Brampton taxpayers unwittingly bankrolling Patrick Brown’s misinformation campaigns as mayor continues his lies

"BILLIONS IN NEW FUNDING COMING TO BRAMPTON"

The statement screams out from the bottom of Mayor Patrick Brown’s Spring 2025 newsletter; bold white text against a red background. It’s an eye-catching banner for Brampton residents desperate for investments in a city that has been chronically ignored by all three levels of government for years. 

For more than six years, Brown has promised to change this. 

“Billions” are spilling out for Peel Memorial’s long awaited expansion into a second hospital and a tunnelled LRT into downtown, the newsletter proclaims. These investments would be a game-changer for Brampton. 

If Brown was telling the truth. 

Following a pattern he has exhibited since his arrival in the city in 2018, Brown’s 2025 newsletter is bloated with misleading information and vague government commitments, none of which come with the billions of dollars he continues to promise.

His stretching of the truth has reached comical heights in a city where GO Train passengers openly mock the announcement that describes Brampton’s downtown as the “innovation district”, one of Brown’s many howlers.  

One of the buildings where Brown promised to house part of his cutting edge innovation precinct has sat empty for years with hoarding that promises the transformation is coming soon.

There is not much innovation in Brampton’s Innovation District. 

(Bobbe Hayes)

Prior to that it was the “Downtown Reimagined” plan that residents were promised, before those billboards were taken down with nothing to show for a project Brown eventually cancelled when he froze the city’s budget.

One of the billboards that was eventually removed from downtown Brampton after the promised “transformation” was cancelled by Patrick Brown. He then renamed the area the Brampton “Innovation District”. Meanwhile, residents continue to question why a decaying city centre would be misleadingly labelled to suggest a Silicon Valley-style redevelopment has taken place.

(The Pointer files)

On the front page of Brown’s newsletter is the “groundbreaking ceremony” for Peel Memorial’s Phase-2 expansion held on March 28. The event “signals the beginning of the dream of better care, closer to home, becoming a reality”.

Except it remains unclear what actually began after the announcement; and why it was called a groundbreaking, when the project still hasn’t even been funded by the provincial government. 

The entire event, attended by PC MPPs and Doug Ford, staged in an election campaign-style promotional setting, was held before the provincial government and William Osler had even chosen a builder for the redevelopment. An RFP for the project closed on April 25, nearly a full month after the so-called groundbreaking. That did not stop the politicians and dignitaries from sticking their shovels in the ground and tossing dirt that had been brought in for the photo-op into the air to mark the “beginning of construction”. They knew there was no major construction work set to begin.

According to Frank Martino, President and CEO of William Osler Health System, the organization that operates Brampton Civic Hospital, Peel Memorial and Etobicoke General in Toronto, the event signalled the beginning of “early” construction. 

During a teletown hall meeting on May 21, Scott Patterson, Osler’s VP of Facilities, Operations and Capital Development, explained that site preparations, the construction of a temporary road and underground servicing are currently underway. No further timelines for construction of the actual facility were provided. 

“The key dates are subject to change and pending additional approval,” he stated. 

If early construction is underway, then surely the provincial government has committed funding for the project in its latest budget? 

No. 

Despite Brown’s claim in the newsletter that the government has committed “nearly $2 billion towards this vital project”, it remains unclear where he got this figure from. There is no line item included in the recently released provincial budget for Peel Memorial Phase II. The government has refused to answer questions from The Pointer about when money will begin to flow. 

Mayor Brown did not respond to requests for comment for this story, leaving his $2 billion claim, like so many others he has made, a mystery. The provincial press release following the March announcement indicated Queen's Park had provided only $46.8 million in capital funding, to help get preliminary plans for the Peel Memorial Phase II project off the ground. This does not include any money for the actual construction of a new building, which still has not been budgeted by the provincial government, and, as of last month, was still waiting for a builder.

Misleading residents is a common theme for Brown. 

In 2022, he had failed to provide funding to execute an approved partnership to bring a postsecondary institution led by the University of Guelph and Humber College to the city. They pulled out and sent a letter to council explaining that failures under Brown’s leadership to meet requirements City Hall was supposed to address, forced them to pull out of the deal. 

Brown then went on a local TV show and blatantly lied about the failed project which collapsed due to his mismanagement. 

He claimed six councillors who had begun to criticize Brown’s authoritarian leadership style and questionable use of taxpayer dollars had cancelled the project during a council meeting. There was no such meeting and no such motion to cancel the approved partnership. 

The host of the TV show, Yudhvir Jaswal, replied: “No, no, no, you are just trying to confuse.” He said there was no such council vote. “They (Guelph-Humber) pulled out”. He had the letter and accused Brown of “dropping the ball”.

“I watched the video of the (TV) interview and I was astounded by the number of lies that came out of Patrick Brown’s mouth,” Jeff Bowman, a councillor at the time, said. “There is no motion to cancel any dealings with Guelph-Humber.”

In January of this year, during contentious discussions about an unprecedented budget request from Peel Regional Police, Brown successfully convinced regional councillors not to back a motion from Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish to limit the Peel Police budget increase to just 14 percent—the police were seeking (and received) 23.3 percent, $144 million extra, which is now built into the base police budget. 

Brown used figures to justify the need for the extra $144 million to hire additional staff but his numbers made little sense, unlike figures Mayor Parrish had brought forward moments before to show the new hires could easily be accommodated with a much lower budget increase. Brown failed to explain the errors in his math. 

He pulled a similar stunt in 2023 when the province was considering breaking apart Peel Region. He claimed to have financial reports and analysis to justify keeping the upper-tier municipality intact, despite refusing to make what other politicians described as the “phantom” report public.

He also repeated a blatantly false claim he had made throughout the 2025 police budget process, that Priority 1 911 calls are not being responded to by Peel Police, which would be a grave professional failure. His false claims of the force’s failure to respond to emergency calls due to a lack of resources were contradicted by Peel Police data and a November press release by the force (which appears to have been removed from the PRP website, but can be viewed here). It noted that implementation of Next Gen 911 (a system that modernized the call-taking process for 911 dispatchers) had reduced wait times by 80 percent in 2024 while there was a 92 percent increase in the number of calls answered within 15 seconds. In direct contradiction to his later claims, Brown held a press conference when the good news data was released on November 19. He stood alongside Peel Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah, and Brown boasted they were returning peace of mind to residents who “know that if they call 911, there’s going to be someone on the other end of the phone, ready to help.”

Two months later, when trying to convince taxpayers they had to give $144 million extra to Peel Police, a 23.3 percent increase in one year, he told them the opposite, that their calls were going unanswered. No report has been brought to the police board suggesting this is the case, which would be a massive public safety failure in Peel. 

Then there was the claim during the COVID-19 pandemic that Osler had done more testing in Brampton than anywhere else, which was the opposite of the truth. He was later caught lying about his behaviour after being discovered by a TV crew playing pick-up hockey with friends at a City-owned arena when such activities were barred and the facility was supposed to be closed during the pandemic lockdown.

It followed a pattern that preceded his time in Brampton. 

Just after his expulsion from the provincial PC caucus when he was the party leader in 2018, following allegations of sexual assault which Brown denies, the Ontario Integrity Commissioner issued an alarming report from Queen’s Park. Brown breached the Member’s Integrity Act four times by failing to disclose certain rental income, as well as a $375,000 loan he received from a Brampton man who would later be handed a nomination to run in the 2018 provincial election. Commissioner David Wake found Brown’s omission was not an accident. 

“It is clear to me that the non-disclosure was deliberate and not through inadvertence,” he wrote. In other words, Brown lied.

The list goes on.

During the last term, Brown claimed he had received a commitment from Ford for a third hospital in the City. Ford’s office confirmed this was not true (Brampton still only has one hospital).  

Brown insisted the Ontario government was in favour of routing the proposed Highway 413 through Brampton’s "boulevard" design for Heritage Heights—something the Ministry of Transportation repeatedly denied. He tried to convince residents his hand-picked selection for chief administrative officer, David Barrick, who was eventually let go by the same majority group of councillors who began to question the mayor’s leadership last term, had not been implicated in a hiring scandal in Niagara Region–he was. During the 2022 municipal election campaign he repeated the lies about the reason why Guelph-Humber had pulled out of the partnership to establish a campus in downtown Brampton.

Brown claimed the Ontario Ombudsman had cleared him and his City Hall allies of allegations of wrongdoing including his scandal-plagued Brampton University scheme that awarded hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to close friends and associates of his and fellow Councillor Rowena Santos. This was not true. The Ombudsman had urged the opposite, telling council to reopen the half dozen investigations into the allegedly corrupt behaviour which Brown had cancelled.

The litany of lies and misleading information has made it difficult for Brampton residents to know how their tax dollars are being spent by a mayor who has made it clear he has no interest in being in the city–Brown has twice tried to re-enter federal politics while serving as mayor, and hid his use of City Hall staff both times. 

For Duff Conacher, the co-founder of Democracy Watch, this type of behaviour should be a warning sign for voters, when politicians with a checkered history are on the ballot.

“They made the ethical choice that, ‘I’m more concerned about getting into power than I am concerned about my moral compass.’”

The second page of Brown’s Spring newsletter is emblazoned with the same “BILLIONS IN NEW FUNDING COMING TO BRAMPTON” banner. 

The pages are filled with promises from upper levels of government made when both the provincial PCs and the federal Liberals were gearing up for the recent elections. 

Brown claims the provincial government has committed to tunneling a four-kilometre stretch of the Hurontario LRT into downtown Brampton, a project that will cost more than $3 billion. Ford pledged to get the project done in a January press conference at Brampton City Hall. Despite his announcement, when the 2025 budget was presented following the election, no money was included for the Brampton LRT. 

The Pointer asked during the January campaign stop when the municipality would see the funds flow to make the project a reality. Ford replied: "We don't have an exact figure, but we will be getting that exact figure." 

When asked if he would include the money for the ambitious project in the 2025 budget if re-elected, he sidestepped again: "Yes, once we get the exact numbers, we'll make them public."

The 2025 budget includes no line item for Brampton’s tunnelled LRT, only noting the provincial government “plans to study options to tunnel the Brampton portion of the segment.” There has been no environmental assessment to determine if a tunnel through the Etobicoke Creek watershed is even feasible. 

Brown’s newsletter also falsely claims the federal government has partnered with the City on the downtown LRT project. It includes photos from an election-style announcement at the end of March, shortly before the federal election was launched. It shows Brampton councillors and MPs smiling in front of a large sign proclaiming: “Brampton’s tunnelled LRT is on the way”. 

This announcement also came without any funding commitment attached. The federal government was simply making Brampton officials aware of a grant program the city is eligible for.  

“No specific monetary commitment was made to the LRT expansion project as part of the (CPTF) Metro-Region Agreement stream announcement on March 21, 2025,” a spokesperson from the Ministry of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada (HICC) told The Pointer at the time.

The federal government committed $106 million to transit needs in Brampton earlier this year; but it remains unclear how that funding will be used. The LRT was not mentioned in the press release announcing this funding. 

“Patrick Brown’s most recent newsletter is worse than bait and switch—it is flat out and blatantly lying to taxpayers,” former Brampton councillor Elaine Moore tells The Pointer. 

Former councillor Elaine Moore (right), supported Patrick Brown during his campaign for mayor in 2018. She has since turned into one of his harshest critics after scandals and mismanagement unfolded inside Brampton City Hall immediately upon Brown’s arrival.

(The Pointer files)

The creation of the newsletter and how it could pass through different levels of municipal staff oversight without being fact-checked illustrates the control Brown has over employees and councillors inside City Hall. 

City officials refused to explain how the newsletter was drafted or who wrote the copy included in the Spring 2025 version. 

The City of Brampton budget does not specifically break out the cost of the newsletter, which is sent out three times a year (Spring, Summer and Fall editions). The section outlining the Mayor and Council operating budget shows taxpayers bankroll $650,000 for advertising, marketing and promotions for the mayor and council, and in 2025, they are covering an additional $139,000 for “Community Outreach”. It remains unclear which of these budget lines includes the costs of the 2025 newsletters. 

Reporting by The Pointer in 2021 revealed Brampton taxpayers covered $93,425.42, excluding tax, for newsletter communications. During the 2021 budget process, Brown demanded there be no increase in overall spending in order to achieve his third consecutive budget freeze, but the newsletter budget was increased dramatically to $303,000 to accommodate four digital newsletters per year, beginning in fall 2021. This was more than three times what was spent in 2020.

The questionable costs extend beyond the physical creation of these newsletters, as City staff are involved. 

Staff did not answer questions about whether the drafting of the newsletter is the responsibility of Mayor Brown’s office or if the Corporate Communication department is involved in any way.

Municipal staff are not paid to support the agendas of local politicians. Instead, their salaries are to ensure taxpayers receive the best services possible. 

Separate staff under a separate budget specific to the Office of the Mayor and councillors are paid for duties such as handling the communications of a politician. 

Under Brown, these lines became blurred years ago, including direct involvement in the hiring of the man tasked to handle the City’s corporate communications. 

Information revealed by The Pointer through the Freedom of Information process previously showed that Brown spent nearly $40,000 on hiring firm Feldman Daxon Partners Inc. to hire Jason Tamming as the director of corporate communications. The same firm was paid just over $30,000 to hire Barrick. Both men were implicated in the Niagara Region hiring scandal exposed by the Ontario Ombudsman in a report titled “Inside Job”. 

While Tamming attempted to mislead the Brampton public about his role in the high-profile scandal, he was eventually fired after a majority of councillors pushed back against Mayor Brown last term, declaring democracy was “under siege” in the city due to his leadership. It triggered a widespread departure of numerous staff members at City Hall who were known to be loyal to the mayor including individuals he had handpicked for prominent positions. The City’s integrity commissioner Muneeza Sheikh, who was associated with Brown prior to her hiring and eventually cleared him in her investigation into his pick-up hockey scandal, was one of those let go last term. She ignored key pieces of evidence implicating him and suggesting he had violated council’s Code of Conduct. Brown had selected Sheikh for the role after he used an image of them together in an earlier campaign pamphlet; she publicly spoke of his positive qualities when his political career collapsed following the allegations of sexual assault. Those allegations have never been withdrawn, despite Brown’s misleading claims to the contrary.

Patrick Brown being questioned by Rebel News after being caught at a pick-up hockey game in 2020 when such activities were banned due to pandemic restrictions.

(Rebel News)

After Brown was reelected and most of his former council opponents either stepped aside or were defeated, Tamming was rehired, despite legal complications in Niagara Region for his corrupt behaviour while working there. Sheikh, despite evidence of exorbitant billing practices that saw Brampton taxpayers pay seven times more for her work compared to past integrity commissioners, was also rehired.

“Brampton residents have cut this mayor and council way too much slack and he’s taking advantage of their goodwill by treating us like we’re stupid,” Moore says. “It’s disgraceful and Brampton deserves better.”

In an op-ed published in The Pointer ahead of the October 2018 election, Brown wrote: “Our property taxes are now higher than the City of Toronto! Enough. Working with my council colleagues, we will put an end to the wasteful taxation and spending practices that have made Brampton among the most expensive cities in the GTA…As your mayor, I will lead a culture shift in the mayor’s office and bring back respect for your hard-earned tax dollars.”

The statements were a main reason many Bramptonians placed their X beside his name instead of incumbent Linda Jeffrey. 

Inheriting a City Hall in turmoil after years of spending scandals under former mayor Susan Fennell, Jeffrey was unable to bring council together. Instead of completing projects the municipality desperately needed—transit, downtown revitalization, economic development and major  investments in institutions, residents watched their tax dollars flow to private limos and lavish trips under Fennell, while Jeffrey spent four years fighting among a split council. 

A poll commissioned by The Pointer in 2018 and completed by Forum Research found the top concern of voters at the time was high property taxes, just above crime and safety. 

The bold promises by Brown, delivered with the convincing prose of a seasoned politician, were a breath of fresh air for frustrated voters. 

They are still waiting for him to deliver. 

With a firm grip on City communications; a majority of councillors supporting him or refusing to speak up; and key staff members at City Hall silent about all the failures, Brown uses Brampton taxpayer dollars to promote his political brand, as staff work daily to push out social media spots and get him in front of TV news cameras.

An analysis of Brown’s expense reports since 2022 shows the Mayor has spent nearly $380,000 of taxpayer money on social media management and content creation.

A large chunk of this funding goes to Solarit Solutions for either “social media campaigns and online content development” or “database building, management and audience engagement”. Since December 2022 the company has received $187,640 from Brampton taxpayers for Brown’s social media use. 

This is the same company he paid for social media work in his failed 2022 leadership run during the Conservative Party of Canada campaign. He used Brampton taxpayer money for that as well in an apparent violation of federal election laws. He was disqualified from the race, but Brampton taxpayers still paid tens of thousands of dollars for his vast social media presence throughout 2022. 

Zyn Media then received $88,531 while Ibrahim Group was given $72,736 since July 2023 for “social media monitoring”. Brown’s office did not respond to questions seeking clarification on what this work entails and how it benefits the taxpayers of Brampton. 

Another $30,497 has been paid to Piphany Capital Corp. for “website content”. 

This could refer to posts on Mayor Brown’s website—servingbrampton.ca—which hosts announcements and written missives about cultural celebrations and City events (similar to the news releases created by the City’s Corporate Communications department). The site is also filled with similar misleading information as Brown’s newsletter. 

A February post on the site details Brown’s “State of the City” address given to the Brampton Board of Trade. While these events are often used as a chance for mayors to detail plans for the future and strategies for addressing challenges facing the municipality, Brown seized the opportunity to pepper those in attendance with misleading statements. 

Referencing the LRT and the “tunnel we’re getting in the downtown”—the project still has no dedicated funding commitment from any level of government—he claimed, “I’m not sure I am supposed to share the total investment, but I can, $2.8 billion being invested in our community. $2.8 billion…This is a game changer for our downtown.”

As confirmed by the federal government, no money has been committed to the tunnelled LRT project. The province refuses to say when and if it will provide dollars for the project aside from studying its feasibility. 

Brown did not respond when asked about the $2.8 billion figure he used. 

“Let’s not fool ourselves into believing that these are the only two things he is lying about. What about the Riverwalk flood mitigation project? What about the cricket stadium? What about an electrified transit fleet?” Moore questions. “Residents are finding it impossible to tell the difference between fact and fiction when it comes to messages from Brown’s office.”

For Duff Conacher, the co-founder of Democracy Watch, who has been pushing for increased accountability in government for over 30 years, there is a clear reason Brown is able to continue to lie and get away with it. 

“It’s the Trump effect…They all know the media has a default position of reporting what the leader says, whether it’s a mayor, a premier or a prime minister or cabinet minister…They’ve watched Trump do it, get away with it, and get reelected doing it, so what’s the disincentive?”

The current mechanism at City Hall meant to hold Brown accountable for such behaviour is the Council Code of Conduct. At least three provisions in the code are meant to prevent a member of council from knowingly misleading, or lying to residents. 

Rule 9 states: “Members shall endeavour to conduct and convey Council business and all their duties in an open and transparent manner.” 

Rule 10 states councillors will “accurately communicate the decisions of Brampton’s Council, even if they disagree with a majority decision of Council so that there is respect for and integrity in the decision making processes of Council”; and Rule 15 notes, “As leaders in the community, members are held to a higher standard of behaviour and conduct, and accordingly their behaviour should be exemplary.”

Residents who might want to hold the mayor accountable must file a complaint with the Integrity Commissioner—Sheikh, who was handpicked by Brown, and has close connections to him. Connacher was one of the accountability experts who said she should never have taken the job.

He says the municipal accountability system, which employs integrity commissioners hired by the very council members who approve their payments and will be investigated by them, is a “sad joke”. 

“Get rid of all these people, it’s a joke, a sad joke, they have a conflict of interest every time they make a ruling.”

He acknowledges that the changes being proposed by Premier Ford to standardize a Council Code of Conduct for all of Ontario, is a small step, but is not enough as it still relies on municipally-appointed ICs.

“He’s going halfway, and halfway is still going to be a sad joke.”

The type of behaviour frequently exhibited by Brown is a main driver of why so many are apathetic about politics and government today, Connacher says, resulting in low voter turnout as more and more people throw up their hands in frustration. Elections Canada data show 69.5 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the April federal election, a decline from the turnouts of 75 percent or more observed in the 1970s and 80s.

For municipal elections, incumbent politicians like Brown have to worry about fewer and fewer voters. In 2022, less than 25 percent of the city’s eligible electors bothered to cast a ballot.

Connacher expresses his own frustration with the recent numbers. 

“Why would you watch it? You know the one side is lying, you know the other side is lying, you’re not sure how. So why would you watch that? Why wouldn’t you just watch a TV show? It’s the same thing, it’s all fiction.”

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