No doubt about it. The verdict is clear.

The mayor is taken to the woodshed.

It is a strange place for the man who has been swooned over by so many Calgarians, idolized by much of the starry-eyed population, placed on a pedestal as the one who could do no wrong.

After all, he is Nenshi, the political phenom, the superhero brought to life, the man who could find lost pets with one retweet.

On Monday, the mayor suddenly looks to be a mere shoot-from-the-lip mortal.

He is a guy who just ran off at the mouth, talked big and talked bull and made stuff up and saw his words spill over on the reputations of some very good people who work for the city he leads.

We get the report on Nenshi’s Beantown bravado, his verbal spacewalk, from Allen Sulatycky, the city’s Integrity Commissioner.

Sulatycky served many years as a judge. He is widely respected. He had a distinguished career on the bench. You can’t slime him on Twitter.

Sulatycky’s report was on Nenshi’s recent comments in Boston to a driver of a ridesharing service.

Video captured Nenshi’s words about a supposed city operation against Uber, another ridesharing outfit wanting to do business in Calgary.

“We’re no fools. So we sent people to sign up to be Uber drivers to see if they could get through the background check.”

“How we found registered sex offenders, I don’t want to know. And people with convictions for violent crimes, I don’t want to know why we know those people.”

“But they all made it through Uber’s theoretical background screening.”

Sulatycky says the picture painted by the mayor’s words is of “a city carrying out covert operations in which sex offenders and violent criminals were engaged on behalf of the city.”

Many people would find this “frightening, scandalous and disturbing.”

The retired judge says there are times where “unsavoury persons” can be involved in a crime investigation but only under “highly disciplined” circumstances.

“The sketchy and jocularly described operation recounted by the mayor is like an episode of the Keystone Kops,” says the report.

Sadly, the message many souls got from Nenshi’s out-of-town ramblings was city bigwigs “on an adventure which created a risk to the public by exposing it in uncontrolled conditions to persons convicted of sexual and violent crimes.”

The report continues.

“City administration was put under a pall of suspicion.”

“Citizens questioned whether their safety had been compromised. Many city employees felt they were unfairly put under suspicion,”

It was all based on the mayor’s bunk.

For Nenshi the good news is the report found the mayor had no “malevolent or tainted intent.”

A few months back, the mayor apologized and said the city was only “anecdotally aware” of one driver with an assault conviction who cleared the Uber background check.

The mayor said his Boston words came from “a conflating of facts and a poor choice of words.”

The report finds Nenshi’s stance to be a “barely plausible explanation.”

“To acquire knowledge anecdotally is not so easily confused with acquiring the same knowledge through a sting operation.”

Why did Nenshi talk the way he did?

He was “enthusiastically indulging in some extravagant hyperbole ...”

“Whatever the explanation is, it does not make the words true.”

“The mayor has tacitly admitted the words spoken in Boston were not true.”

Sulatycky says Nenshi’s previous apology was not good enough.

What would be appropriate would be “a more fulsome apology as enthusiastically delivered as the Boston statements” to Calgarians and city staffers.

And so Sulatycky recommends city council require the mayor to apologize “specifically to city administration and all Calgarians for the noted effects of his unfortunate enthusiastic and hyperbolic statements.”

Nenshi apologizes. The mayor says he made a mistake and learned a lesson. Later, the mayor says he screwed up.

Outside the council chamber, Sulatycky says “the report speaks for itself” but does speak of the mayor’s words in “bringing the integrity of the city administration into question.”

“The mayor was just trying to make himself or the city sound good.”

The judge says the lesson to be gained is: “Don’t say anything unless you’re absolutely sure it’s true.”

But, in this particular case, there is no lesson.

A reality check, even one delivered by a learned judge, will not cause the legions of purple Kool-Aid drinkers to stray for one second from questioning their unquestioned devotion.