Blogs Raise a Little Hell

According to the province’s conflict of interest law, no cabinet minister or senior civil servant is allowed to enter into a contract with — or receive a benefit from — government for a period of one year after leaving office.

The provision is supposed to create a buffer zone between the time politicians or senior civil servants leave office and when they can get back on the taxpayer-funded gravy train.

The only problem is there’s a big “if” in this legislation. “If” cabinet decides to override the act, it can. In other words, with the blessing of Premier Greg Selinger and his cabinet, government or any Crown organization can enter into contracts with whomever they please whenever they want.

And they just did. Cabinet is allowing the Public Utilities Board to enter into a contract with former PUB chairman Graham Lane who just “retired” March 31.

They passed the order-in-council May 9. Lane was considered to be a senior civil servant under the act. But he’s getting a pass.

You see, under Sec. 19.1(1) of the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Conflict of Interest Act, it says that “except with the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council (that’s a fancy word for cabinet), no minister or senior public servant shall, for a period of one year following the date on which the minister or senior public servant leaves office, enter into a contract with, or accept a benefit from, the government or a Crown agency.”

And since the Lieutenant Governor in Council has approved this deal, Lane gets to enter into a contract as a consultant with the PUB, even though he just retired less than two months ago.

So he gets to collect his pension and draw more money from taxpayers through the PUB as a consultant.

We don’t know how much he’ll be paid because the order-in-council simply gives the PUB the authority to enter into a contract with him and to set the “terms and conditions of the consulting services to be provided.”

All we know is he’ll be working for the new board chairman.

Isn’t it nice when the law says cabinet can just wave a magic wand whenever it wants, bypass the province’s conflict of interest rules and enter into contracts with whomever they please whenever it suits them?

Kind of makes the act not worth the paper it’s written on.

MPI staff who supposedly worked above and beyond the call of duty over the past year got free Winnipeg Jets tickets, paid for by motorists through their insurance premiums.
That’s according to the results of a freedom of information request submitted by the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation released Wednesday.
My question is, why on earth should anyone at MPI get free Jets tickets paid for by us just for doing their jobs?
This is not the private sector. MPI is a state-owned monopoly that forces us by law to purchase our car insurance through them — whether we like their product or their lack of consumer choice or not.
Nobody at MPI should be getting any bonuses for processing forced insurance premiums on Manitobans.

MPI insurance premiums should be used for insurance claims for crashes like this one, not for staff bonuses.

According to the FIPPA response, MPI paid $199,548 to True North Sports and Entertainment for 170 pairs of Jets tickets and to advertise road safety messages at MTS Centre during NHL games.

Some of the tickets — 86 pairs — were given to charity. I’m not sure MPI has a mandate to use our car insurance premiums for charitable donations. But we’ll leave that off the table for now.

Four pairs of tickets were given to MPI bigwigs.

And 80 pairs of tickets were earmarked for MPI staff who “demonstrate commitment and dedication to their work by going the ‘extra mile,’” — among other basic job requirements. What a scam.

If a private sector company wants to purchase tickets through whatever marketing or promotional deals it has with sporting teams and gives tickets to their staff for whatever reason, that’s nobody’s business.
You don’t have to buy their product if you don’t want to.
But Manitobans are forced to buy automobile insurance through MPI and any net revenues derived from that should be used to lower insurance premiums, not give bonuses to MPI staff for doing their jobs.
This is ludicrous.

Meanwhile, Manitoba Lotteries Corp. has also been snared in the ticketgate scandal. According to a separate CTF FIPPA response, MLC received tickets as part of a similar advertising deal. They also used some tickets for senior executives, for Gambling Minister Andrew Swan (who supposedly has since paid for those tickets) and for staff awards. Again, was is a Crown corporation doing rewarding staff with public money for doing their jobs? Any net revenues from gambling proceeds are supposed to be  transfered to the provincial government’s general revenues for spending in areas like health care, education and infrastructure?

It’s wrong.

Manitoba’s Opposition Tories should lodge an official complaint with the province’s Civil Service Commission into how a senior bureaucrat in Immigration and Multiculturalism helped organize a political rally at the Manitoba Legislature last month.
Assistant Deputy Minister Ben Rempel sent an e-mail in late April to undisclosed service agencies who receive funding from the government — including Red River College — and encouraged them to skip work and class to attend a political rally inside the legislature to protest federal changes to an immigration service program.
“I would like service agencies especially, to feel free to release staff and clients to attend tomorrow’s session in the gallery of the Legislature, if they choose,” Rempel wrote in an April 18 e-mail.
The rally was presented to the news media as a grass-roots event organized independent of government. In fact, it was organized by Rempel and NDP political staff, who were seen in the legislature directing protesters where to go in the building.
Senior civil servants in the provincial government are mandated to uphold a high level of political neutrality while discharging their duties as non-political staff. They are supposed to do so within a code of conduct under the Civil Service Act.
The Civil Service Commission is charged with, among other things, investigating breaches of that code of conduct to ensure the civil service is not being used as a partisan instrument for any government.
Manitobans have a right to know whether anyone from cabinet, including the premier’s office, or political staff directed Rempel to organize the event. So far, NDP cabinet ministers have refused to answer any questions on the matter when asked directly by opposition members.
This should be investigated

The Government of Manitoba’s debt continues to grow in leaps and bounds after the NDP tabled its fourth straight deficit budget Tuesday.
And as percentage of the economy, Manitoba’s debt is starting to become a real problem.
Debt went up in almost every category in the budget, including the overall debt which now stands at a staggering $27.6 billion. That’s up from $18 billion in 2007 and it’s been climbing every year.
Capital investment debt — money the province borrows for capital projects like the new Bombers football stadium — is growing at the fastest pace. It now stands at $3.75 billion. That’s more than triple what it was in 2007 when it was just over $1 billion.
And that money will have to be repaid one day.
Total summary borrowings, guarantees and obligations — which excludes Manitoba Hydro debt — is also up. It’s pegged at $20.7 billion, up from $19.6 billion last year. It was $14.9 billion just four years ago.
Borrowing for general government programs has jumped $1.5 billion since 2007 when it was $6.5 billion. It’s now just over $8 billion. That’s money the government borrows to help pay for everyday operations, including funding for bureaucracies.
The summary net debt, which includes assets such as the pension fund and other financial assets, stood at $16.3 billion. That’s way up from last year when it was $14.8 billion. Summary net debt was $10.5 billion in 2007.
So no matter what category of debt you look at, it’s all up — way up.
The NDP says the province can afford it because as a percentage of a growing economy, it’s manageable.
But here’s the worst part. As a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, Manitoba’s debt has been growing steadily over the past five years.
Net debt as a percentage of GDP is up for the fifth year in a row. It now stands at 27.4%, up from 21.6% in 2007.
At some point, this government is going to have to do something about it’s out-of-control propensity to borrow.
This has to stop.

The good news is there are new laws on the way under the Harper government’s omnibus crime bill that will help hold young punks who break the law more accountable for their actions.
The bad news is I don’t see anything in the changes that would have much — if any — effect on criminals like the then-14-year-old who smashed a stolen SUV into cabbie Antonio Lanzellotti in 2008, killing him.
There are new provisions in the act that would require the court to consider options such as adult sentences in certain cases, especially for prescribed violent crimes and for patterns of offending behaviour. But they’re not mandatory.
The court will also, under the changes, have to consider the sentencing principles of deterrence and denunciation, which is good. That will likely, in some cases, turn what may have been non-jail sentences into incarceratory ones.
And in some cases the courts will have to consider lifting publication bans on the names of some young offenders, although they will never be obligated to.
I don’t see anything in the changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, though, that would have had any material impact on offenders like the one who killed Lanzellotti. In that case, the Crown asked for an adult sentence, but the court refused. I suppose one could argue that with the new deterrence and denunciation principles added to the act, a judge may agree to an adult sentence more readily if the court has to consider those principles.
But it still leaves the decision in the hands of the judge and it’s not a slam dunk by any means.
The offender in the Lanzellotti case already got the highest sentence allowable under the YCJA for the crime he committed — three years for criminal negligence cause death. So the deterrence and denunciation principles would have had no impact there.
Beyond that, there are a few other changes to pre-sentence custody rules and several other non-related amendments. But there’s nothing I can see in the new YCJA provisions that would have made any real difference in this offender’s sentence.
I stand to be corrected. But from where I sit, I don’t see any.
Which is exactly why we need a major overhaul of this act.