If Tom Vegh is re-elected on 26 October 2026 for a third term on the public payroll as Newmarket’s Deputy Mayor and Regional Councillor, he’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. 
Most people don’t spend their time thinking about municipal elections which allows shallow and mediocre full-time politicians like Tom Vegh to prosper and thrive.
He avoids debate. He knows his embellished record would be taken apart if he were on a debate stage with a well-briefed challenger like Dr Mohsen Alavi who, memorably, told Newmarket Today:
Newmarket should have “an expert voice at the table, not a quiet one.”
Vegh relies on huge name recognition. Vegh has been on the public payroll for over twenty years in one form or another. No-one is quite sure what he has done but he’s been around for so long they believe he must have done something.
Carpet Bombing
His strategy is to carpet-bomb the Town with hundreds of lawn signs using money borrowed from the banks.
He benefits from the incumbency effect. Years of attending events – allegedly 900+ in the 2022-2026 council term – with support paid for by the Town with a brief to project his image and avoid controversy.
And, on top of all that, elected officials who’ve known the real Tom Vegh for years make no comment about his absences, his disengagement and silence at Council and Committee meetings or the absurdity of him touting himself as “a leader you can count on”.
And why did Vegh choose not to speak in a lengthy York Regional Council debate on 29 September 2022 on the funding of the Inn From the Cold (where he was Executive Director) on a motion brought forward by the Town’s Mayor, John Taylor? This is truly baffling. I asked the Mayor if he quizzed Vegh about his silence but that’s information Taylor is not willing to share.
Eight Years without authoring a single motion for debate
It is worth repeating that, in eight years on York Regional Council, Vegh has not authored and brought forward a single motion for debate. 
In the entire 2022-2026 term of York Regional Council when there were 85 council and committee of the whole meetings the press reported him speaking in eight.
On 28 September 2023 he was one of two regional councillors voting against spending $4.3M on asylum seeker services. On 7 December 2023 he spoke about car thefts in his neighbourhood and he returned to this subject on 30 May 2024. On 7 November 2024 he said he wanted more visible police patrols and on 6 November 2025 he said he supported civilian staff handling various tasks that would otherwise take an officer off front line duty. Half his reported comments over the four-year period were about the police.
On 10 April 2025 on a debate on provincial funding shortfalls for health and human services, Vegh talked about the burden on regional taxpayers saying:
“The residents of York Region (are) very compassionate and caring but not at any cost.”
On 27 November 2025 he supported a $25M contribution by York Region to York university’s medical school. On 9 April 2026 he talked about the importance of clean water. And on 9 April 2026 he wondered aloud if development charge reductions would lower house prices or increase developers’ profits.
And that’s it.
Checking the Transcripts
Of course, Vegh could have spoken on a range of hot button issues that were not picked up by the press but AI now allows us to generate transcripts of videos of meetings and check on Vegh’s contributions. (That assumes the videos are posted on-line and have not been taken down.)
I pick one at random – 26 October 2023 – and ask ChatGPT to import the 1hr 13m video code and transcribe it, highlighting Vegh’s contributions. As is so often the case, Vegh moves the adoption of some minutes but AI tells me it finds:
“No substantive debate contribution by Vegh identified in this review. Neither transcription pass identified a substantive exchange introduced or otherwise attributed to him.”
Vegh wants us to believe he is a diligent Deputy Mayor and Regional Councillor only missing two meetings of the Newmarket and York Regional Councils in this 2022-2024 term. He missed 18. He missed 21% of the meetings of the Lake Simcoe Conservation Authority. 23% of the Lake Simcoe Foundation Board from 2022 to 2024 – when he came off. He missed 18.5% of the meetings of the York Region Rapid Transit Board. He sits on all these bodies because he is a Regional Councillor.
What matters is not his attendance record per se but the contribution he makes when he’s there. Did he shape and lead the discussion or did he just gaze out the window?