Embattled Brampton councillor channels Trump in attack on the media

Gael Miles wants all media questions, and council or staff responses, posted on city’s website

Thestar.com
May 31, 2017
By Peter Criscione

In a scene straight out of U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House, a group of Brampton councillors angry over critical coverage of their leadership introduced a plan to scrutinize the media.

Just days after the Brampton Guardian published an article criticizing the lack of work by certain veteran councillors on key transit files, those same councillors reacted angrily, claiming biased and inaccurate reporting.

At Wednesday’s committee meeting, Regional Councillor Gael Miles, the subject of several recent Guardian articles, introduced a motion to monitor media scrutiny. Her motion states: “copies of all media inquiries received by the mayor, members of council and staff be posted to the city website, along with their responses provided.”

The proposed motion, headed for a council vote on June 14, also includes a provision that “all future committee of council and council agendas include a section for members of council to speak publicly on recent media stories which relate to council decisions or issues that may impact the City of Brampton.”

“There is nothing that makes me angrier than injustice and I think the City of Brampton is not being served well by the kind of media reporting that we are having,” Miles said during the committee meeting.

She has been heavily scrutinized over the years for her support of a now-defunct community agency she used to head before it was taken over by her husband. It had received hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, while failing to provide key financial details, such as how much of the public funding went to her husband’s undisclosed salary. Council was asked two years ago to excuse more than $90,000 owed to the city by the organization.

In recent weeks, the Guardian has also questioned Miles over her push for a taxpayer buyout of a money-losing golf club, which is owned by a development group that has donated substantially to her political campaigns and $600,000 to a charity she founded, as well as $30,000 to the agency her husband ran.

She has declined to answer several questions the Guardian sent to her about the golf club deal. Under her new motion, which was referred to staff for a report, all of the questions she has declined to answer would be published on the city’s website.
But several other council members, including Mayor Linda Jeffrey, questioned Miles’ attempt to control the media.

“The freedom of the press is a key pillar of our democracy, regardless of whether or not we like what is being written,” Jeffrey said. “The media needs to be able to do their jobs freely, so they may inform the public of what is happening at their city hall.”

Regional councillors called the move “childish.”

“This is nothing more than the government overstepping its boundaries,” Councillor Gurpreet Dhillon said. “Telling people they don’t know what they are doing and that the government needs to hold their hand? Our residents are smarter than that.

“If we don’t like an article, we got to be big boys and big girls and suck it up,” he added.

Councillor Grant Gibson said he doesn’t think the motion is a big deal.

The Guardian has published several articles in recent years bringing into sharper focus how elected officials, bogged down by petty squabbles and a host of legal battles and investigations, have handled important files facing Canada’s ninth-largest city.

That coverage includes the mishandling of a historic downtown development deal, which has landed the city in legal trouble, as well as a massive restructuring of the civil service and a divisive debate on light-rail transit.

On Wednesday, councillors targeted an article published earlier this week about the city’s exclusion from a proposed high-speed rail line between Toronto and Windsor.

Councillors who criticized the province for “ignoring Brampton” were asked to provide examples of their advocacy for expanded transit during their time on council. No examples were provided.

Regional Councillor Elaine Moore told the committee that councillors decided not to provide detailed responses to the Guardian’s questions “because it was obvious the story wasn’t going to be accurate or representative of the way we have done business around this table for a good number of years.”

Moore said the motion Wednesday “puts the media on notice,” suggesting it’s a fundamental responsibility of councillors to hold the press accountable.

“When you send me questions, they are going to go on the website, and so too are my responses,” Moore said.

Just a few months ago, Moore and others on council penned a letter praising the Guardian’s reporting on a $28.5-million lawsuit against the city filed by a developer over the contentious city hall expansion.

“Since assigning Peter Criscione to cover city hall, there has been a consistent and marked improvement in the thoroughness of reporting,” Moore wrote in the letter to the Guardian late last year.

“When errors are brought to his attention, he is quick to make any corrections. It is clear that he tries to present the facts and to write balanced stories. It is unfortunate that the reporting at the time of the SWQ decision did not probe staff and councillors to demand information on the details needed to make sure Brampton taxpayers were getting the best financial deal possible.”