Details

Yesterday Newmarket Today published an explosive piece by reporter Joseph Quigley detailing the bullying and harassment meted out by Newmarket-Aurora MPP, Dawn Gallagher Murphy, to her former employees. 

Gallagher Murphy's behaviour is truly shocking. She comes across as a strutting office tyrant, instilling fear in her employees, cracking the whip around the clock.

She is also a hypocrite. The video she posted on YouTube last November in which she brazenly condemned bullying is proof enough.

Jekyll and Hyde

Even though her former office manager, Teena Bogner, who brought an action against the MPP at the Ontario Labour Relations Board, has now settled and will make no further comment, a line-up of up to seven ex-employees are now openly denouncing our Jekyll and Hyde MPP.

What were the terms of the settlement agreed between Teena Bogner and Dawn Gallagher Murphy? Was it simply an apology or was there a financial settlement with no admission of wrongdoing by the MPP? If the latter, who paid? Our bullying, tyrannical MPP, the Progressive Conservative Caucus or the taxpayer?

Last night I asked Teena Bogner for details of the settlement. She told me:

“The terms of a settlement agreement are private and confidential. I have not provided any information or documentation to Newmarket Today, with the exception of a statement: “The matter has been resolved to my full satisfaction”. 

I am unable to comment or provide additional information.”

Public Interest requires disclosure

Unquestionably, the public interest requires disclosure of the details of the settlement. People have been in touch with me since August last year describing Gallagher Murphy’s tyrannical behaviour towards her employees. Yesterday, one of them told me the settlement would probably have a non-disclosure agreement built in and that the details would undoubtedly remain secret between Bogner and Gallagher Murphy. This person urged me not be press Teena Bogner to disclose the terms as “she was a victim too”.

True.

But she also has responsibility towards those other ex-employees who felt the wrath of Gallagher Murphy and developed mental health issues as a consequence.

Domineering and Oppressive

There is no getting away from the fact that I am deeply disappointed in Teena Bogner. In my email to her last night I gently made the point that Gallagher Murphy’s bullying was not an issue between two private individuals. Gallagher Murphy was a public representative, acting in that capacity, when she bullied and harassed Bogner.

It is wholly legitimate to raise concerns about our MPP's fitness for public office.

Newmarket-Aurora's Progressive Conservative MPP is a janus-faced domineering and oppressive bully who should be brought to book.

If not now then when?

We are at the start of an election campaign and things have a habit of coming out.

(Click “read more” below to read my email to Teena Bogner)) 

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Update on 30 January 2025: From Newmarket Today:  Video: Ford defends fellow MPP accused of bullying staff, creating "toxic" workplace

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A decade ago the residents of Glenway in the Town’s north west quadrant were battling to save their community from the developer, Marianneville, who planned to build over 700 new homes on the fairways of the 140-acre golf course which threaded through the neighbourhood.

I vividly recall the packed, animated meetings convened by the residents’ group, the Glenway Preservation Association (GPA). They were well organised and highly motivated but they were up against a developer with deep pockets and an equivocating and hesitant Council unwilling to lead and shape events. 

The residents lost and the Glenway neighbourhood they knew has since been transformed. Many residents left the area.

Kelowna

In 2019 a key figure in the Glenway Preservation Association, Dave Sovran and his wife Ann, moved to Kelowna in BC. And, ironically, the City has just acquired the Michaelbrook golf course in support of its strategy for recreational services. The Town says the 52-acre property: 

“will remain fully operational as a golf course through a lease with a third party operator”.

This would have been the ideal outcome in Newmarket where the Town’s own Official Plan identified the North-West quadrant as being short of public open space. 

Predatory

In Ontario, predatory developers had been eyeing up golf courses for years, believing they were ripe for development and would deliver eye-watering profits if the land use designation could be changed.

Marianneville bought the Glenway lands for under $10M in 2010 hoping they would be able to change the land use designation – private open space – and be allowed to develop the land. 

The Town didn't meet the deadline for considering the developer's application and Marianneville appealed to the (now defunct) planning adjudication tribunal, the Ontario Municipal Board, which found in its favour. 

In its 2014 decision, the OMB observed that by 2010 the Town knew the golf course was available for development but took no steps:

"...to acquire these lands for public open space and public park purposes."

Glenway offered to the Town

In fact, Newmarket Council had been given the chance to buy the Glenway golf course in 2008 but, unbelievably, councillors turned the offer down in a thirty minute discussion on 17 March that year after the then Chief Administrative Office, Bob Shelton, told them in a verbal report that the Town was not in the business of running a golf club. Neither the OMB nor the rest of us was aware of this fact which only came to light in 2015. (Photo right: Bob Shelton)

The late and much missed Newmarket Councillor Dave Kerwin desperately wanted the Town to buy the old golf course when it was offered to them on a plate. He told me it broke his heart when the Town decided not to. 

Glenway was unquestionably one of the most consequential decisions the Town has ever taken. 

Disastrous

The Town responded to Marianneville’s manoeuvres by bringing in an outside planning consultant, Ruth Victor, to handle the Glenway file. She had no line manager and the then Mayor and now MP, Tony Van Bynen, left her to get on with things with no steer. The Town’s planning department was otherwise engaged on the Secondary Plan and couldn’t spare the staff to work on Glenway. They, too, left her alone. The result was disastrous.

Victor sided with the developer, Marianneville, arguing there were no planning reasons why the former golf course could not be developed. She was hired to give her professional opinion. But her recommendation to allow development was the kiss of death.

By the time councillors belatedly decided to back the Glenway residents on 25 November 2013 Marianneville’s appeal to the OMB was months away and the die was cast. 

Scared

Victor, paid by taxpayers’ dollars, was summoned to the OMB Hearing by the developer, Marianneville, and became their key witness. The developer’s silver-tongued lawyer, Ira Kagan, told the adjudicator on 27 March 2014 that he was tempted just to call one witness, Ruth Victor, so compelling was her testimony.

“If I was really bold I would not have called another witness (other than Ruth Victor) but I was scared not to.”

Kagan told the adjudicator that Victor had told him that Town planning staff “shared her opinions”.  But these were never tested at the Hearing because, incredibly, the Town’s planning staff boycotted the Hearing. Not a single member of the Town’s planning staff appeared. 

Mismanaged

The then Mayor, Tony Van Bynen, never championed the Glenway residents’ case. He mismanaged things from start to finish, always trying to find a middle way that could satisfy both sides. He told the ERA newspaper afterwards in the context of the proposed Clock Tower development (which he shamelessly supported):

“We learned through Glenway that polarity doesn’t help anybody.”

Under pressure, the Town convened a “lessons learned” meeting but we didn’t learn that much.

New narrative

Almost a decade later, the Town has thousands of new residents and things are rapidly changing. People have new perspectives and the memory of the Glenway residents’ protests is fading.

A new narrative is replacing the old one. 

In December 2021 Marianneville, having secured all its objectives, gifted 16 acres of undevelopable land in Glenway West to the Town as open space and received a tax certificate in return allowing the developer to offset this charitable gift against tax otherwise owing to the Canada Revenue Agency. (Graphic right: the gifted land)

Impertinently, the Town was also asked to place signs on the land telling us it has been generously gifted by the developer, Marianneville, as public open space.

We are expected to feel a warm glow of appreciation.

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Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison in a tiny claustrophobic cell on Robben Island, a forlorn windswept place, just 45 minutes by ferry but a world away from bustling Cape Town. 

His young Afrikaner warder, Christo Brand, describes the prison routine in his book “Doing Life with Mandela. My prisoner my friend.”

“An ear-splitting clanging would start up all over the prison at 5am.  We used metal pipes with a chain inside to make the maximum noise, a horrible grinding sound, to wake up all the prisoners in their icy cells.”

“The cells were as cold as fridges, all year round. They were made of cement and unpainted. Overnight they would freeze…. I would see Mandela doing exercises in his cell at 5am, usually for an hour. He would have been cold all night, so he would be doing sit-ups to warm himself up. He was a tall man and the two mats issued to him were too short. When he lay back, his head would be touching one wall, his feet the opposite wall.”

I stood in Mandela's cell and tried to imagine the horrors of such a brutal existence, year in, year out. (Photo right)

Close friends

Brand was nineteen and Mandela sixty when they first met and they grew to be close friends, a relationship which had to be concealed from everyone, not just the prison authorities.

Inevitably, if people had known about it they would have talked.

Astonishingly, I met Christo Brand, now 63, who was on Robben Island on the day we were there.

He described a visit from Winnie Mandela who had smuggled her four-month old granddaughter into the prison under a heavy wool blanket. It had been a rough crossing on the ferry and black visitors had to sit on the top deck, exposed to the wind and lashing rain. 

She pleaded with Brand to let her husband see the baby but he sternly told her this was out of the question. It was expressly forbidden. He told her to leave the baby in the waiting room with other visitors while she saw her husband.

When the time was up Winnie was escorted out of the booth with no idea that Brand had given the child to a tearful Mandela and let him hold her for 30 seconds. 

“On the way back to the cells Mandela walked close enough to tell me: “Thank you, Mr Brand. I know you can lose your job for that. Now it’s a secret between us, just you and me.”

It was a secret kept for decades.

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Christo Brand earlier this month talking to visitors in the former prison on Robben Island, now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Details

First things first. Watch Dawn Gallagher Murphy MPP talk about bullying and harassment and read on...

Dawn Gallagher Murphy MPP does not run a happy ship. Her constituency office is a toxic workplace according to her former Constituency Office Manager, Teena Bogner, who was sacked on 10 June last year.

I have now heard from a raft of people who accuse Gallagher Murphy of behaviour that affected their mental health while employed by her.

In one case I was taken to task for using the word “spat” to describe the conflict between Bogner and Gallagher Murphy. 

“Harassment is not a spat. It is a serious challenge in workplaces. I am sorry you feel the need to trivialise it… Shame on you for marginalising the effect that harassment has on the well being of employees, students and people in general. It is truly awful and should not be joked about.”

Damning 

There’s more to the emails but I don’t want Gallagher Murphy to identify the sender so I have held back damning details.

And last year I received a series of emails from an employee at the Legislative Assembly accusing Gallagher Murphy of bullying and harassing her staff.

So it takes some chutzpah for Gallagher Murphy to put in this Oscar winning performance on 22 November 2024 denouncing the very behaviours she exhibits in her own office.

Hand-picked

Before she was hand-picked by Doug Ford to run as Progressive Conservative candidate in Newmarket-Aurora she was Christine Elliott’s constituency office manager. She may have ruled with a rod of iron but she didn’t run a smooth, well-functioning office. 

I remember trying to get an appointment with my then MPP Christine Elliott to discuss Ford’s plans to allow convenience stores to sell beer.

“It was early June 2019 and her office told me to come back in the Fall. After a lot of huffing and puffing I managed to get 15 minutes with my MPP two months later, on 12 August 2019, with Dawn sitting in, taking notes.” 

Even then, the office was totally dysfunctional.

Reprisal

One of the people who contacted me spoke about the powers of the Ontario Labour Relations Board:

“The OLRB only deals with reprisal, not allegations of harassment… If the hearing favours Teena Bogner it means she was terminated for reporting harassment, nothing more.”

If Bogner was sacked for reporting harassment – and given the message in the video -  I think we can safely describe Dawn Gallagher Murphy as a hypocrite as well as a bully and office tyrant.

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Update on 28 January 2025: From Newmarket Today: More former employees accuse Newmarket-Aurora MPP of workplace bullying

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The spat between Newmarket-Aurora’s Progressive Conservative MPP, Dawn Gallagher Murphy, and her former Constituency Office Manager, Teena Bogner, is gripping stuff.

Earlier this month I took myself down to the Ontario Labour Relations Board in Toronto’s University Avenue and asked to see the file. I was shown Bogner’s complaint and Gallagher Murphy’s response but the supporting documentation was withheld for legal reasons. But all will be revealed at the Hearing which is expected in February 2025.  (Photo: Bogner right)

Their separate accounts of what happened between 9 April 2024 and 10 June 2024 – when Bogner was sacked - could not be more different. Gallagher Murphy accuses Bogner of creating an “untenable work environment”.

Imperious

For her part, Bogner brands Gallagher Murphy, an imperious bully:

“The Member’s erratic and hostile behaviour continued, including unnecessary interruptions during the Applicant’s (Bogner’s) personal time, derogatory comments about colleagues, hanging up on the Applicant, and an overall toxic work environment that affected the Applicant’s health.”

Gallagher Murphy insists it was Bogner who pestered her for the job and it was she (Bogner) who was the disrupter in the office. She was the one who allegedly harassed other staff!

It seems to be a classic case of “she said, she said”.

Deceit

So (not to put too fine a point on it) who is being deceitful?

Being the kind of person Bogner is - a stickler for process and follower of rules and protocols - she may well have rubbed people up the wrong way as she tried to create order out of chaos in Gallagher Murphy’s office. I can well believe there was a titanic clash of personalities. 

In her Linked-In profile, Bogner describes herself this way:

"I am an inspiring, motivated, and collaborative leader committed to achieving, and exceeding, strategic goals. I lead diverse teams in a fast paced and demanding environment to facilitate and deliver leading edge governance policies and procedures, change management, and elections. I have significant government relations practice, from my work within the legislative assembly and non-for-profits."

Taxpayers' Advocacy

Years ago, when Bogner was President of the Newmarket Taxpayers’ Advocacy Group (NTAG) - and without asking her first - I put her on my mailing list as I was regularly blogging on Town issues and I wanted her to be aware of my thinking. 

When she got the (temporary) job of returning officer for Newmarket-Aurora in the 2019 Federal Election – an important role carrying with it a great deal of responsibility - she bluntly told me to take her name off my mailing list as she had to be scrupulously impartial. No problem. I did so immediately. So would a person like this invent these interactions with Gallagher Murphy? 

Economical with the actualité

I can think of many occasions when Gallagher Murphy was economical with the actualité. Inflating the numbers at her second Annual “Free” BBQ immediately springs to mind. The venue - Newmarket Commons – was largely deserted. 
 
At the time she was offered the Office Manager job Bogner says she told Gallagher Murphy that she was actively seeking a job with another organisation and was in the interview stage. But the MPP is adamant that Bogner did not discuss any other job offer with her. 
 

On balance I prefer to believe Bogner’s version of events. 

Harassment

Gallagher Murphy says 

“At no time did Bogner make any complaint of harassment in convention (sic) of the Caucus Harassment Policy or take any acts as contemplated by the OHSA.”

That sounds pretty definitive. But some of the material Bogner relies on may be in the video or phone recordings or in the other supporting documentation which, as I say, we cannot yet see.

The stakes are high for Bogner and Gallagher Murphy.

They can’t both be telling the truth.

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To read Bogner's complaint and Gallagher Murphy's response click "read more" below.

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