Why Tony Van Bynen shovels public money into the Newmarket Era

Why is Mayor Tony Van Bynen so obsessed with controlling what information gets released to the public?

Back in the dying days of the 2014 municipal election, Tony Van Bynen and his allies went apoplectic when a secret Glenway memo was released to the public. He decried the "breach of confidentiality" condemning it in the strongest of terms.

All of it was nonsense of course. There was no breach because the secret memo was distributed after council voted to make the document public. The only reason Van Bynen was upset was because he couldn't put his spin on the memo. The memo was released in its pure, unvarnished form and it revealed to Glenway residents important information that the Mayor didn't want them to know.

So it is of no surprise that the upcoming Code of Conduct revisions is equally obsessed with so-called "confidentiality" matters. Namely, unless the information is made public by approved methods, Councillors are bound to keep quiet.

It's a nice way for Tony Van Bynen to sit on information until his spin-masters in the ever growing "Communications Department" have polished and massaged the details that the public is entitled to know.

Earlier in Council this week, we saw how Tony Van Bynen reacts to facts. When confronted about his salary, which apparently Freedom of Information reports reveal to be substantially higher than the $151,000 he told the Editor of the Era, he says, "I don't think your facts are correct."

Van Bynen could end the controversy by making his tax filing public for the 2014. He chooses not to. Instead, he lives in the grey, murky world of half truths and obfuscation, hoping that residents will get lost in the fog.

Keep in mind the Mayor's stranglehold over what stories the Newmarket Era publishes (certainly never a disparaging word - ever - regarding Mayor Van Bynen. Miraculously, the Era has agreed with 100% of what Van Bynen does for more than a decade).

Here are some extremely relevant stories that the Era has ignored in the past year:

1)  The Mayor's salary fiasco.

2)  Deputy Mayor John Taylor keeping secret the fact that his wife is a senior executive of the media group which owns the Era. Not only did he keep it secret, he voted to advertise "announcements" in her paper on many, many occasions without ever declaring a conflict of interest.

3) The paper wrote about campaign compliance audits in other municipalities but did not cover the regional councillor John Taylor's (even though he was made to return a fat cheque to a company owned by billionaire Frank Stronach).

4) A lawsuit alleging that Steve Hinder, Stronach's bag man and the debate moderator in the 2014 election, punched a man at a political event, resulting in the victim spending months in the hospital recovering.

5)  Councillor Tom Vegh living la vida loca on the taxpayer dime via his discretionary expense account.

Each one of these topics are big news even in a small town like Newmarket. Could you imagine the furor if someone like Rob Ford were to be embroiled in anything similar? It wouldn't just be making headlines in Toronto, but across the nation.

But in Newmarket, due to the cowardice of  Era publisher and editor, Ian Proudfoot and Tracy Kibble, too afraid of the Montgomery Burns character we have as our mayor, cower at the feet of Tony Van Bynen. They call themselves a "community paper" but the Era has long given up serving the community. The Era serves just one master.



In an era when Canadian newspapers are closing their doors and laying off staff, the Newmarket Era is one paper that deserves to be shut down for being a propaganda rag that only publishes state-sanctioned talking points pre-approved by Tony Van Bynen and his stooges.