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 From the FB site "Canadian Memes"

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Last month, I filed three Freedom of Information requests with the province’s Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development that had been written by ChatGPT in line with my instructions. This was a first for me. 

AI is already with us. It combs through minutes and agendas in seconds, work that would have taken hours. It can craft Freedom of Information requests with the skill of a first-class lawyer. It can make mistakes but so, too, can lawyers.

What happened to the reform of the law on Non-Disclosure Agreements? 

Almost three years ago, on 22 November 2023, Newmarket-Aurora’s PC MPP, Dawn Gallagher Murphy, told MPPs at Queen's Park the Governmemnt planned to reform the law on non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). (Photo right) 

NDAs are often used to gag employees who have suffered, for example, sexual harassment or bullying at the hands of their employer. In 2023, the Canadian Bar Association called for a change in the law 

“to discourage use of NDAs to silence victims and whistleblowers in cases of discrimination, abuse and harassment”. 

Gallagher Murphy said the Government would be consulting on restricting the use of non-disclosure agreements: 

“… to help end workplace misconduct and hold abusers to account, our government is proposing to conduct consultations and detailed analysis on the use of non-disclosure agreements—NDAs—in the settlement of cases of workplace sexual harassment, misconduct or violence. The consultation would identify legislative options to restrict the use of NDAs while protecting the rights of victims and survivors. Ninety-four per cent of Canadian Bar Association members recently voted in favour of discouraging the widespread use of NDAs in settlement of cases of harassment and discrimination.”

She continued:

“There are concerns within the legal and survivor communities about the adverse impact of using NDAs. Signing an NDA could prevent survivors from talking about their experience and protect perpetrators unjustifiably. However, prohibiting or limiting NDAs could be a disincentive to settlement, forcing more matters of this nature to litigation. Consultation with the legal community, survivors and employers would support a more complete assessment of risk and benefits.”

Since then all we hear is radio silence.

Bullying and Harassment

In January 2025, Newmarket Today published an explosive piece detailing the bullying and harassment dished out by Gallagher Murphy to her office staff.

The action against the MPP brought by former Office Manager, Teena Bogner, was settled before the matter came up before the Ontario Labour Relations Board at a meeting scheduled for 9.30am on 25 February 2025. 

All this begs the question, why has the proposal to reform the law on NDAs stalled? I am trying to find out. But I have no way of knowing what I’ll get and how much will be redacted.

Information is power

A cliché but true, nonetheless.

Our ability to get information from the state is fundamental to our democracy. Openness and transparecy promote good governance. Freedom of Information (FoI) requests can reveal maladministration and misconduct. They can show how important policy decisions are made – after careful consideration or on the fly. With supporting evidence or without.

I have been filing FoIs for decades. My most consequential FoI, filed in the UK in 2007, unmasked Michael Ashcroft, then Vice Chair of the Conservative Party, as a tax cheat. He entered the House of Lords in 2000 after promising to pay UK taxes on his worldwide income – not just the portion generated in the UK. He never did. (Photo right) 

The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 now prohibits membership of the UK Parliament (meaning in this context the House of Lords) to anyone who does not pay UK taxes on the entirety of their income.

Secret Newmarket

Here in Newmarket, FoIs have also revealed facts the powers-that-be would have preferred to stay hidden. In 2015 we learned the Town of Newmarket had considered - in closed session in 2008 - an offer to buy the 144-acre Glenway Golf Course. It was the bargain of the century. But it was rejected by the then Mayor, Tony Van Bynen. He has never spoken publicly about this decision in the intervening 18 years. In 2010, the developer, Marianneville, bought the Glenway lands for $9.9M (about $14.3M in today’s dollars).

Bob Forrest’s plans to demolish sections of the Town’s historic Main Street and build an out-of-place 9 storey condo triggered a cascade of FoIs from a number of concerned residents. The Town rejected Forrest’s proposal with only the then Mayor, Tony Van Bynen, voting in favour.

Freedom of Information requests revealed Southlake’s plans (since changed) to build its second Acute Hospital on protected Greenbelt land north of Davis Drive West and Bathurst.

Other FoIs directed at the Town’s Library exposed a dysfunctional organisation whose Chief Executive was making it up (the membership statistics) as she was going along.

Getting these FoIs answered sometimes comes at a price. I have been quoted an eye-watering $450 by the Ministry of Labour to answer (in whole or in part) just one of my three FoIs on non-disclosure agreements.

Can our Freedom of Information laws be made to work as intended?

There has been a long debate on how we can make our Freedom of Information laws work as intended. The Ford Government is doing everything it can to restrict their scope and applicability.

Earlier this year, the Ford Government used the budget Bill (Bill 97, the Plan to Protect Ontario Act (Budget Measures) 2026) to make consequential changes to the Province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA).

This omnibus Bill removed whole categories of political office records from the scope of FIPPA – and made the change retroactive. Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commission said the practical effect of the change takes things back to 1988, the beginning of the province’s access-to-information regime. And the new exclusions shield the records of parliamentary assistants like Dawn Gallagher Murphy.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner, Patricia Kosseim, objected but was unable to feed her views directly into the legislative process. The Bill had no Committee stage.

Because of this, the Commissioner and others with interest and expertise in the subject had no opportunity to voice their concerns face-to-face with MPPs before Ford's highly controversial changes became the law of Ontario. 

The Commissioner - an officer of the Legislative Assembly no less - couldn't have been more blunt:

“Taking away Ontarians’ access rights — retroactively and into the future — denies them the information they need to understand government decision-making at the highest levels and hold their governments to account. Such a change would not modernize access laws, strengthen privacy, or enhance security; it would weaken transparency and accountability for generations to come. This should be concerning for all Ontarians, regardless of political affiliation. We urge the government to reconsider its proposal and keep public trust onside.”

Ford carried on regardless, bulldozing his changes through the legislature with the unwavering support of Newmarket-Aurora’s PC MPP, Dawn Gallagher Murphy.

Pretty predictable, I'd say.

It's not as if she has anything to hide.

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It was a comment deliberately designed to make everyone sit up and pay attention.

When Doug Ford said out loud that Donald Trump can "kiss my ass" he knew it would (a) make headlines and (b) get a round of applause from Canadians totally fed up with the so-called "leader of the free world".

But in that moment Ford put an unwanted image in my head.

I was reminded of an exhibition on political satire at the Art Gallery of Ontario that I visited in 2019.

Back then, it was Trump's ass on display.

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Nominations close at 2pm this Friday (21 August) for the elections to Newmarket Council on 26 October 2026. 

As I tap this out, there will be elections in five of the seven wards and for the Deputy Mayor. It looks like Mayor John Taylor, Bob Kwapis (Ward 5) and Christina Bisanz (Ward 7) will all be acclaimed and will be returned unopposed.

Why is there so little interest in municipal elections?

Pitiful turnout

At the last election in 2022, when I ran unsuccessfully against the incumbent Deputy Mayor Tom Vegh, the turnout was a pitiful 24.8%. But we were no worse than many others in Ontario.

The municipalities with populations over 50,000 that had the lowest voter turnout are shown in the table (right).

Where are the Political Parties?

Political parties are forbidden by Statute to contest municipal elections in Ontario. (But see note below.)

Of course, candidates don’t leave their politics at the door when they run for election to their local council and because they all run as “independents” it is difficult for the voters to get a handle on where they are coming from. Party colours and Party labels give voters an easy way to place candidates on the ideological spectrum. 

Newmarket’s Mayor John Taylor ran for the Liberals in the 2003 Provincial Election in York North against the PC incumbent Julia Munro and lost by 3,463 votes. Ward 7 councillor Christina Bisanz ran for the Liberals in Newmarket Aurora in 2007 narrowing losing by 1,355 to the incumbent PC MPP, Frank Klees.  She ran again, unsuccessfully, in 2011.  Ward 3 councillor Jane Twinney ran for the Progressive Conservatives in the 2014 Provincial Election and Tom Vegh tried to get into Queen’s Park as a Progressive Conservative but wasn’t selected as the Party's candidate. On 5 December 2016 Vegh told residents in Ward 1 that he was ready for a bigger challenge.   (see graphic right)

Newmarket’s former Mayor, Tony Van Bynen, was forever droning on about being "steadfastly bi-partisan" but as soon as he retired he joined the Liberals and was selected from a shortlist of one and elected as the Liberal MP for Newmarket Aurora.

Institutional memory

At their best, Parties provide an institutional memory, recalling significant political events that most of us forget after a few weeks. They provide campaign finance and a ready-made band of volunteers to help in the campaign. (At their worst, they corruptly legitimise campaigns and elections that can be bought through signing up thousands of new Party members who are committed only to a particular candidate and not to the Party.) 

Fighting an election as an independent costs money and for many excellent aspiring candidates this can be a real disincentive. 

Election spending shouldn't be an Arms Race

In the 2022 Newmarket Election Tom Vegh spent $27,312 against my $7,292, a difference of $20,000 and approximately 3.75 times greater than my spend.

I took the view that running for election shouldn’t be an arms race and I did everything I could to minimise my spending – in retrospect a big mistake.

After the election I returned a surplus of $1,495 to the Town of Newmarket which was money I had raised for the campaign but did not spend.

Tough Call

As an “independent”,  taking on an incumbent can be a tough call. He or she (the incumbent) has name recognition and four years to build support in the community – backed by the Town Hall machine. The Deputy Mayor, for example, has an Executive and Community Relations Assistant who

“reviews and analyzes social media channels, as well as Committee reports and decisions and alerting the Deputy Mayor on operational or emerging issues, and initiating the action required to respond.”

The assistant’s duties are wide ranging and include:

“monitoring activities related to social media channels and recommends options to improve social media content, outreach to the community and businesses, as well as support design elements that best serves the purposes of various audiences.”

This is from the Job Description:

Non-incumbents running for election do so, almost by definition, from a standing start.

So, how do candidates break through and get their message across to the voters?

Election Debates should be a key part of every election

Personally, I believe election debates are the great equaliser and they can break though into the public’s consciousness when reported by the local media.

In 2003, for example, when John Taylor ran against the PC incumbent, Julia Munro, the ERA newspaper reported that Taylor had put in a strong debate performance and this had narrowed the gap between the two in a Conservative leaning riding.

So, debates do matter.

Unfortunately, in 2022, neither the local Chamber of Commerce here in Newmarket nor the local media organised a debate for the contested Deputy Mayor position. For me, this was incredibly frustrating. You have no idea how much time and effort I put into trying to get a debate.

Three Choices

I gave Vegh three choices of dates with an offer that he could also select the debate moderator but he simply wasn’t interested. So I organised my own. The last thing he wanted to do was defend his disgraceful practice of taking money from developers to fund his election campaigns.

Over the years, I’ve stood in many elections in the UK and there has always been a candidates’ debate. Indeed, in my many years as an MP at Westminster, I used to do three or four across the constituency during each campaign.

Here in Newmarket the whole experience of running for election without a debate left me feeling profoundly dissatisfied. It was an election where, for me at least, there was still unfinished business.

I shall be blogging on these and other themes as the election campaign gets under way.

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Correction on 18 August 2026:  I said in my original post that Toronto was an exception to the rule that political parties could not contest elections at municipal level. The Ontario government confirmed in 2006 that the Municipal Elections Act did not prohibit candidates from working together or forming civic parties. This was reiterated during the 2016 legislative debate over municipal-election reform.

Civic parties may organize politically, but cannot obtain the formal electoral status, ballot designation and financial framework enjoyed by provincial and federal parties.

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Will the real Dawn Gallagher Murphy stand up? 

In her latest newsletter which arrived by email at 1pm today Dawn Gallagher Murphy says she had

"the pleasure of participating in Newmarket/Aurora’s Emancipation Day celebrations, commemorating the legal abolition of slavery in Canada and across the British Empire. It was great to connect with the Newmarket African Caribbean Canadian Association (NACCA) and the Aurora Black Caucus, two important organizations advancing racial equity and inclusion in our community."

Early last year, former members of her own staff called her out as a racist, alleging she referred to a Black History Month event as “woke bullshit”.

On 18 February 2025 Newmarket Today quoted a former employee:

“Ultimately, it was hard to go home and reconcile racist comments with my own personal beliefs. It was deeply upsetting.”

Newmarket Today reported:

"Allegations against Gallagher Murphy first surfaced in December (2024), when former constituency manager Teena Bogner filed a complaint at the Ontario Labour Relations Board, alleging Gallagher Murphy unfairly fired her after she raised concerns to PC Caucus Services about alleged harassment. That case was settled before the election campaign began, but a group of employees then came forward and hired a PR firm to share their own negative experiences working with Gallagher Murphy.

Those allegations include verbal abuse, calling and demanding work at unreasonable hours, lashing out, name-calling, not tolerating mistakes and reprimanding clothing choices in front of other employees."

Teena Bogner subsequently withdrew her complaint to the Ontario Labour Relations Board and settled with Gallagher Murphy before the hearing.

The details of the settlement have not been disclosed by either party.

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