Apology overdue to former city councillor

Opinion

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This article was published 18/01/2018 (2809 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In an interview that was tone deaf, appallingly condescending and outrageously evasive, the leader of Winnipeg’s firefighting union proved just how low he could go.

On Saturday, Alex Forrest was patronizing in his response to former mayoral candidate and city councillor Paula Havixbeck, who said in an interview last week that she feels, after all these years, she deserves an apology.

You see, Havixbeck was the proverbial canary in the coal mine in 2014, sounding the alarm during the civic election campaign at a time when Winnipeggers were sick and tired of a city hall that was looking more and more like an Old Boys club with friends being given membership privileges that no one else received.

She called the practice of city hall paying the salaries of union leaders while they represented city staff a conflict of interest and suggested that, “This arrangement does not pass the transparency test for the citizens of Winnipeg.”

In a news release, Havixbeck stated, “I would have never imagined our city was paying over half a million dollars every year for city staff to essentially negotiate with the city.”

Mike Davidson, then president of CUPE Local 500, representing the majority of civic employees, said Havixbeck had it wrong, and that it’s a long-standing practice for the city to pay the union presidents and then for the respective unions to reimburse the city.

Except, however, it looks like Havixbeck didn’t get it wrong at all when it came to Forrest and the United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg. Forrest claimed Havixbeck’s complaint was just sour grapes because his union was backing Judy Wasylycia-Leis in the mayoral race. But it wasn’t just sour grapes.

The fact of the matter is the City of Winnipeg actually did pay for the UFFW president’s salary, something Forrest finally admitted and then whined about on Tuesday, saying he’s the worst-paid union leader in all of Canada and that somehow we’re getting a good value for our dollar.

Havixbeck said it was happening in 2014. She may have gotten it wrong by saying all the unions, but she certainly got it right for one — the UFFW.

On Saturday, Forrest responded in a dismissive fashion, with a text message to the Free Press that stated, “I will say I understand why Paula would want to get on board with this story as a way to get her back to some level of political relevance just months before the election. As the last time we saw Paula she received less than one per cent of the vote in the 2014 mayor race.

“With Paula’s injection into this issue, it shows again how these attacks upon the firefighters of Winnipeg are politically motivated.”

On Tuesday, Forrest finally admitted that Havixbeck was telling the truth.

He is, in fact, being paid twice — getting two paycheques for his one job as self-styled top dog of the Winnipeg fire department, an arrangement unlike any other fire department in Canada. But he never apologized. Not to her. Not to anyone.

Worse yet, his actions against a former city councillor and mayoral candidate who was asking all the right questions in 2014 are disgraceful.

To put it down to politics is even more laughable, given that politics seems to be Forrest’s raison d’etre.

Don’t forget the UFFW has backed many political candidates, and there were rumours that in the 2015 leadership race between then-premier Greg Selinger and dissident cabinet minister Theresa Oswald, the union switched its backing to Selinger in a bid to ensure the continued strength of the firefighters union. As taxpayers, we should be asking some hard questions about what that means.

But if we’re going to point fingers at Forrest, we also need to ask hard questions of Mayor Brian Bowman and the civic administration, because these last few weeks have been a circus. It certainly doesn’t engender a great deal of confidence in city hall.

It’s been almost like two weeks of watching a Three Stooges movie, as bureaucrats tell us they can’t find contracts, don’t know if there were contracts, think they were breaking contracts, and then discovered that no, wait, it was all laid out in the contract after all.

As the Free Press learned Tuesday, the city’s paying of Forrest’s salary is stipulated in Article 20 of the collective agreement(s). It remains unclear why the city officials did not mention prior to Tuesday that paying Forrest’s salary for 17 years had been agreed to in collective bargaining. Perhaps they didn’t know; perhaps they just didn’t think it was anyone’s business.

Bowman should remember this: in 2014, voters in Winnipeg were angry at what was happening at city hall and voted for change. The vote for Bowman as mayor was very much a vote for renewal in a city tired of police investigations into questionable real estate dealings and what began to feel like daily updates regarding scandals at city hall.

In 2018, Winnipeg seems to be no further ahead. There’s still a sense that corners are being cut; that the mayor can’t be trusted to ensure that rules are followed; that there is no one in administration who will give a straight answer to a direct question, especially if it will make them look bad. Moe, Larry and Curly are geniuses compared to what we’re seeing here.

Winnipeg is a big city. It deserves to have real leadership.

Forrest’s actions aren’t indicative of that. And neither are Bowman’s.

Shannon Sampert is the director of EvidenceNetwork.ca and an associate professor of political science at the University of Winnipeg.

s.sampert@uwinnipeg.caTwitter:@paulysigh