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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 26 September 2025

Doug Ford’s decision to introduce legislation to ban municipal speed cameras is truly bizarre.

All the evidence shows that drivers slow down when they know a speed camera is watching them. And speed is a leading cause of injury and death.

By all means, let people know the cameras are there (as the Town did before switching them on). 

The object of the exercise is not to ambush drivers but to get them to slow down.

The York Regional Police road safety map for Newmarket shows that over the past year 167 people have been pulled over for careless driving in Town, 80 for impaired driving, 23 for dangerous driving and 16 for stunt driving. And that's just for starters. 

Cash Grab

The Minister of Transportation, Prabmeet Sarkaria, claims:

“Municipal speed cameras have become nothing more than a tool for raising revenue." 

What an absurd statement. Nothing more than a revenue raising tool?

On 9 May 2023, Sakaria’s predecessor, our next door neighbour, Caroline Mulroney, told the Legislative Assembly:

“Our government introduced community safety zones around schools for this specific issue, to make sure that drivers take extra care when they are driving around our most vulnerable, our children. We have allowed municipalities to introduce this around schools, and we’re doing everything we can to support community safety zone implementation across Ontario. 

"We understand that in 2021 alone, over 250,000 tickets were issued to vehicles that were captured by speed cameras that were noticing speeding in these community safety zones.”

She warned that careless driving could in future merit more than a slap on the wrist:

“We’ve introduced a new offence for careless driving causing death or bodily harm, with penalties that include fines, licence suspensions and imprisonment. This offence carries the longest prison term of any penalty in the Highway Traffic Act.”

Lobotomised

We wait to see if the Bill goes into Committee and evidence is sought from road safety organisations or if it is just bulldozed through, as is so often the case, with next to no scrutiny.

Our own MPP, the lobotomised Dawn Gallagher Murphy, can be expected to support Ford’s latest bright idea. Even if it makes no sense.

Whatever the merits or otherwise of a proposal she can be counted on to parrot the Party line.

When the Safer Roads and Communities Bill was going through Queen’s park last year, Thomas Barakat, the Head of Public Policy at Good Roads (a municipal association focussed on the quality and design of roads) said this:

“We recommend that Bill 197 include provisions to double fines for speeding offences, introduce escalating sanctions for repeat offenders and empower municipalities to double speeding fines in school zones, as they already have the ability to do in community safety zones. I think a lot of you are aware, speeding fines in Ontario have not kept pace with inflation and are amongst the lowest in Canada. They have not been raised since 2005. According to MTO’s data, there has been a 25% increase in speed-related deaths over the past five years. We think that speeding should be treated as seriously as an issue as something like drunk driving. Updating these penalties would restore their deterrent effect and contribute to safer roads, particularly in school areas where children’s safety is paramount.” 

Socially unacceptable

I agree. Speeding should be treated as something that is socially unacceptable, like blowing cigarette smoke in someone’s face.

Last September at Queen’s Park, the NDP MPP for Sudbury, Jamie West, confessed:

“They reduced the speed limit in my area. I got caught by a speed camera doing five over, a $100 fine. I had to pay $100. I really, really watch my speed going through that area now, right? That’s the idea of it.”

Yep.  That’s the idea. 

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Update: Yesterday (25 September 2025) a friend emailed Dawn Gallager Muphy with concerns about the plan to ban speed cameras. This is the reply from Gallagher Murphy's Office:

Dear XXX,

Thank you for taking the time to reach out to the Office of Dawn Gallagher Murphy, MPP Newmarket-Aurora and share your concerns regarding banning speed cameras.

At a time when governments at all levels should be doing everything they can to lower costs and make life more affordable, too many municipalities are using speed cameras as a cash grab.

That is why our government is introducing legislation that will ban municipal speed cameras across the province. At the same time, we are establishing a new provincial fund to proactively support road and school zone safety without raising costs for drivers.

The new fund will help affected municipalities implement alternative safety measures to prevent speeding, including proactive traffic-calming initiatives like speed bumps, roundabouts, raised crosswalks and curb extensions, as well as public education and improved signage, to slow down drivers.

Since 2019, over 700 municipal speed cameras have been installed in 40 municipalities across Ontario, with more currently planned for installation in the coming months.

If passed, our legislation will prevent the use of municipal speed cameras in Ontario immediately upon Royal Assent. The province will also introduce requirements for municipalities with existing speed cameras in school zones to install large new signs in advance of a school zone to slow down drivers by mid-November 2025, with permanent, large signs with flashing lights to be in place by September 2026.

Enough is enough. Instead of making life more expensive by sending speeding tickets to drivers weeks after the fact, we’re supporting road-safety measures that will prevent speeding in the first place, keep costs down and keep our streets safe.

Please do not hesitate to reach out with any further questions, concerns or suggestions.

Regards,

The Office of Dawn Gallagher Murphy, MPP

Newmarket-Aurora

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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 16 September 2025

Background: Tomorrow, 17 September 2025, the Board of Newmarket Public Library meets. Since Tracy Munusami was appointed as Chief Executive of Newmarket Public Library over four years ago we have seen a steady deterioration in the quantity and quality of data used to measure Library performance. 

The Chief Executive says it is all about cleaning up the database but there is more to it than that.

In the Library’s “Report to the Community 2023” and “Report to the Community 2024” there are no year-end membership figures. Instead, we are given annual percentage increases in membership and other Library services which distort the true picture.

The 2024 Report stated membership had surged but, in reality, it dropped by 7.9%.

10 and 11 April 2025

I posted a blog about the collapse in membership on 10 April 2025. The following day, 11 April 2025, Ms Munusami contacted the Ontario civil servants responsible for maintaining the Province’s Annual Survey of Public Libraries to change the number she had filed previously.

She updated the 24,136 Active Library Cardholders for 2023 (see graphic above) to a new lower one (18,992) which allowed the Library to assert there had indeed been an increase in membership.

Under Ms Munusami’s leadership, the full range of Library usage statistics has not been collected since 2023 but we do have figures for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

The Library no longer reports publicly on the number of members who renew their membership.

Why is this happening? 

The previous Chief Executive, Todd Kyle, spent years trying to convince the Town the Library was too small and was no longer fit for purpose. Some councillors, like Regional Councillor Tom Vegh, pushed for a new library but when, in exasperation, Kyle moved on to a new job in Brampton, all talk of a new library faded. No-one on the Town council or, astonishingly, on the library board saw any merit in a new library. The focus was all on getting more out of the existing resources. And the way to measure success was in increased membership. This became the key metric.

What is missing and what do we need?

The library should give us in its annual “Report to the Community” the year-end membership number that is reported to the Province. 

It should separate out new (or first time) members and those existing members who are simply renewing their memberships.

The library should be crystal clear who is an “active cardholder”. Is this someone who actually uses the Library at least once in the two-year membership period? Or does it include someone who has filled in a membership form at a school or outreach event and doesn’t follow through by using what the library has to offer? 

Signing up people through outreach could produce a new cohort of sleeping members, people who are Library members in name only. In 2023 there were 595 new members signed up through outreach work. In 2024 the number rose to 1,543.

Who are the members or “Active Cardholders”?

Ms Munusami initially told the Province there were 24,136 members (or “active Library cardholders”) in December 2023. It was subsequently revised to 17,893. She now says:

“The correct number is - 18,992 (Using our new definition)”

On 4 July 2025 she told me:

“...I acknowledge that we have reported some numbers in error during the transition to the new definition. We are working to correct this going forward.” 

The Statistics Dashboard report that went to the Board on 21 May 2025 was also flawed:

“Staff found an error in the formulas. We will correct it and report the error to the board next quarter.” 

Why on earth didn’t the Chief Executive - on $170,000+ a year - spot the error before it got to the Library Board? 

It was screaming out as all wrong.

Refused

I have asked Ms Munusami to let me have the Excel spreadsheets and formulas she used to generate the statistics and to show me where the errors crept in.

But she refuses point blank to let me have sight of them.

Why?

What’s the problem with sharing the data and the methodology?

Do I have to go to the Information and Privacy Commission to wring this information out of her?

$3,781,775

Newmarket Public Library is not a private company where the owners call the shots.

The Town gave $3,781,775 to our Library last year to support its operating budget.

Despite this, there appears to be no audit on how the Library reports on the key fundamentals of membership and usage.

Are we supposed to take it all on trust?

Why should we?

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See also: Data from NPL is useless and can't be trusted

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Read more: Time for Newmarket Public Library to be open and honest with the Town

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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 16 September 2025

Our MPP, Dawn Gallagher Murphy, was right to condemn the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing polemicist who revelled in face-to-face debate with those who disagreed with him. 

But the irony was not lost on me. 

Dawn Gallagher Murphy, who has chosen never, ever to debate an opponent on an election stage, posthumously praises Charlie Kirk who relished encounters with those who fervently disagreed with him.

To my mind, the late Charlie Kirk was racist, homophobic, anti-semitic and had weird views on the role of women in present-day America. Not really my cup of tea.

But, manifestly, none of that made him a fair target for assassination.

Nothing will Change

The real story of the murder of Charlie Kirk is that nothing is going to change

For me, Richard Warnica, writing in the Toronto Star last Friday, summed it up best:

If there’s one thing America has proved again and again, it’s that no shooting, no matter how deadly or high profile, ever changes much of anything. In the U.S., gun murders are part of the fabric, not just of school life and work life, but of political life too. Kirk himself knew that. He considered gun deaths part of the grand American bargain. “I think it’s worth it,” he said in 2023. “I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

There is absolutely no way the Second Amendment is going to be removed from the US Constitution.

Flintlocks and Muskets

But could the Amendment itself be amended to limit the right to bear arms to those that were current in 1776?

You know…  give the gun worshippers the right to buy flintlocks and muskets that were used in the American Revolution. The kind of weapons that take forever to load and are not too accurate. And go off with a spark and a puff of smoke.

That would, at least, be a step forward.

Alas, it ain't gonna happen.

Dysfunctional

We all know the United States is a completely dysfunctional country. Institutionally unable and unwilling to enact the changes that would make its citizens safer.

Decades ago, when I was an MP in the UK, I voted for a complete ban on handguns following the tragedy at Dunblane in Scotland where elementary school children were killed by a lunatic with a love of guns.

So you can ban guns if you want to.

But not in America.

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Charlie Kirk’s Death won’t change a thing.

by Richard Warnica (Toronto Star)

Charlie Kirk, one of the most influential organizers and activists in American right-wing politics, was shot and killed Wednesday while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University, in Orem, Utah. I probably didn’t need to tell you that. If you’re reading this, you likely know the details already: of the shooting and the backlash; of the manhunt (such as it was. The police didn’t catch the shooter. His dad turned him in); and the fiery and largely pointless online debates about who has and has not condemned whom with enough clarity and zeal.

As I typed this Friday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump had just finished telling Fox News that authorities had a suspect in custody. As I finished the piece, that suspect was identified as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah resident. Police apparently found both fired and unfired bullets tied to Robinson’s gun engraved with messages that all seemed less ideological than just deeply online: “Hey fascist! Catch!”; “If you read this, you are gay LMAO;” and, in a reference to an obscure meme, “Notices Bulges, OwO.”

By the time you read this, we may know more about Robinson’s background and motivations. But based on past experience, I don’t expect those details, no matter what they reveal, to change much about the debate over Kirk’s killing.

If there’s one thing America has proved again and again, it’s that no shooting, no matter how deadly or high profile, ever changes much of anything. In the U.S., gun murders are part of the fabric, not just of school life and work life, but of political life too. Kirk himself knew that. He considered gun deaths part of the grand American bargain. “I think it’s worth it,” he said in 2023. “I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

Nothing changed in America after a depressed student murdered 32 classmates at Virginia Tech university in 2007. Nothing changed after 26 children were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary. Nothing changed after Dylann Roof murdered nine Black parishioners at Emanuel Methodist Church. Nothing changed after James T. Hodgkinson shot up a Congressional baseball practice. Nothing changed after Vance Boelter murdered Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband this summer.

Trump held a parade the day Hortman died. I was there. He didn’t even mention her name.

So no, I don’t think Kirk’s murder will be an inflection point in American history. I don’t think it will lead to any actual changes, at least not the kind that would result in fewer gun deaths or less violence in America. I was in Milwaukee, at the Republican National Convention, days after Trump himself was shot and nearly killed at a rally in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2024. I remember all the columns and punditry about how everything had changed, how he had changed, how the race had changed, how politics must change.

Nothing changed. Two weeks later, it was barely a story.

Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 10 September 2025

Background: Tomorrow (Thursday (11 September 2025) York Region's Housing and Homelessness Committee will consider a new report on the characteristics of homeless people living in the Region. Who are they? Where do they come from? How did they become homeless in the first place? 

The Region in partnership with United Way Greater Toronto conducted a "point-in-time" count of the homeless over a 24 hour period between 26-27 November 2024. The staff commentary is here.

The Count found that 878 people in York Region were experiencing homelessness - a 166% increase compared with the 329 in 2021. Covid is likely to have depressed the count in that year.

Voluntary Survey

Of the 878, just under half (428) completed a voluntary survey which tells us, amongst other things:

60% of the survey respondents are male

75% are single

42% say they have always lived in York region

56% say they have mental health issues

and 15% had been in foster care or in a youth group home at some point in their lives.

600 homeless people in Barrie alone

The number of homeless people  in relation to the population of the Region (1.25M) is growing but is likely to be a gross underestimate. To the north of us, the city authorities In Barrie estimate there are around 600 homeless people.

Barrie licenses and regulates lodging or rooming houses but demand for such accommodation clearly outstrips supply. 

Here in York Region there is only one lodging house regulated and licensed by the Region and it is only listed as such because they give it some kind of funding.

In Toronto, which is grappling with its own homelessness crisis, there are any number of lodging houses but, clearly, more are needed.

Kicked into the long grass

In Newmarket the Town is considering regulating and licensing lodging houses but this could take forever. It was first mentioned as a possibility 14 years ago and it was kicked into the long grass. Nothing happened.

The Town tells me it is aware that Toronto, Mississagua, Kitchener, Brampton, Peterborough, Windsor, Oshawa and Barrie license lodging or rooming houses.

No-one pretends that more lodging houses across the Province can solve the problem of homelessness on their own - but, surely, they can be part of the solution.

Seems to me there is no reason why Newmarket cannot follow other municipalities and take steps now to incorporate policies in its Official Plan and Zoning By Laws.

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