I’m sure some real journalist on the local scene has found this out and reported on it already but ever since filing my copy for the new issue on Tuesday morning the only news I’ve looked at is week-old stuff from Comic-Con… you know, to catch up.

Holy crap, that Superman-Batman movie announcement? That’s some stupid fucking bullshit, that is.

Anyway, remember the reports that came out on Monday about robo-calls in the lead up to the special council meeting? Well, I just spoke with Deb McEwen¹, manager of communications for the City of Regina, and she confirmed that it was her department that conducted the automatic polling last weekend about the waste water plant, the petition and the P3. Here’s what she told me…

In my role in providing communications advice to council I do polling from time to time. I have not yet had an opportunity to brief [council] on that poll — on it’s results — and frankly at this point in time I’m not sure when that might happen, but I wouldn’t be prepared to release that information until I’ve had the opportunity to brief council.

McEwen says that the city has worked with a variety of polling firms in the past but for the first time they did a Request For Proposals for a research firm of record and awarded that contract last Friday. But, because that contract hadn’t been finalized at the time when they decided they needed to do a poll on the waste water project, they sole-sourced last weekend’s poll to a Saskatoon-based firm called Saskatchewan Direct Marketing Service.

Like an idiot, I didn’t ask who they’d awarded the research contract to on Friday. But I’m sure that’ll turn up in a report to council at some point.

So there you have it. Mystery solved. Have to say I’m a little disappointed. I was really hoping it’d turn out the Grey Water Illuminati was behind this. But alas, the solution was mundane as usual.

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FOOTNOTE
¹ I also didn’t ask her how she spells her last name and originally spelled it MacKeown. Fortunately commenter Jayne, who I’m taking at her word, came to the rescue to let me know it’s “McEwen”. I updated the post with the correct spelling.