Details

Newmarket Public Library’s Report to the Community 2024 is seriously misleading. 

It claims a “significant increase” in membership between 2023 and 2024 when, in reality, there was a decrease of 7.9%

In her presentation on Monday 7 April, the Library Chief Executive, Tracy Munusami, told councillors the Library had 22,234 “active library cardholders” in 2024.

Ms Munusami told the Province it had 24,136 active library cardholders the year before, in 2023. (See table bottom right)

The Province requires all libraries to file a wide-ranging set of statistics annually showing membership, usage and so on.

How does the Chief Executive explain the claim there were 9,476 new library members in 2024? The question was never put to her by councillors.

Business decisions

At Monday’s meeting Ms Munusami was quizzed by Ward 4 councillor Trevor Morrison on the reasons for membership numbers fluctuating over the years.

She told him:

“In 2022 we were looking at ways to evaluate the people who are using the library card numbers as well as to clean up our databases.…  In 2022 we've removed accounts from the system that were no longer active library users. The definition of an “active library user” is someone who's used the library in the last 24 months. And in order to make better business decisions we had to have the most accurate data. So that's why we made the change in 2023."

Cllr Morrison: 

“And as a follow up…  the 24 months… is that just something that… the Board (has) come up with or as a library policy?”

Tracy Munusami: 

“So that is the definition through the… We do a survey every year to the Ministry. It's called the annual Public Library survey and that's the definition that they use.”

"Active Library Cardholders"

The statistics submitted to the Province show “active library cardholders” in December each year. Newmarket library card holders have to renew their membership every two years so there is a constant churn with people joining the Library, leaving or renewing their memberships.

Fortunately, the Ontario Public Library statistics allow us to compare apples with apples. The figures do not back up the claim by Library Board Chair, Darryl Gray, that the past year had been marked by a significant growth in membership.  

The Chief Executive’s presentation drew attention to 1,543 new card memberships in 2024 resulting from the Library’s outreach work. That is impressive but this wasn’t enough to lift the total number of active library users in 2024 above the 2023 level.

Outreach

Outreach work is important. The Board and the Council have made it clear there are no plans – nor any ambition – for a new library or even another branch in the foreseeable future. 

Instead, there has been renewed emphasis on outreach work – getting to parts of the Town that are underserved by the Library. The downtown area has a much higher level of Library membership than neighbourhoods further afield.

There was a big breakthrough last October when the Board was shown library membership statistics by ward for, I believe, the first time. Councillors had been pressing for this information. And now that we have the number of active library members by Ward and the Town-wide total we can easily track the number of non-resident Library members who, last year, made up more than a quarter of Library members.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Note: Some data held by the Province (years 2022, 2020 and 2019) is temporarily unavailable on-line but we can access figures going back to 2014 – and earlier. The Library Chief Executive reported the 22,234 membership in her presentation to councillors on Monday 7 April 2025.

 

Details

9 April 2025: The latest projection from Éric Grenier - who does the CBC's Poll Tracker - says Newmarket-Aurora is now leaning towards the Liberals having fallen back from their previous status as the likely winners. 

 

 

 

The People's Party of Canada and the Greens did not register a candidate.

 

 

 

 

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Details

Elections Canada confirmed today that the NDP is fielding Anna Gollen as their candidate in this month’s Federal election. 

Nominations closed at 2pm this afternoon (7 April 2025). So far, only the Conservative, Liberal and NDP candidates appear on the official Elections Canada website but it will be updated with the definitive list posted on Wednesday. The People’s Party of Canada says their candidate is Andre Gagnon. The Greens are fielding David Hitchcock.

No chance

The NDP’s Anna Gollen is a paper candidate with no hope of winning.

She has no track record of doing anything in Newmarket-Aurora but I wait to see her profile once it is posted on the NDP candidates website. She has no digital footprint and her “campaign” as I tap this out is completely dark.

Mandy Price

Her election agent, Mandy Price, is also the agent for two other NDP candidates in this election, in Bowmanville-Oshawa North and Orleans. But there may be more.

In January the NDP was looking to recruit

“numerous Election Campaign Official Agents to act on behalf of local election campaigns across the country as Official Agents”. 

It may be that Mandy Price is one.

Spoiler

I wouldn’t object to Anna Gollen running for election to the Federal Parliament if she had a track record of doing things. Campaigning. Speaking out. Causing trouble. Being a nuisance.

But we don't have that here. She has been parachuted in.

Until I get to know her, Anna Gollen is just another paper candidate whose only role in this election is to act as a spoiler, increasing the chances of a Conservative win. 

Sandra Cobena and her team will be rubbing their hands with glee.

Brand Strength

In the last three Federal elections in Newmarket-Aurora the NDP vote was greater than the difference between the Conservatives and Liberals. Admittedly, in those elections the NDP had a very strong candidate, standing head and shoulders above all the other contenders. But, even with an invisible candidate this time around, the NDP could easily pick up few thousand votes just on the strength of the brand alone.

Astonishingly, there are no election debates being organised in Newmarket-Aurora in what could be one of the most consequential elections in the nation’s history. So voters have no way of getting the measure of Ms Gollen.

The boundary of Newmarket-Aurora has changed for this election taking a chunk out of the south-west corner and, with it, some Conservative support.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Update on 9 April 2025: There appears to be no PPC or Green candidates running in this election.

Details

The latest projection from Éric Grenier - who does the CBC's Poll Tracker - puts the Liberals as the likely winners of the election in Newmarket-Aurora.

This is the state of play on Saturday 5 April 2025.

Grenier defines likely and unlikely this way:

Likely means the party has a high likelihood of winning the seat, though there is an outside chance (less than 5%) that another party could win.

The converse, unlikely, means the party is not in serious contention for the seat, but there is an outside chance that, with enough polling and modelling error and/or local dynamics at play, the party could pull off an upset. This is the flipside of the “Likely” rating.

The big unknown is whether the NDP candidate, Anna Gollen, will secure the 100 endorsements from local electors which she needs to get on the ballot paper. We shall know on Monday.

If it is a straight fight between the Liberals and the Conservatives there is little doubt Jennifer McLachlan will be our next MP.

That said, it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Details

Newmarket Public Library’s membership rocketed last year by an eye-watering 9,476 new members. We are told this was a 43.47% increase on 2023. 

These figures remind me of the old tractor production statistics we used to get from the former Soviet Union.

So good they can’t possibly be true.

The Library’s Chief Executive, Tracy Munusami, will be giving a presentation to Newmarket councillors on Monday (7 April 2025) on the Library’s annual Report to the Community 2024 and I shall be interested to hear what she has to say.

Amazing!

In the time she has been in charge I have grown used to Ms Munusami’s well-polished library lingo. 

Everything is amazing, exciting and extraordinary.

So when Library Board chair, Darryl Gray, told us in the foreword to the Library’s latest Report to the Community that 2024 had been extraordinary and membership had grown significantly I had to take a second look.

“This past year has been extraordinary for the Newmarket Library, marked by significant growth in membership and an expanded presence throughout our community.”

Where did the 9,476 new members come from?

It wasn’t from the Library’s outreach programme which saw “new card memberships” increase by 595 in 2023 and 1,543 in 2024.

A simple request. Can we have the number of library members for 2024 and for 2023?

Comparisons

It’s not an easy job tracking down the figures. We used to get detailed statistics on library usage in a time series that allowed us to compare performance over the years. But that’s all been thrown out of the window. 

In the latest Report to the Community we see, for the most part, amazing percentage increases in Library usage from 2023. And where, unusually, we see a 26.34% decrease in “reference questions answered”  we are told:

“it is highly likely that this significant decrease is due to a technical error”.

Significant increase

It may well be that these “new members” are simply former members rejoining the library after the COVID pandemic. Perhaps the library suspended membership renewals during COVID.  But if that is the case then the “significant” increase in membership should be labelled as such.

I wrote to Ms Munusami last December about the Library’s outreach work and about the huge increase in the number of “out-of-town” members.

In September 2024 the number of out-of-town members (5,830) was more than a quarter of the total membership which, at that point, was 22,935. 

I asked her:

“What explains the very significant increase in out-of-town members in 2024? In speaking to your counterparts in neighbouring libraries, is this surge in out-of-town members something that they too are experiencing?”

She told me:

“Over 3.9 million Ontarians, or nearly 27% of the population, hold a public library card. Collectively, the goal across Ontario public libraries is to provide equity of access to information and contribute to education, literacy and life-long learning. This starts with getting more people through library doors, which is why we open ours. 

The Newmarket Library has a long-standing reciprocal borrowing agreement with York Region Libraries, Bradford West Gwillimbury Library and Brock Township Libraries.

We have removed barriers to open up our membership system so our library is accessible to anyone who may come through its doors. This included removing fines and welcoming our out-of-town neighbours to become members.  

We also know that Newmarket is a regional hub that brings people into our community for shopping, recreation and culture programs, and healthcare, which in turn may bring more people into our library.

In speaking with library counterparts, we all take a similar open-door approach, so much so that many libraries do not distinguish out-of-town users within the data they capture.

The Library receives funding from the province in addition to municipal funding.”

Her reply didn’t really answer my question.

Free membership, Province wide 

Newmarket library now allows free membership to anyone living in Ontario. That means non-residents can borrow what they like and sign up to services such as Hoopla which costs the Library money for each item borrowed.

This is a different approach from many other libraries in Ontario. They charge non-residents fees unless reciprocal arrangements apply. For example, Bradford and West Gwillimbury charge $60 a year; East Gwillimbury $40; Toronto $150; Hamilton $100; Burlington $63 and so on.

Our neighbour, Aurora, charges an annual fee of $80 to non-residents coming from areas with no reciprocal agreement.

The Library Chief Executive, Jodi Marr, tells me the number of these non-residents is 10 or less.

Breakdown

So are these out-of-towners joining Newmarket Library for free and then using their membership to access other libraries in York Region where a membership fee would ordinarily have to be paid?

Should Newmarket Public Library collect and publish a breakdown showing the numbers of resident and non-resident members and those with reciprocal memberships? 

Tracy Munusami would probably say it serves no useful purpose. 

I disagree.

The library has just started to collect and make available Library membership numbers by ward. That's progress.

So why abandon collecting statistics on non-residents?

Is it just too much hassle?

Or not exciting enough?

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Note: I was told last year that the full range of library statistics for 2023 was not collected.

Click "Read More" below for email from NPL's Chief Executive

Update on 9 April 2025: From Newmarket Today: Focus on Community Outreach gives Newmarket Library a growth spurt

  • You are here:  
  • Home