Winnipeggers right to be angry about lack of accountability at city hall

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/03/2016 (3505 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s an old Kids In The Hall sketch where a grumpy boss goes on a rampage, looking for someone to take responsibility for the rain that’s ruined his company baseball game.

“Who’s to blame?!” he mutters menacingly as he careens from cubicle to cubicle, forcing terrified employees to point elsewhere when he approaches.

Eventually, the crazed bossman enters a stairwell, where he encounters a janitor. “You! Are! Fired!” the boss announces. The maintenance worker drops his mop.

The boss then walks outside, where the sun emerges from behind the clouds. Angelic music plays, sending a message that humans are only satisfied when someone takes the fall.

In recent years, Winnipeggers who’ve paid attention to city hall have probably felt like that crazy boss, looking for someone, anyone to blame for our municipal malaise.

Over the past four years, we’ve learned the city broke up a contract to build four new fire-paramedic stations in a manner that allowed the award to Shindico Realty to avoid council scrutiny. We learned one of those stations was built on Shindico’s land, subject to a since-cancelled three-for-one land swap that also wasn’t disclosed to council.

We learned the city provided one potential Canad Inns Stadium buyer with site plans and an expression-of-interest document before it started entertaining options for the land. We learned city staff recommended the sale of downtown surface lot Parcel Four for $5.9 million without telling council the land was valued at $10 million.

We learned the Parker land swap was conducted as a “rush job,” with no appraisals of the private and public land involved or any competitive tendering of the city land.

We learned the Canada Post complex was purchased without an appraisal in order to build a new police headquarters — and that council wasn’t told it would cost roughly the same amount of cash to expand and renovate the existing Public Safety Building.

We learned the mostly vacant tower portion of the Canada Post complex and the soon-to-be-vacant PSB, both owned by the city, are in desperate need of tenants and/or renovations while the city spends millions leasing downtown offices in privately owned buildings.

We learned of design changes and project-management issues on the police-headquarters project that took the project cost from $135 million to $214 million. We learned Caspian Construction, the primary contractor on the police-HQ job, is under RCMP investigation for allegations of fraud and forgery related to the project. We learned the Winnipeg Police Service chose not to interview one of two whistleblowers that came forward with these allegations.

We learned Caspian wrote personal cheques to former mayor Sam Katz in return for hockey and concert tickets. We learned Katz paid cash to buy a US$1-million Arizona home from the sister-in-law of a Shindico official.

These revelations have left Winnipeggers cynical about municipal politics and skeptical of the city’s ability to do anything in the public interest. They’ve also left some of us looking for someone to blame.

You could say former mayor Katz has borne the brunt of public scorn. The once immensely popular mayor didn’t run for re-election in 2014, the same year audits of the police-headquarters project and major city real estate transactions were completed.

You could also say former Winnipeg chief administrative officer Phil Sheegl has also endured his share of criticism. He left the city in 2013, shortly before the release of a fire-paramedic station audit that identified him as being somewhat in charge of the project.

You could even say former Winnipeg acting CAO Deepak Joshi served as a scapegoat, too. He left the city in 2015 after running afoul of Mayor Brian Bowman.

But the reality is, no city official — elected or appointed, still with the city or departed — has ever been named responsible for any of the scandals that transpired at the City of Winnipeg. No official has ever been disciplined on record. Certainly, no one has been fired.

Given the lack of accountability, how can the city move forward? New CAO Doug McNeil says under his leadership, city staff know how to do the right thing. That presumably includes some of the same officials who couldn’t prevent the problems that took place under the previous administration.

Bowman, meanwhile, urges Winnipeggers to wait for the conclusion of the RCMP investigation. That investigation, however, appears to have a laser-like focus on the fraud and forgery allegations related to the police HQ.

Bowman also said he’s open to a judicial inquiry if all the answers don’t emerge. That means it will be up to the province to decide whether Winnipeg will ever get the closure it needs.

With a provincial election a month away, Premier Greg Selinger isn’t calling an inquiry. He also won’t be making that call afterward, if NDP polling numbers hold.

Brian Pallister, the premier-in-waiting, ultimately may have to decide whether Winnipeg gets to answer the question of “who’s to blame.” Just don’t expect sun and angelic music if it happens.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca