The gangs of smaller cities

It's the spring of 1996 and Gary Doer is upset. In just 25 days, the city will have its heart ripped out. The Jets are on their way to Arizona.

But the boys in red, white, and blue aren't what's got the leader of the opposition upset. Not exactly. It's the dollars and cents of the on-ice equation that's beginning to make his blood boil.

Desperate to keep the franchise, premier Gary Filmon had signed an agreement five years earlier to run the Jets at an operating loss, to the tune of $5 million. By the time the team skipped town, losses had swelled to $43.5 million--a number kept secret until auditors arrived.

This, Doer says, is how the city's politics have worked for far too long: money slides from hand-to-pocket behind closed doors. Meanwhile, unemployment and child poverty is on the rise.

Like every good opposition leader, Doer has a plan to place blame. But there's not one man his sword is pointed at. In fact, there's a whole gang of them.

And so the rant begins: “No offence on the Deputy Speaker, who was never a part of the inner junta of City Hall, never head of the Gang Of 18--as my honourable friend the Minister of Finance was formerly in his past life."

"I still remember the cameras on that meeting in the Fort Garry Hotel, that the gang of 18 were meeting like the knights of the round table to decide the kind of spoils of the civic budget of that year."

Enter 18 king-makers, a cigar smoking, money hungry boys club who held the reigns to the city, and maybe never let go.