A wide-ranging chat with Sam Katz, breaking news about the Avion shuttle vs. Unicity Taxi, ripping the Free Press again, crime, sports and entertainment news made for a full week.
Monday: Over the weekend a former Winnipeg police officer was apprehended with a familiar name from past headlines, and the city was buzzing with the news. Ken Houston had retired from the force three years ago and is owner of Level One restaurant on Corydon Avenue. When police boxed in his truck in a nearby back lane, they found Houston in the company of Hell's Angels member Billy Bowden, a 9 mm. gun and a small amount of Ecstacy. Houston is the third cop in recent years to be linked to outlaw motorcycle gangs.
Emlwood MLA Jim Maloway launched a media blitz urging citizens to call Mayor Katz and prevent the closure of Kelvin CC. Maloway had been conspicuously silent in the legislature on this and every other issue for years, but suddenly decided that a political campaign was a good way to use his constituency budget. In the same vein, on Saturday Gordon Sinclair Jr. buried the mention of his mistake - claiming that Elmwood CC was on the chopping block - but used his Free Press column to continue to assail the Mayor and Councillors. Our call to Editor Bob Cox to clarify how the paper reviews columns for accuracy or publishes corrections went unreturned.
Meanwhile readers continue to flee the paper by the thousands.
Oddly the paper published a letter to the editor in full support of the Blue Bomber proposal to build a roofed stadium at the Red River Ex site - proving that even their own readers don't pay attention to the Free Press. The paper had twice reported that existing agreements with True North and the MTS Centre precluded any government funding of a competing facility, but that didn't stop them from running an opinion opposed to the David Asper proposal.
With the Colts and Bears advancing to the Super Bowl the predictions rolled in, with Frank the Italian Barber taking the Colts by 10. Our caller last week who pretty much predicted the Colts and Bears margins of victory correctly said Colts by 6. Our business expert and NFL junkie, Shaun Myall of Victoria BC, called in and said Colts by 6. So in two weeks we will reconvene our football panel and if Chicago ekes out a win, a lot of crow will be consumed on the air.
Tuesday: Mayor Sam Katz was on the phoen and he took on the issues head on.
Two years ago there was a unanimous vote by Council to adopt the PUFS report which said Bronx Park was to expand and Kelvin to close. The mayor said that area councillor Lillian Thomas voted to close Kelvin and that the recent PR campaign by her and NDP MLA Maloway meant "they have a different agenda" and that he was convinced a provincial election was in the offing. Katz pointed out that when the playground equipment was removed last summer he personally ensured a swing set was delivered for families to enjoy.
He said that the Crimestat program would start in about 10 days and any new chief of police would be inheriting a functioning system. Crime was his top priority and Katz made the statement that some other city could assume our title as "murder capital of Canada" as he was determined to do something about it.
On the Avion proposal, he clarified that the vote being held tomorrow was not to approve of the proposal but only to refer it to the Public Utilities Board and that public hearings should be held into the matter to allow all the facts to come out. On the stadium feasibility study he expressed the view "there was no meat" to the proposal for the Ex site. Finally he reiterated his invitation for a developer to bring forward a waterpark proposal - which he would build himself if he were not in public life. Waterpark anyone?
As Mayor Katz got off the phone, we got exclusive news that the taxi companies had decided to file a legal challenge to the Avion proposal by asking the courts to rule on whether the Taxicb Board was wrong to have dumped the issue on the city by claiming they did not regulate a shuttle service proposal that was clearly about "a motor vehicle transporting passengers for compensation."
Turning our attention to the international stage, we broke more news by quoting from reports that the former Prime Minister of Spain, as well as Senator John Edwards and others, were endorsing a movement to bring Israel into NATO to create a MAD scenerio with Iran. This has many implications for Canada as NATO is a mutual defence pact.
Lastly we wondered why CTV's website had edited the interview of a Hamas official threatening Canada.
When Peter McKay refused to meet with Hamas while on his Middle East tour for the government, the offended Palestinian foreign minister Mahmoud Zahar said Canadians had to remove our "extremist" government and that "you cannot create an enemy without a price".
The outright and blatant threat to Canada was in the original story by the Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070122.whamas22/BNStory/International/
but CTV hid it from Canadians, and none of the local media outlets bothered to let the public know about this outrageous threat. With Canada a target of Islamofascists the idea of Israel joining NATO may well be a key to enhancing our future security.
Wednesday: Kelly Dehn brought listeners all the details Houston/Bowden bust, and reviewed the details of the search warrants in the Jubilee shooting case. Police now say that a bullet shot off three fingers of the suspect's left hand but ricocheted and had wounded Cst. Cull in the leg. There was still no confirmation of the report we had found that a second cop was also wounded by friendy fire, but Kelly said he'd look into it.
When discussing Crimestat Kelly made a very good point, as illustrated by the first murder this year on Alexander, that when there is alcohol and emotions involved, no system can predict homicides. So while some kinds of crime such as break-ins may be solved faster, there is no likelihood our murder rate will decrease.
With city hall running late on the vote about Avion, we hopped all over the one result we did have, that the vote to wind-down Kelvin CC was passed by an 11-4 margin.
Former US president JimmyCarter was on the defensive at an appearance at Brandies University, claiming he hurt by claims he was an anti-Semite. Blaming a "mistake" in one single sentence in his book and did not mean to say that Palestinians should continue attacks on Israel until their politcal demands were met. Carter did not, however, repudiate his equating the Israeli government practices with the apartheid of the former South African regime.
Thursday: Joan Wilson of Unicity Taxi gave our audience her version of the 9-6 vote at Council to pass the Avion shuttle service proposal to PUB.
She reiterated that the majority of drivers and owners were visible minorites from immigrant communities who had $200,000 investments in the service industry and that no complaints about airport service were on record with the Taxicab Board. Wilson said that the cabbies had no faith in the PUB process as the Airport Authority Board was stacked with influential political types, and that is why they were going to ask the courts to review the TCB conduct of the Avion application.
The vote itself was weird as Councillor Swandel, who opposed it at EPC, voted for it; Councillor Clement, who said that his Public Works committee made a mistake passing it to EPC without a recommendation and they should have opposed the proposal, turned around and voted for it; while Councillors Wyatt switched sides from his EPC position in favour, and joined Pagktakan, Thomas, Gerbasi, Smith and Lazarenko as opposed.
Now consider this- why would council vote against Lazerenko, when he is the city rep to the Taxicab Board and he stated that the Cab Board had abrogated their responsibility?
Oh ya, cause the city lawyers told them to. Nice display of leadership.
Two callers hit the lines, both saying that something was fishy about the Airport Authority concealing their involvement of the Avion proposal as ultimate owner of the service. One caller noted that Avion had not repeated their statement about customers being scared to take taxis, suggesting that it reflected a prejudice which may be the real reason why the shuttle service was being proposed. That and the goal of keeping every possible dollar on the airport property and not circulated by hardworking cabbies to other small businesses in our community.
Comments by NHL czar Gary Bettman during the All Star game revived speculation that Winnipeg could support an NHL team, with so many franchises in the south drawing flies. Of course we discussed this before New Years' with Darren Ford but it was nice to see MSM outlets playing catch-up to our stories.
Dee Hooker of Haven Productions made his debut on our show, showing his expertise of Winnipeg music history by reminding listeners of the great hits and performers such as Ralph James, Georges Belanger and Glen Willows, who made up the legendary 80's rock band Harlequin.
Friday: The Winnipeg Free Press continued their assault on cabbies with a full page editorial insisting the industry be deregulated.
The basis of the piece, which cited no supporting data or studies, was that it was supposedly difficult to hail a cab downtown, and that service was not instant. Surely more cabs setting their own fares was the answer.
We took the time to explain to listeners, that the reason cabs didn't cruise for street hails was that
A) for years, the practice had been discouraged by the provincially appointed Taxicab Board, and
B) going back to Mayors Bill Norrie and Sue Thompson, hell would freeze over before the civic administration would surrender a single metered parking spot to establish taxi stands where pedestrians could expect cabs to park and wait for fares.
As for letting fares be arbitrary, we gave the example where two girls leave a nightclub, aiming towards one cab., only to have another pull up declaring - 'hey take me, 5 bucks flat rate'. The mayhem and choas that would ensue when the law of the jungle is the order of business, explains why metered fares are the norm.
As for the Free Press gallantly worrying about people having to wait for a cab, amazing isn't it how the Free Press expects the cabs to be instantly available, when their own newspaper frequently misses morning delivery deadlines because their printing presses break down and aren't maintained? Pot-kettle-black.
But as we have leasned, the Free Press never lets facts get in the way of a good story. It's a surprise they didn't find a way to blame Sam Katz for it all.
The weekend wrap-up of theSundance Film festival gave us a chance to remind listeners of the filmed-in-Manitoba flick The Good Life which was well-reviewed, and tell our own story about attending the festival starting in 2000 before the tech bubble burst, and getting dragged off by Rachel Hunter to join her party at Harry O's. The free lunch from Dwight Yoakam's producer, who actually wanted Hunter's number but said the invite was really because his grandfather was a Rabbi in Winnipeg in the 40's, was another example of the serendipity that happens when us Canucks get to mingle with the movers and shakers of Hollywood on their winter holiday at Redford's get-together.
To end the week Shaun Myall quickly crunched the numbers for attendance, corporate sponsorship revenue and salary cap figues to illustrate how marginal the profitability of an NHL team in Winnipeg would be. Ol' Dirty Money himself, also hinted that a major announcement was forthcoming about a media deal out of Victoria which would be of interest to our listeners.
