which is very ironic.

Because, you see, Tiffany and Isaac Skye are cousins of Nathan Starr, the 14-year-old boy who was killed in a fire on Mountain Avenue in 2007 which was set deliberately by two members of the Indian Posse street gang. They were trying to burn out some rival drug dealers but torched the wrong house.

Issac obviously doesn't hold a grudge. And his family is now depending on the police, Winnipeg and RCMP, to find out what happened to their Tiffany.

The point is that many of these missing girls are connected and like Tiffany Skye have dark underbellies to their sweet lives. They are heavily connected to the thug life underworld of aboriginal street gangs, which brings with it heavy drug usage and random violence.

The police and the families of these girls do their best to hide this side of the story. And by doing so, they obscure the probable answers to the disappearances.

The answers don't lie with the general community; they will be found in the aboriginal community.

Is anybody looking?

Hot Buttered Soul. Replacing Jack Layton

2011-08-23T19:48:00.004-05:00

Yep. Still dead.

We had to check after Monday's media wallow over the death of the new Moses, Jack Layton, aka the man who accomplished nothing in his federal career apart from propping up the corpse of the Liberal Party until it literally fell to pieces.

Let's see, he was leader of the fourth largest party in Parliament, never spent a day in government, and waited until the Liberals finally imploded to pick up the pieces and lead a gaggle of Quebec students and separatists to Ottawa under the NDP banner. Then he expired, leaving the party in the hands of a 68-year-old woman with the English language skills of Stephane Dion and who, when elected, was a card-carrying separatist party member and financial donor. Way to go, New Moses.

But while the mainstream media commentators rushed to buy sackcloth and ashes before prostrating themselves at Layton's cold dead feet, they studiously avoided the only question anyone wanted answered--- who is going to lead the NDP, now? Or, as all those new-born biblical scholars would say, who will be the new Joshua ?

A passel of potential candidates has bubbled to the surface and no one is happier to see them than the pundits of the governing Conservative party who are dancing a jig at the prospects.

For starters, the Conservatives will walk into Parliament in September to face two leaderless Opposition parties. And it only gets better from there.

Unless NDP apostate Bob Rae performs a true miracle by returning to his roots, seizing the leadership of the federal NDP and then uniting the NDP and Liberals into a single party of the left, the future for both looks mighty dim and foreboding.

The Liberals have a tradition of alternating between Anglophone and Francophone leaders. Wouldn't you know it, it's the turn of a French-speaking leader. With the seminal need to rebuild their strength in Quebec, a leader from that province becomes almost inevitable.

The NDP, meanwhile, finds itself with more than half its members in Parliament from Quebec. To choose a leader from anywhere other than Quebec would be a humiliation.

So in the best-case scenario for the Conservatives, the Opposition parties would go from no leaders to both being led by someone from Quebec. And, apart from the amusement of watching them tear each other to pieces in that province come next election, there's the knowledge that the rest of Canada would vote for Muammar Gaddafi before voting for a Quebecer.

Which takes us back to the NDP leadership contest.

Who is in the running?

<> Topping any list is undoubtedly Gary Doer, former Premier of Manitoba and currently the Canadian ambassador to the United States. Like Jack Layton, he was the political leader you would most want to have a beer with. Unlike Jack Layton, Doer was a winner, in his own province at least. As Premier he hugged the middle of the road, keeping his foot firmly on the throat of his left wing, while deftly knocking aside the ineffectual Opposition leaders in his home province. But he headed for the nearest Exit door when he began feeling the heat from a political scandal involving NDP cheating in the 1999 election that brought him to power. He speaks French like Dion spoke English, and at 63 years old, he will be collecting an Old Age pension by the time the next federal election rolls around; hardly the hopey-changey image of the future the NDP wants to present. No chance.

<> Another Manitoban, Bill Blaikie, came in second to Jack Layton at the last leadership convention. A distant second. He retired from federal politics, took a job at the University of Winnipeg, left that to sit in the Manitoba legislature as an NDP MLA, and announced this year he was retiring and not running in the October provincial election. He may be only 60 but looks ten years older than Gary Doer. Yesterday's man.

<> Thomas Mulcair was Layton's deputy leader. He's from Quebec (Outrement). At 57 he's not sixty. He's a lawyer (ptui). After American special forces killed Osama Bin Laden, Mulcair famously questioned whether the U.S.had photos of Bin Laden's dead body. What was he getting at? Who knows. The NDP shut him up right quick and hid him in a closet where nobody could question him further. Rabid anti-Americanism and conspiracy theories are in the blood of Dippers, so that's not going to hurt him. What will, though, is the strain of anti-Israel sentiment that flows just as strongly through NDP circles.

Mulcair has been called "the most aggressive pro-Israeli MP in the NDP caucus". That's anathema to the left wing of the left wing party. They will be oppose him vigourously if he runs. Does the NDP want a battle over Israel and the inevitable accusations of anti-semitism televised on national networks? Or will they pull an Ignatieff and "select" Mulcair in the back rooms and announce his leadership to the cheering masses? Hot potato.

<> The far left is promoting lesbian Libby Davies, the 58-year-old MP for Vancouver East, B.C. She's the politically correct co-deputy leader with Thomas Mulcair. She doesn't speak French, so her chance of becoming leader is nil. She does speak Wacko, though. She presented a petition to Parliament endorsing 911 Truthers who insist the terror attacks on New York were an inside job by the U.S. government. If this is the best female the NDP can throw up, the party is in deep, deep trouble.

Luckily, for them, she's not.

<> A name being bandied about by insiders is Megan Leslie (Halifax, N.S.) She lists her profession as "community legal worker." Only 38 she's the NDP's health critic, replacing Judy Wasylycia-Leis. She's been attracting a lot of attention including being named "Best Rookie" MP in 2009 by Maclean's magazine, one of 2010's top MPs by columnist Davik Akin, and among Ottawa's Up and Comers in 2011 by Postmedia.

"But, somewhere among all those MPs may be future leaders and even prime ministers - or, at the very least, people who will change government policy in meaningful ways."

"They may be backbenchers, opposition critics or simply sitting on committees that tackle high-profile issues. They may sponsor a private member's bill that generates controversy or just be solid, hardworking MPs who command respect from all parties and, in doing so, wield influence."

"Based on their performance or record to date, and on the issues likely to dominate Parliament in 2011, Postmedia News has assembled a roundup of MPs to watch."

She's not above a little self-promotion and you'll find the latter story on her website
http://meganleslie.ndp.ca/post/ottawas-up-and-commers-who-to-watch-on-parliament-hill

<> Is the NDP ready to be led by somebody whose formative years were the Eighties?

One name sure to be at the top of the list of contenders is Paul Dewar, MP for Ottawa Centre. He's currently the Foreign Affairs critic. At 48, he's about the right age for a leader looking to revitalize the party. He used to be a teacher, but became a union rep and is better known as a "labour and social activist." (Don't any of these people have real jobs?) He speaks French. His drawback, he's got a penis and a wife. A female wife. Politically incorrect.

<> That leaves one frontrunner. Ladies and gentlemen, meet your likely new leader of the NDP.

Peggy A. Nash.
Riding: Parkdale--High Park, Ontario.
Age, 60 (which means she won't stay long).
Gender: just right.
Party cred: She's a union activist and negotiator. First with the Canadian Airline Employees Association, then with Canadian Auto Workers. She's got the union vote sewn up.
She's won accolades for her work promoting women in politics.
She's won awards from the Sierra Club of Canada for her environmental work.
She's been an election monitor in South Africa and two elections in Ukraine.
She's married. To a man, which will go over well with non-Dippers.

The only challenger who could beat her is Black Moses himself, Isaac Hayes. And he died in '08

Has crime got you worried? Uh oh, its worse than you think

2011-08-16T18:18:00.002-05:00

Chances are you've been talking a lot about crime lately.

What with a triple shooting in Transcona and a teenager stabbed in a public park this week, shots fired as two ethnic groups faced off in Osborne Village last week moments before one man was stabbed to death on the street, and a summer of arsons spreading fear throughout Fort Rouge and St. James.

No wonder we're the violent crime capital of the country according to Stats Canada.

What you don't know, is that it's much, much worse than you think.

Statistics Canada divides its annual crime stats into two parts. There's the crime severity index and the violent crime severity index, which get confusing if you don't speak Bureaucrat.

The crime severity index is the number of crimes reported to police in a city and the violent crime severity index is a measure of how serious those crimes are.

So a city may have a lot of shoplifting and vandalism, and place high in the crime severity index. But another city may have a lot of arsons and shootings, and be Number One in the violent crime severity index.

We're that second city. We're tops. Numero Uno. Nobody can touch us. They measure us at twice the violent crime of the Canadian average.

Only, as we said, its worse than that.

We looked at how they create the violent crime severity index. It turns out they give "weights" to the various crimes, then average them out. So that possession of marijuana gets a 7 count while murder gets a 7000.

The weighting depends on how judges sentence offenders.

"The specific weight for any given type of offence consists of two parts. The first component is the incarceration rate for that offence type. This is the proportion of people convicted of the offence who are sentenced to time in prison. The second component is the average (mean) length of the prison sentence, in days, for the specific type of offence." Stats Canada

In short, the easier the judges, the lower the weight given to crimes. So that when Manitoba judges give hand out one day in jail for killing someone, that lowers the average "weight" for murder.

Whenever an aboriginal offender plays his get-out-of-jail-free card given him by the Supreme Court, it lowers the average "weight" for his crime.

And when it comes to crime by juveniles, why bother? All those probation orders for car theft handed out by Manitoba judges don't count for a thing. Even "deferred custody", whatever that is, is treated "as non-incarceral in the model" states Statistics Canada. In short, all the murders, muggings, break-ins, and, yes, arsons, committed by juveniles in Winnipeg don't mean a thing because the most severe sentence a judge can impose is 3 years in jail for first degree murder.

A weighting of 7000? Forget it. Try 0.7.

And----wait for it---- it's actually worse than that.

Stats Canada releases another report on crime every five years. They hate it. The liberal bureaucrats do their best to minimize the findings because it contradicts the myth they want to propagate, namely that crime is falling and there's no need for the Conservatives' tough-on-crime legislation. Here's how the Stats Canada crowd describes their own report:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2010002/article/11340-eng.htm

"Every five years Statistics Canada releases self-reported victimization data from the General Social Survey (GSS), which measures people's perceptions of their experiences of crime for eight offences. The GSS captures information on self-reported incidents of criminal victimization, whether or not they are reported to police. The most recent victimization data were published in September 2010."

Got that? "People's perceptions of their experience."

So remember, the next time someone breaks into your house or your car, that's only your "perception" of crime according to the Stats Canada bureaucrats.

But they can't escape what the report shows.

"According to the 2009 GSS, about 7.4 million Canadians, or just over one-quarter of the population aged 15 years and older,reported being a victim of a criminal incident in the preceding 12 months."

Manitoba tops the list of provinces. The Stats Canada survey indicates that 175 of every 1000 people in the province were victims of one of the eight crimes canvassed: sexual assault, robbery, physical assault, break and enter, motor vehicle/parts theft, theft of household property, vandalism and theft of personal property.

We're so far ahead of the everyone else on the chart (second place was Saskatchewan at 159 per thousand) that if it gets much worse they'll have to create one chart for all the other cities and a separate chart just for Winnipeg.

And remember, that's only eight crimes. Arson doesn't make the list. Does getting your house sprayed in a drive-by shooting count, as vandalism, maybe? And if your 14-year-old son or 13-year-old daughter gets mugged or shot or run down in a stolen car, its an invisible crime to bureaucrats.

Only the damage is real. The physical damage and the emotional damage.

Winnipeg leads the country in criminal violence even when the statisticians do their best to minimize the severity of crimes.

And the number of crimes reported to police doesn't come close to the number of victims.

People have given up calling the police. It's comical to see Winnipeg police spokesman Jason Michalyshen advise people, now that violent crime has erupted in the suburbs, to call whenever they see anything suspicious. Residents of the North End and Inner City have been doing that for years and getting the brush-off from police.

You want a taste of the frustration of real people, not the sugar coating of the police spokesman? Read the blog A Day in the Hood. Here's a sample:

http://adayinthehood.blogspot.com/2011_07_10_archive.html

Monday, July 11, 2011
When Is Criminal Behaviour Not Criminal Behavior?

Well, I am sorry to say, I am not over this issue yet.
We had a bit of an incident yesterday, with an intoxicated individual busting through the neighbours hedge and attempting to open a window with his keys. This was followed by the Police advising me that no crime was committed. And the landlord wanted to know what I expected her to do about it.

Let me re-word this.
What if this happened in Charleswood?

What if an extremely intoxicated individual was seen breaking his way through a thick hedge in your neighbours property? What if you heard him snapping branches and struggling to get through the hedge? What if he made his way into the neighbours yard?
Answer: vandalism, public intoxication, trespassing

What if this intoxicated trespassing vandal proceeded to go the window of the next house over and try to cut the screen open with his keys? What if he kept trying to pry the window open? What if you knew the only person on the lease of the suite from that house was a female?
Answer: attempted break and enter

What if this same intoxicated person left the yard and moved to the back yard of the property he was trying to get into? What if he wandered around the yard for a while? And, what if he finally got into his truck and drove off?
Answer: public intoxication, driving while under the influence

What if this same person came back, crashing his truck into the fence in the yard he drove into? What if he was still intoxicated? What if he decided to pass out in his truck to wait for the person who lived there to come home and open the door?
Answer: driving while under the influence, property damage, public intoxication

So, why are all of these things allowed to happen in the North End?

Regarding the Police:
Why did the Police on the phone tell me no crime was committed when I told her about the hedge, the trespassing, the attempted break and enter and the individual wondering in the back yard of the residence he tried to get into? Why did the person tell me they probably live there?

And, of course, there's the mighty press that's raising a hue and cry about the arsons in the suburbs. Here's how they treated the same story in the North End.

http://adayinthehood.blogspot.com/2011/07/dumpster-ablaze-in-wee-hours-of-morning.html

There was the fire in my dumpster. Then the fire in the dumpster down the street, in the dumpster that I ordered in, so garbage would not be placed on the ground behind that one house. Then the couch and back of a porch on a house in the lane. And now, the neighbours dumpster.

Those are the fires I am aware of, the ones I noticed, in my one back lane on a single block in the North End of Winnipeg.

A Free Press reported, William Burr, contacted me last week, after I wrote my blog entry Fires Running Rampant ... In Crescentwood?. He was going to come into the North End and take a tour of the area I talked about, the three short blocks that had seven fires within three months, that I was aware of. The reporter said he would have to get the 'ok' from his Editor. And we all know what the editor said ..... "not news worthy". It didn't surprise me one bit that North End fires are not 'news worthy' to the Press.

I also contacted 311 to see if I could get stats on the number of arsons taking place since April 1 from Redwood to Mountain, Main to McGregor (about the same area as stated in the Free Press article on Arsons in Crescentwood). They said to contact the Police, so I did.

Still waiting for a reply...

News nobody else is going to tell you

2011-08-11T00:17:00.006-05:00

Ditch what you think you know about the melee in Osborne Village last weekend which resulted in shots fired and the stabbing death of one man.

There's lots the police aren't telling the public. Here's some of it:

You've heard that the incident involved an estimated 50 people. You haven't heard that it involved a confrontation between one group of Asians, Vietnamese in appearance, and another group, East Indian in appearance.

Each of these groups was about 15 in number. The rest of the people on the street were bystanders.

The night had been unusually testy in the Osborne Village Inn, with scuffles breaking out in the line to get in, and on the dancefloor. At closing time, the patrons spilled out onto Osborne as usual, but instead of dispersing, they coalesced around a face-to-face confrontation between two men.

One man accused the other of having stabbed his brother a year ago. The sides formed and trouble was in the air. Bar staff stepped in, trying to diffuse the tension by talking to the individuals who were most agitated to calm the situation down enough so that everyone could go their way without a fight.

Then shots ran out.

Who fired, we don't know.

But it transformed the confrontation into a screaming mob looking for escape. One of those running for his life was 27-year-old Baljinder Singh Sidhu. Word is he saw his salvation in a taxi nearby. He jumped into the cab, but, before it drove off, a group of men literally dragged him out of the vehicle and began stabbing him outside the Happy Cooker, located in the former Bank of Montreal building on Stradbrook at Osborne.

He broke free of them and ran for his life across Osborne back towards the bar for help. He never made it. He collapsed, and died on the sidewalk.

Apparently much of the action was captured on cell phone video, but how much of that made its way into police hands is the unknown factor. Nobody has been arrested for the stabbing death of Baljinder Singh Sidhu yet.

************************************
There's another fugitive on the lam, and this one is a real cur.

His victim: none other than petite CBC television news host Janet Stewart---among others.

It seems that earlier this summer former CKY sports director Steve Vogelsang was hosting a farewell party at his house after retiring from his job as journalism instructor at Red River College. Among the guests was Janet Stewart.

During the evening, Vogelsang's dog leaped up and chomped down on Stewart's face, the bite coming dangerously close to one of her eyes. With blood gushing down her face, she was rushed to hospital. Despite treatment, the gash got infected. You may have noticed her absence from the newscast for weeks; it wasn't a vacation.

Shocked partygoers were discussing the event when they suddenly realized something---they had ALL been bitten by the same dog at one time or another.

As Janet Stewart was convalescing, Vogelsang packed up his wife and his dog and bid farewell to Manitoba for his new home in Nelson, B.C.

The only description of the fugitive--canine in appearance. Breed unknown.

H/t to A Friend.
***********************************
It's said "revenge is a dish best served cold". They forgot to add that it tastes like four-month old crow.

Global News engaged in the most reprehensible form of gotcha journalism during the last federal election by "reporting" (and we use that term as loosely as possible) nothing less than a drive-by smear on Conservative candidate Shelly Glover.

On Monday, more than four months after their cheap shot hit their newscast, they apologized, saying, we quote "“proper journalistic checks and balances were not adequately followed and that [Shelly] Glover’s quotes were taken out of context.”

Actually, they still tried to wiggle off the hook by headlining it as clarification, but there's no mistaking the grovel in the statement.

Here, in full, in case you missed it, is the apology to Shelly Glover from Global News. The unforgivable illiteracy and errors are in red.

Clarification
Global News: Tuesday, August 9, 2011 9:45 AM

.An important clarification and apology regarding a story we first reported  on this program on Monday, March 28th. The report centered on excerpts from an  interview with Shelly Glover, Conservative M-P fir  St. Boniface. During the interview, Mrs. Glover commented on then Liberal  MP, Anita Neville's performance, saying she had "passed her expiry date."

In  our story, we inaccurately suggested that Mrs. Glover's comments meant she  thought Ms. Neville was too old for the job when Mrs. Glover never made any  comments related to age.

A review of the complete interview transcript  supports Mrs. Glover's assertion that she was reffering only to Neville's performance in Parliament on  behalf of her constituents.

Our story, which ran during the federal election  campaign, resulted in some harsh criticism for Mrs. Glover, which was  unjustified. Global News Acknowledges that in this case, proper journalistic  checks and balances were not adequately followed and that Mrs. Glover's quotes  were taken out of context.

A full transcript of the interview with St.  Boniface M-P Shelly Glover is available here:

Nelly Gonzalez: What do you  think the concern is? We know that most Manitobans here usually vote  conservative in many of the ridings. But there is a couple that could be up for  grabs. We know Anita Neville, there's a mystery candidate there. If it's going  to be Joyce Bateman or other names... What do you know about that and what do  you think the chances are for the party to regain that seat in Winnipeg Centre?

Shelly Glover: Well I think Anita is in trouble, I've only been in  parliament for two and a half years Nelly and I'll tell you, there are a lot of  shenanigans going on in parliament. And we need some fresh blood, we need some  new people, who come with some new ideas and who are going to really stand-up  for their constituents and I'm afraid Ms. Neville has passed her expiry date.  Her constituents are constantly coming to my office because the can't receive  service in French, because they can't receive phone calls back. I think Ms.  Neville is going to be defeated. I can't tell you who...

Nelly Gonzalez:  Because you know who the candidate is and you know this person well?

Shelly  Glover: Well I do know who the candidate is, but the person is not a candidate  of record as of yet, we're just going to have to wait until that plays itself  out. But as I say I think the philosophies of our parties and very different. We  stand by what we say. We don't flip flop, when we say we're going to do  something we actually do it. The record of Anita Neville's party is not a record  similar to ours. They have a number of issues from the past to address. Because  they've said one thing and done another. I mean things, like the gun registry.  It's a big issue, I know a number of emergency workers, police officers in that  riding who are definitely coming out and I’ve had a number of police officers  come into my campaign office unexpectedly saying we want to make sure that gun  registry is taken care of. It's a waste of $84 million and they would like to  see that money go to something far better than a piece of paper that tells you  whether or not somebody’s actually filled out a form saying they've got a gun so  I think Anita Neville is done, I think Raymond Smart  (sic- it was Simard)is going to try his best but I think these constituents are definitely  going to stick with me.

© Copyright (c)

Readers of The Black Rod read the transcript of the full interview way back in March and could see for themselves how biased Global's reporting was.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/03/drive-by-smear-against-shelly-glover.html

The collateral damage of Global's gotcha journalism was to the reputation of reporter Nellie Gonzalez who did the interview and had to watch it used out of context to push a false story. Has Global apologized to her?

And speaking of apologies...

Will Dan Lett, Winnipeg Free Press columnist and, em, blogger, apologize to Shelly Glover as well? He attacked her in support of the Liberal Party of Canada, going so far as to psychoanalyze what she was thinking.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/blogs/lett/Over-the-hill-Thats-what-she-said-118859874.html

Now that the source of the story he was citing has admitted it was 100 percent wrong, will he do the honourable thing and issue an apology?

Bwahahahaha. We said honourable in relation to the Winnipeg Free Press. Ha ha ha.

And don't forget that these are the professional reporters we're supposed to trust. They are highly trained, extremely ethical, and never let their personal biases influence their, ahem, reporting. Oh, and they have editors to catch mistakes. They just can't get the story right, they can't spell and they refuse to correct the record unless forced.

You say Trumel, the rest of the world says Turmel. Bwahahahaha.

*********************************
It's turning out to be Arson Summer in the Suburbs.

Fear is sweeping Fort Rouge and St. James. Nightly fires have residents on edge. Targets have gone from dumpsters, to garages, to golf courses, condo complexes and community centres. Even the new restaurant of former rock radio shock-jock Dick Rivers got damaged.

A video posted on YouTube in July may have caught a glimpse of one of the arsonists. A home owner in Fort Rouge had three surveillance cameras set up around the back and side of his house. He caught two young men in the lane, hanging around his place, goofing off, swinging hockey sticks, and---what's that?---carrying a gas can?

The video has been "removed by the user". But we watched it before it was, and, sure enough, for a couple of brief seconds, there's a shot of one of the young men walking with a gas can. A more complete analysis of the video is on the blog ReadReidRead:

http://readreidread.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/firebugs/

"This creepy video was taken by the security cameras at a home in my neighbourhood between 8:35 and 8:46 in the evening on July 27. I don’t know where the specific house is. This is new on YouTube. It shows the arsonists lighting a fire! Since it’s eleven minutes long, I’ll give you the highlights timewise. At :55 two boys appear to be playing in the alley. They are the arsonists. They disappear and reappear. At 3:13 in lower right frame, the firestarter walks into yard carrying jerry can. Thereafter the accomplice acts as lookout, at 4:29 hiding when a car comes down the alley. At 4:55 the accomplice walks down the alley, looking back. At 6:13 firestarter runs in opposite direction carrying jerry can. At 6:34 firestarter casually walks by and down the alley, no jerry can. Note the same boxy black runners with white stripe from early shots. By 10:35 neighbours are reacting to hearing the fire engines. As I write this, the video has less than two dozen hits. I hope at least one of them is from the Winnipeg Fire Department. (Update: Sunday, July 31: Wpg. Police Services arson task force is aware of the video.) With today’s face recognition technology, these two should already be behind bars!"

We hope someone screencaptured the suspect and has provided a blow-up to police.

************************************
You want fear? Walk into a CBC boardroom. You can smell it.

Sun News is buzzing at the BBM rating of Ezra Levan'ts interview with Mark Steyn. Levant's show, The Source, the feistiest hour of television in Canada, registered 64,000 viewers at 4 p.m. Winnipeg time and 89,000 viewers at the 9 p.m. replay. That's 153,000 total.

CTV News Channel, by contrast, has 59,000 at 4 and 41,000 at 9 for a combined total of 100,000.

The blog A Few Tasteful Snaps ( http://afewtastefulsnaps.net/) , by Glen McGregor, Ottawa Citizen reporter, filled in the missing piece.

"I have half-hourly breakdowns from BBM for CBC. They show CBC’s Power and Politics drew 57,000 average viewers between 5:00 (Eastern) and 5:30 p.m. that night, and 70,000 from 5:30 p.m to 6:00 p.m. — an average for 63,500 over the hour, same as Levant."

"In the 10:00 p.m., time slot, CBC averaged 90,000 viewers over the hour, compared to Levant’s 89,000 — so, bang on. In that time slot, CBC was running Passionate Eye - I Shouldn't be Alive."

He concludes: "As I’ve said to people eagerly predicting Sun TV’s demise, there is an appetite for what they’re selling."

And nobody is more worried about that than CBC, the target of daily verbal assaults by Sun News hosts.

Bipole III may not be needed, says PUB in a challenge to the NDP

2011-08-05T18:44:00.001-05:00

The Manitoba Public Utilities Board dropped its biggest bombshell yet and it hasn't made a peep in the mainstream media.

It turns out that Manitoba Hydro may not need to build the immensely expensive and bitterly controversial Bipole III transmission line after all.

You read that right.

NOT. BUILD. BIPOLE III.

How can that be?

Manitoba Hydro, which has been frantically hiding the cost, insists Bipole III is absolutely, positively necessary for mankind and must be built or the sky will fall and the seas turn to blood.

Just as fiercely, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition insists the 832 mile line is a great big boondoggle that's being reeled out on the orders of the NDP on the wrong side of Lake Winnipeg, the west instead of the east, at an inflated cost for degraded efficiency.

Unelected Premier Greg Selinger says Bipole III is being built for free -- Americans will pay the full cost of construction when they buy electricity from new power plants that will pass through the transmission wires and across the border.

But Opposition leader Hugh McFadyen says its going to cost every Manitoban $13,000 and change by the time the the 'on' switch is flipped.

The PUB spent days poking and prodding for the truth and published its conclusions in a ruling issued last Friday (which we've translated into English where necessary).

"During the proceeding, MH modelled only two alternatives: a) build (MH’s preferred approach - the construction of Wuskwatim, Keeyask, Conawapa and Bipole III, a plan that requires new export contract commitments); and, b) “no build”, i.e. the development of Wuskwatim, Conawapa and Bipole III, to service domestic load when required and sell excess generation through opportunity export sales)."

Translation: Hydro wants to build three power plants, one after the other, to churn out elecricity that can be sold to American buyers for a profit until its needed in Manitoba. But the profit can only be assured by signing contracts on a fixed price. The alternative is waiting until local demand is strong enough to warrant each new power project. As each power plant comes into service, any surplus electricity can be sold on the spot market (where prices are lower than firm sales.)

"MH also advised that it had, earlier, considered an alternative approach beyond that of the “no build” option, one relying on the construction and use of Combined Cycle Combustion Turbine (CCCT) thermal generation (refer to MH’s 2008/09 and 2009/10 Alternative Development Sequences), MH did not, in the end, consider employing CCCT generation as a means to defer new hydro generation, and possibly transmission, as is now proposed for in its capital development plan."

Translation: Hydro rejected a third option---to build a natural gas powered plant that would postpone the need for expensive new power plants and Bipole III.

"The deferral of new hydro-electric generation in favour of the diversification of supply through the construction of CCCT generation would represent an approach that may not require additional firm export contracts."

Translation: A gas plant would mean Manitoba Hydro won't get stuck with long-term contracts. The PUB found elsewhere that construction costs are exploding while power prices are sliding and Manitoba Hydro may find itself delivering power at subsidized prices by the time all the megaprojects are finished. And that means higher rates for Manitoba customers who will get stuck with the construction costs; all the pain and none of the gain.

"Overall, the Board does not accept MH’s export revenue forecasts to-date as representing a realistic basis for determining the economic viability of MH’s proposed new major generation and transmission facilities, to be supported by export sales in advance of domestic load requirements."

Translation: We don't trust Hydro.

"In particular, the Board finds it troubling that MH has not explored in any depth natural gas (CCCT) thermal generation supply alternatives to the new major hydraulic generation and transmission projects now planned for by MH."

"With the considerable escalation of project costs for Keeyask G.S., Conawapa G.S. and Bipole III, the Board would prefer MH justify (on a Net Present Value basis) the need for and alternatives to each of these three projects."

Translation: Don't believe Hydro when it says there's no choice but to plow ahead.

"With respect to alternate capital development scenarios (models providing forecasts of financial results out twenty years) not provided by MH, one scenario among others that the Board wants to be modelled involves the deferral (potentially partial, and potentially to represent a “staggering” of elements of MH’s current capital development plan) of the Corporation’s current major capital development plan along with the modelling of the expected consequences of the construction of a combined cycle natural gas generation plant in southern Manitoba."

Recognizing the defiant attitude that Manitoba Hydro has to the PUB and its orders, the board recommended putting some muscle into the review of Hydro's high-cost plans.

"Accordingly, the Board strongly believes a thorough ‘Needs For and Alternative To’ (NFAAT) process, presided over by a quasi judicial panel with independent adjudicative authority and evidence based process should address these issues far in advance of MH making final commitments to enter into its proposed export contracts, and as soon as possible to avoid further massive new investments in MH’s preferred development plan ahead of a thorough NFAAT proceeding."

"That proceeding should examine not only MH’s preferred development plans, but also consider alternative development scenarios including the potential construction of a combined cycle natural gas generation plant, that to diversify supply, reduce drought risk and, potentially defer Keeyask, if not Bipole III."

Translation: If you build a gas plant you can save yourself almost $10 billion in up front expense by not building the $5.6 billion Keeyask generating station and the $3.9 billion Bipole III line.

The PUB crunched the numbers (don't worry, we won't bore you with them) and determined the size of a gas plant we would need in a worst case scenario.

Manitoba Hydro says it needs to build Bipole III to guarantee reliability of power delivery from the plants in the north to customers in the south in the event that weather knocks out the existing transmission system.

The PUB says a gas plant, likely to be in Brandon, could cover the risk very well.

"... to completely meet Manitoba’s peak domestic loads in the winter, if Bipole III were not available Manitoba would need a gas plant having a capacity of approximately 1500 MW."

The cost? The PUB spitballs it at a million dollars a megawatt, or roughly $1.5 billion. Which, the PUB pointed out, would leave plenty from the $3.9 billion saved on Bipole III to buy natural gas to run the Brandon plant.

Its important to remember this ruling came out of a lengthy hearing into the risk management of Manitoba Hydro, a hearing sparked in part as a result of the huge losses Hydro suffered from a drought in 2003-4.

The PUB has a lot to say about Hydro's drought plans, and little of it was complimentary.

"The Board is aware that ICF/KPMG/Independent Experts reports alluded to the ability to gain domestic rate increases (if approved by the Board) as a risk mitigation factor. This is not inconsistent with what happened after both 2003/04 drought and the 2006/07 mini-drought, where rate increases were provided to MH; increases that have provided ongoing revenues that, as a present value, has provided well in excess of the specific revenue shortfalls experienced. Ratepayers have not seen any subsequent rate relief."

Translation: We boosted rates after two droughts hit Hydro's finances hard, but now that they made up their losses and are flush again, ratepayers aren't seeing any relief. Why's that?

"... annual post-mortems (back-testing of decisions) should be normal practice. (The Board, in its 2004 GRA Order directed MH to provide such a post-mortem of its actions through the drought of 2003/04, that report was never filed.)"

Translation: What's Hydro hiding?

"In a response to an interrogatory submitted by the Board, MH responded that it would file a written Drought Preparedness Plan by April 1, 2011; MH did not."

"In cross-examination, MH suggested that a written plan was not needed as MH reacts “everyday” on the basis that a drought could be starting, and it would be difficult to reduce all of MH’s experiences into a written plan, when MH has to plan given an infinite number of variables."

"MH was disingenuous in its response to the Board’s interrogatory and it remains to be seen if the Corporation will follow through on its written evidence and oral testimony by a Vice-President. The Board recommends MH act to meet the urgent need for such a document."

The single bright note for Manitoba Hydro came in what the PUB concluded about the most alarming allegations of the Hydro consultant known as the Hydro Whistleblower. Coming at the very end of the ruling, it reads:

Concluding Note
"On a positive note, and recognizing that the in-depth risk assessment explored in this hearing (limited by MH’s refusal to provide its export contracts, fully updated 20-year financial forecasts and alternative development scenarios, as requested by the Board) was partially stimulated by the dire predictions of bankruptcy and blackouts by NYC, the Board is satisfied by the unanimous evidence of all the experts heard from that such dire predictions are without merit."

How they reached that conclusion is a total mystery, given as how the 111-pages are peppered with confirmation of the Whistleblower's observations and criticisms of Hydro, as well as the public acknowledgements by Hydro's hired consultants ICF and KPMG that they DID NOT examine her report or the issues she raised with Manitoba Hydro or the provincial Ombudsman's office when filing a whistleblower complaint.