Radio silence on Brampton's 2025 budget: Patrick Brown’s plans to revive his national profile ignore city business

Amid growing social problems, major projects hanging in the balance and unprecedented levels of financial precarity for many residents, the City of Brampton has provided nothing in the way of a financial blueprint for the coming year.

Neighbouring municipalities have forged ahead. Mississauga’s 2025 budget was provisionally approved at the end of November (with possible amendments next year); Caledon’s is slated for approval tomorrow (December 17) and The Region of Peel is actively working through its budget, although talks appeared to have stalled until the new year following a move by Mississauga councillors that delayed the process.

Other cities and towns across Ontario have held public consultations while council budget committees have deliberated on the various decisions to determine community priorities and set the financial plan for next year.

Brampton has scheduled no dates to discuss the budget in open council and it appears the City has eliminated its Budget Committee. There is no indication from Mayor Patrick Brown when he will be introducing the 2025 financial blueprint under new Strong Mayor Powers. 

The new budget process under the special authority granted by the PC government to the head of council allows Brown to bring forward a budget, followed by an amendment process that allows councillors to make changes. According to the provincial legislation, after receiving the proposed budget from the mayor, council has a 30-day review period to make amendments. After that, the mayor has 10 days from the end of the council review period to veto any council amendment. From there, within a 15-day window after the veto period, council can override the mayor’s veto of an amendment if two-thirds of members agree.

The City’s official website announced that “Budget 2025 is underway.” The “Key Dates” section mentions that Mayor Patrick Brown, along with councilors and staff members, will host a series of public engagement opportunities. These sessions aim to gather insights into the priorities of Brampton residents, businesses, community groups and local stakeholders. However, no specific dates for these engagements have been provided.

The practice in Brampton for decades saw public consultations and budget committee meetings held throughout the fall with final budget approval typically before Christmas; in election years this usually happened early in the new year.

But as has been the case around transparency inside City Hall since Brown’s election in 2018, the public has witnessed the steady erosion of accountability. The 2025 budget process, or the lack of one, is the latest example.  

“Details will be posted as scheduled,” the City website claims.

The Pointer emailed the City’s communication department and councillors about any indication of when they are planning to hold a meeting for the 2025 budget and on which dates specifically.

The communications team, responsible for keeping the public informed, did not respond. It is supervised by controversial head Jason Tamming, who was fired from Niagara following corrupt behaviour in a hiring scandal there, then was no longer in his Brampton position at the end of last term when a majority group of councillors raised concerns about hiring under Brown’s leadership.

He has shown little interest in the business of the city since becoming mayor. The Council calendar this year has been alarmingly bare and agendas for meetings that are held have very little city business on them, despite critical issues facing Brampton residents, including an underfunded transit system struggling to meet demand and the future of a light rail transit system that Brown claimed five years ago was on track to get funding from higher levels of government. There have been few updates. 

The mayor promised a new standalone university, but that plan has disappeared since Brown was implicated in a scandal involving payments to a friend for work that was never done; he then cancelled a series of external investigations called by councillors last term. 

Residents have been kept in the dark about the status of the Riverwalk project, which is years overdue and was supposed to reimagine the entire central area of the city while finally allowing development in the floodplain thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars in investments that were supposed to move forward. 

It’s a similar story for the redevelopment of the city centre, after Brown cancelled the Downtown Reimagined program immediately after first becoming mayor, to make good on his promise to slash the city’s budget to keep it flat.

Major transit projects have been delayed. His promise to build a world class cricket stadium has been forgotten (reports that staff said would be presented have never materialized). Brown’s claims of building an “innovation district” and the billboards around City Hall announcing its arrival, have not been met with action, funding or any signs in budget documents of how the plan will be achieved. 

Brown spent much of last term planning his exit from the city, and his recent testimony in front of Parliamentarians investigating India’s interference in Canadian elections included his accounts of criss-crossing the country to win the federal Conservative leadership in 2022, working around the clock, when he refused to take a leave from his paid role as mayor.

The lack of attention to city business has continued under his leadership this term, as Brown floods media with commentary on issues that have nothing to do with Brampton’s transit woes, his promise of bringing a new university to the city, badly needed infrastructure, his vow to build a world class sports facility, opening an LRT line, redeveloping the struggling downtown, finally getting a desperately needed second hospital, fixing the flood problem preventing development and many other pressing issues.  

Speaking with The Pointer on December 11, Brampton Councillor Martin Medeiros who represents Wards 3 and 4 said the 2025 budget is expected to be discussed at the next council meeting on January 14. 

Brampton’s Council meeting on December 11. There is no indication when the 2025 budget will be discussed.

(Muhammad Hamza/The Pointer)

This lack of progress on next year’s budget raises several questions about the funding for major projects around the city. It also leaves residents in limbo as they await news of what impact any potential tax increase will have on their household finances. 

With the budget completely in the hands of Brown, it remains to be seen whether he will continue with the financial strategy he has deployed since arriving in 2018. The budget was frozen for the first three years devastating city coffers and delaying major investments. 

Brampton has fallen behind other large Canadian cities. It is the only one without its own standalone university. Its bus fleet still relies on heavily polluting diesel vehicles while municipalities such as Mississauga have invested in hybrid and electric buses. Brown refused to help fund a second hospital despite a healthcare emergency declaration in the city, which has less than half the per-capita number of hospital beds compared to the rest of Ontario.

He has failed to fund local social services, beyond what the Region of Peel is mandated to support, despite rising homelessness in the city.

Brown’s budget freeze strategy was popular among some residents, but contradicted the City of Brampton’s previous financial strategy which called for reasonable tax increases to keep up with the rapidly growing city and its aging infrastructure. Initiatives such as the downtown extension of the Hurontario LRT, the Riverwalk flood mitigation project and the long-promised expansion of Peel Memorial into a full-service hospital have all suffered. Despite the badly needed hospital investment, Brown was opposed to a special tax to help raise funds for Peel Memorial’s expansion because it contradicted a campaign slogan he used during his failed plan to become Conservative Party of Canada leader, when he ran as the mayor who “balanced budgets while freezing taxes”. 

Brampton is facing several major social challenges including homelessness, intimate partner violence, mental health crises and human trafficking, as well as the sexual exploitation of young international students, but Brown has failed to combat any of these local problems while focusing on getting his profile as a national politician back on track since he was disqualified from the 2022 CPC leadership race (he was previously dropped as PC leader in Ontario following allegations of acquaintance rape and sexual assault, which he denies).

The city also faces financial uncertainty around the downloading of regional services, as Brampton will take on responsibility for roads currently owned by Peel, with other services possibly moving over to City Hall.

Last year, The Pointer reported that Brampton’s 2024 budget proposed by Mayor Brown, faced significant criticism for neglecting essential infrastructure and long-term planning. The budget did not include a crucial ten-year capital plan, which Brown axed shortly after becoming mayor, hindering the City's ability to prepare for future infrastructure demands (almost all large municipalities have one to set longer term financial planning).

Additionally, key services, including bridge repairs, parks maintenance, forestry, and recreation, have experienced significant underfunding, despite the urgent needs identified in the City’s 2022 State of the Local Infrastructure (SOLI) Report.

It suggested that Brampton libraries, recreation facilities and the vehicle fleet have the highest number of assets classified as being in poor condition, requiring immediate maintenance. Despite this, these departments experienced budget reductions in capital funding during the previous fiscal year under Brown's administration.

He has also scrapped major transit infrastructure investments, leading to the current capacity problems, one of the many trade-offs to keep budgets flat. One area that has grown dramatically is staffing to support the mayor, his office, his various self-promotional activities and his extensive media and social media campaigns which largely market the mayor as a politician. 

Meanwhile, several major projects promised by Brown, such as the cricket stadium (which still lacks funding or any update), the Brampton University project (which ultimately failed following an investigation by The Pointer that uncovered serious concerns about questionable spending), the revitalization of downtown and the extension of Mississauga’s LRT into Brampton, remain a mystery.

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