The week of April 29 was a routine one in County publishing. CountyFM’s The Grapevine interviewed Mark Johnson of Save Our History. This newspaper featured an account of the Hotel Confidential exhibit at The Royal Hotel. And The Times ran one of its story + editorial hit jobs, this one targeting the Unaffordable Housing Corporation.

As I said, routine.

Recent Times targets include Steve Ferguson — a good mayor for about a week during the pandemic, he went downhill after that. Gifted with a “broad sweep of powers and authority” — that made me laugh — he was “guided by an insight only he could see or understand” (April 19). 

Mr. Conroy is a lively writer who, like many such, braids the true and the false. But while most great storytellers spin their straw into gold, Mr. Conroy prefers the reverse alchemy: he takes the gold and decimates it. A favourite theme is the bungling at Shire Hall, of both councillors and staff. If they spend our money like water, incompetence is the source of every expense. Hundreds of kilometers of crumbling roads that eat the majority of every year’s budget? Blame the CAO! Expensive, aging waterworks plants in both Wellington and Picton at full capacity? Blame the Mayor! Lack of provincial funding? It’s the staff! Not just overpaid, but inept!

But. Back to April 29. One signal accomplishment of the Mayor’s second term — and there were a few — was securing $45 million from the province to repave the entirety of Highway 49.

In Mr. Conroy’s hands, this windfall is just another disaster.  “We have a lot of money going out this year,” he quotes the finance director as saying. Then he continues:

“The County has committed to funding a portion of the rehabilitation of County Road 49. The last estimate put that project at $54 million, [$52.3 million, but who’s counting] of which the province has committed a large share,” he notes, suddenly at a loss for the actual amount.

In fact, the County will pay $7.8 million, a sum budgeted years ago, and a fraction of the $45 million secured from the province. But the object, dear reader, has nothing to do with 49. It is to weaponize the Mayor’s win in Mr. Conroy’s crusade against the Affordable Housing Corporation. Because we must repave 49 this year, the story goes, we cannot afford the AHC.

After this item, in a Comment called “The Five,” Mr. Conroy calls the five councillors who sit on the board of the AHC “hucksters for a rickety ponzi scheme….so deep in they have come to believe their own bovine excrement.”

The column crosses the line that separates defining from defaming. The Times regularly crosses this line, but Councillor Phil St-Jean, another of Mr. Conroy’s regular targets, has finally had enough. In Council last week, he took a point of personal privilege to address the attack. 

This was appropriate because Mr. St-Jean’s complaints were not directed at Mr. Conroy. They concerned his fellow councillor, Corey Engelsdorfer, publisher of The Times.

“What makes these comments particularly egregious …is the fact that one of our Council members has allowed these false claims to be published,” he said.

“A member of this Council is a party to these kinds of malicious, slanderous, and libelous comments.” Noting the accusations “are not factually supported in any way,” he concluded, “falsely accusing Council members, or anyone for that matter, of operating a criminal operation to defraud the community should never be tolerated.” 

Unfounded personal attacks on a public platform contravene both federal and provincial libel laws.

“Councillor Engelsdorfer,” asked St-Jean, “as the publisher of The Times, do you not believe you have an obligation to print the truth? Do you not believe you have a responsibility to ensure what you publish is factually correct and does not intentionally cause harm to anyone?”

What was the answer to these excellent questions? First came Mr. Engelsdorfer’s total lack of awareness that as the publisher of libelous accusations about five of his colleagues in his own newspaper he had done anything wrong. 

“A heads-up would have been nice that this was coming to me,” he said.

And then, “It would have been nice to reach out to me personally instead of doing this in a public forum like this,” he said, again apparently blissfully unaware that a newspaper that claims a circulation of 5000 every week is a public forum that more than rivals a Tuesday evening council meeting. 

“I’m not going to get into it tonight because I don’t think this is the right place to do it.” 

Of course, in one light, this heedlessness is understandable: The Times is rarely called to account for its deliberate spreading of misinformation, week in and week out.

Except that Mr. Engelsdorfer went on to explain, or rather complain,  “we have been doing this for four years now already, talking about my newspaper. We’ve done it in closed sessions, we’ve done it out here, when does it stop? Honestly!” 

Four years, in other words, of complaints and discussion have done nothing to move the hapless councillor to acknowledge the clear conflict of his overlapping roles, at once newspaper publisher and elected representative. He can and does use his platform to champion his and Mr. Conroy’s views, discredit the councillors who oppose them, and sway large numbers of people — his voters — to see things a certain way. Facts are rarely allowed to get in the way of this enterprise.

Nor have the past four years helped Mr. Engelsdorfer to understand the roles and responsibilities of either position. “It was an opinion piece signed by Rick Conroy, so it has nothing to do with me,” he said. Instead, we are to feel sorry for him. “I’m a business owner, just trying to run a business with an opinionated writer.”

I have news for Mr. Engelsdorfer. As the publisher of a newspaper he is responsible for every word and every image in his publication. Every letter. Every headline. Every story. 

Under Canada’s and Ontario’s libel, slander, and defamation laws, a newspaper is responsible for everything that it publishes, regardless of where it came from. A publisher is liable for defamation even if he is not the source of the statements published, doesn’t agree with them, or did not know they were defamatory. It doesn’t matter whether libelous statements were made in an anonymous letter, an op-ed, a headline, or a crossword puzzle — a newspaper is accountable for everything it prints.

It is about time The Times was held to account.