Poop-flinging shenanigans reign at Henry Baker Hall

City Hall | Paul Dechene

It’s the tail end of May and “Rhymes With”-gate still hasn’t disappeared.

It’s made us the butt of a joke of our own making everywhere from the BBC to Bill Maher. For the first time, my mom is interested in my work.

Thanks for that, Experience Regina.

I guess technically you’re Tourism Regina again as, in mid-April, REAL’s board of directors reversed the rebrand and went back to the old name.

REAL followed that up by hiring a third-party consultant to conduct a full review of the failed rebrand. That work is quietly underway and a public report on how we got here is expected sometime in June.

Two months of a confidential investigation process might have given the Experience Regina stink a chance to fade, but for some crackerjack reporting by CBC’s Alexander Quon that has revealed Experience Regina’s racy turn went deeper than just a t-shirt company turning that old “city that rhymes with fun” joke into a slogan on a hoodie.

Sex, it seems, was always the root of their marketing strategy.

Quon filed an access to information request that uncovered a confidential marketing slideshow showing that Experience Regina’s vision was just three words long: “Make Regina sexy”. And if it hadn’t been forced to reverse course due to public pressure, it would have soon launched a follow up slogan: “Do It In Regina.”

Sigh.

How does the slideshow rationalize this? By literally telling the reader not to worry: “Don’t worry, it’s meant to be cheeky. This campaign is to own who we are (the city that rhymes with fun), showcase what Regina can offer, and have a fun motto that engages locals and visitors.” [Emphasis mine.]

It’s getting more difficult to claim Experience Regina’s other slogan, ““Show us your Regina!”, was intended to be a harmless, playful double entendre when their own marketing material is openly referencing “doing it” in what Regina rhymes with.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of tourism, Volleyball Canada’s Youth Nationals were held in Regina from May 19 to 21. It was a huge event. According to REAL CEO and head of Experience/Tourism Regina, Tim Reid, it attracted more visitors and hotel guests to our city than the Grey Cup.1If Experience Regina had been allowed to carry on business as usual, then Volleyball Canada’s teen girl athletes would have been one of the first groups of visitors to our city to be greeted by our fun pun on “do it in vagina!”

I’m certain they would have found that very engaging!

Meanwhile: You Were Saying Something About Integrity?

Then there’s that other massive council controversy. The one where last June, council voted unanimously to add a line item to the budget to fund a program to end homelessness. But when the budget came out, that line item had been left out so Councillor Dan LeBlanc represented Councillor Andrew Stevens and local activist Florence Stratton in a court action to compel the new city manager to follow the council vote and include the line item.

The judge ruled against LeBlanc’s action.

The budget passed without significant new funding for a plan to end homelessness.

That other controversy.

Well, just when council was superficially starting to look like it was healing a wound or two and getting back to business as usual, it turns out that in the background, two Regina residents had lodged complaints with the integrity commissioner against LeBlanc and Stevens saying they violated the city’s ethics bylaw by treating the new city manager poorly and by making city council look dysfunctional.

The integrity commissioner ruled elements of the complaint had merit and recommended LeBlanc and Stevens formally apologize to city manager Niki Anderson.2

At a May 10 meeting, council considered the recommendation. The meeting was long and difficult to summarize but suffice it to say LeBlanc and Stevens are unrepentant about their court action. The city manager circumvented the will of council they said, and as a result, whether or not to invest more deeply in solving homelessness didn’t even get discussed at budget time.

The city manager countered that the budget she put forward was responsible and represented the (updated) will of council. She also noted that it was very difficult to start a job while having to defend herself in court and she couldn’t see online claims (some from LeBlanc) that she was destroying Regina’s democracy as anything but a personal attack.

The mayor moved discussion of the matter to a private session of executive committee.

We can expect to find out if council will compel LeBlanc and Stevens to apologize or invoke some other sanction against them at a council meeting in June.

The New Normal Is Not Normal

After a March 22 council meeting, back when Experience Regina had just graduated from local social media pummeling to a full-blown international laughingstock, Mayor Sandra Masters took questions from media and I had to wonder about how the last two years have been, to put it mildly, controversy rich. Specifically, I asked if she had an explanation for what was going on.

“I think that what you see is not unique to the City of Regina, from polarization within communities, from — if everyone deleted a Twitter account, it’s a world I wonder what that would look like,” replied Masters.

“Honestly, I’ve talked to federal politicians about this, I’ve talked to provincial politicians about this and it seems to be there’s a binary that exists. It’s either good or it’s bad. And if you’re bad then you’re evil and if you’re evil then you’re evil in your totality as opposed to actually just being able to look at an issue and say, I really want this, I’ll compromise on this, or, shoot, I didn’t get what I wanted type of principle. I think there’s a lot of social issues out there. I honestly think that being isolated from one another, being behind screens for a couple years is detrimental to social connection and relationships. Just the ability to relate, I think we’ve been put in a once-in-a-century situation, and I think you’re kind of seeing a little bit of the repercussions.”

I can’t disagree with that. Nerves are raw. Polarization is a thing.

But if Masters’ point is that Twitter and psychological fallout from COVID is interfering with the work of governments, I’m not buying it.

What we’ve seen over the last two years — from the oil and gas sponsorship motion to the conversion therapy ban debate to the (in)action on homelessness budget item to the Experience Regina embarrassment, etc., etc. — is that this council is at least as polarized and pandemic traumatized as the general public.

During that meeting about the integrity complaint, LeBlanc and Stevens floated the idea that maybe what council needs is some kind of mediation. And maybe they do.

Because until they deal with their shit, people are going to keep noticing it. ■


1. This was at the May 17 executive committee meeting, while Reid answered questions about REAL’s desire to borrow more money to cover lingering expenses they racked up during the pandemic.

2. It’s crucial to note that the integrity commissioner, Angela Kruk, did not find that the new city manager was harassed or treated in a sexist manner. She notes that bringing a lawsuit is not, in and of itself, a disrespectful act, and she says that Stevens and LeBlanc never treated the City Manager in a way that was not with dignity, understanding or respect. Which, when you solve for all the negatives, means they treated the city manager with dignity, understanding and respect. But Kruk does concede that court actions are a pain in the ass (my words) and recommended the apology because she felt it would give LeBlanc and Stevens a chance to reflect on what they put Anderson through.