‘A confusing mess’: Why did the City of Brampton take $1.2 billion from taxpayers, but then never use it?

Brampton residents have desperately waited years for the completion of major city projects, after routinely facing cancelled bus routes, an overcrowded transit system, failed downtown revitalization plans and deteriorating city infrastructure. Now, taxpayers are wondering why Mayor Patrick Brown and senior staff failed to explain how $1.2 billion collected from property owners was so badly mismanaged.

The alarming amount of money is sitting in City-held accounts unspent or uncommitted, even though taxpayers were promised the collected funds would be used for badly needed municipal infrastructure and services, in some cases years ago.

In a May 14 council meeting, the City released its financial status report, which revealed that as of December 31, 2024, the City had approved $3.19 billion overall for the capital projects covered in the update, 583 active ones in all. From that amount, the city utilized only $1.38 billion, which means that the remaining balance was $1.8058 billion, of which $397.7 million was committed in contracts.

That means almost $1.2 billion approved in recent budgets for capital needs and collected from taxpayers over the past few years was not spent as of the beginning of the year.

To shrink the figure of the unspent balance, City staff excluded $210 million to come from the provincial and federal governments, even though the amount has not been secured yet.

Instead of reporting the unused amount collected from taxpayers in billions, it appears officials tried to downplay the financial mismanagement by reporting the figure as $1,198.1 million, instead of $1.198 billion.

The C.D. Howe Institute’s Nicholas Dahir analyzes municipal budgeting processes and described Brampton’s chaotic situation as “a confusing mess”, pointing out that amounts approved by council are routinely not needed at the time or go unspent because of poor management, while taxpayers are on the hook for services and infrastructure they paid for but never got. 

Under Patrick Brown, the failed governance is something that’s not new for Brampton taxpayers. Despite the shocking amount of unused capital, his office’s decision to use misleading numbers in the report by referring to “$1,198.1 million” rather than simply stating $1.2 billion, suggests Brown does not want the public to understand just how alarming the mismanagement is.

Sylvia Roberts, a Brampton community advocate who uses social media to report on City Hall’s financial management, told The Pointer that council direction under Brown to limit the budget and delay key projects has stalled key initiatives for years.

"It's a lot of shortsighted decisions."

Roberts says current council members don’t understand the consequences of stalling and delaying projects that staff have already included in the budget because they are critically needed to keep the city running.

"Council failed to consider the implications."

She points out Brown’s habit of claiming higher levels of government will step in to provide funding that should be coming from City Hall.

"Why is the City constantly begging other levels of government to fund basic city projects?"

She uses the need to electrify a major transit storage and maintenance facility as an example of a badly stalled project with serious implications for Brampton’s struggling bus system.

"This project has to be in progress because it takes time to get the buses, so they can buy the buses when it's in progress. But until it is in progress, we cannot actually roll out the fleet electrification. So because we are dragging out this $150 million project, it is delaying all sorts of things down the line. And if we don't know when this is done, then this causes impacts on when we're buying buses."

Digging into the roughly 30 projects that make up the lion’s share of the unspent and uncommitted $1.2 billion of capital that has already been collected from Brampton taxpayers, many of the high-value initiatives remain in preliminary stages despite being approved years ago, and some, shockingly have had almost no money spent on them despite previous reports that suggested millions of dollars were supposed to have been put toward them years ago, when the money was taken from taxpayers who expected to see a return on their investments by now.

The Facility Electrification project Roberts mentioned was budgeted $150 million in 2023. While Brampton officials claimed it was an active project under its capital plan and submitted an application for external federal funding of 50 percent from the Zero-Emission Transit Fund, claiming to have received positive feedback, no investment has been made in the project.

Another transit project that was budgeted for $298 million, to build a major storage and maintenance facility that was supposed to have seen construction begin in 2019, has only had 7 percent of the approved amount allocated. It has been stalled for years, creating a bottleneck for the entire transit system, while taxpayers have been charged for work that should have been completed years ago. It remains unclear when the facility will finally come on line.

To achieve the city’s zero-emission goals, another project was added to the capital list specifically for bus purchases. The City budgeted $66.2 million in 2024 for the transit fleet, but zero investments had been made as of the end of 2024.

Other projects where no dollars had been spent by the end of last year, despite being trumpeted as city-building successes by Brown, are: $18 million for the Home Opportunities project; and $17.2 million to extend Lagerfeld Drive westward.

Beyond these entirely untouched projects in terms of funding, other major capital initiatives are also frozen, with close to nothing spent, despite having been approved in previous budgets that taxpayers have provided funding for.

This graph reveals a troubling trend: while council-approved capital budgets have steadily increased since 2019, actual capital spending has remained far lower, leaving a growing amount of unspent funds collected from taxpayers—reaching nearly $1.2 billion by the end of 2024.

(City of Brampton)

For the Riverwalk project to finally revitalize the downtown core, which has been overdue for years (it was supposed to start almost a decade ago) and was supposed to reimagine the entire central area of the city, only 6 percent of the approved funds paid by taxpayers has been spent; $122.4 million was approved for the initiative in 2021, but only $3.79 million was spent while 94 percent is still uncommitted.

Despite being approved six years ago, the Transit Maintenance and Storage Facility is still crawling in its early construction phase, with a contract awarded in March 2025. For that facility, $298 million was allocated in capital funding, but as of the end of 2024, the remaining untouched amount was $277 million, which means 93 percent had not been committed or used.

The list goes on:

•  Embleton Community Centre Project—$124 million allocated and 94 percent of funds not used. It was supposed to start in 2021.
•  Centre for Education, Innovation & Collaboration—$99.4 million approved in 2018, when the project was supposed to start, and only $3.9 million has been spent, leaving 97 percent of the balance unspent. The file now appears to be in limbo as it has been transferred under the CAO.
•  Transit Hub Project—$30 million was budgeted in 2021; 96 percent of the funding is unspent, with no further financial plans since its launch.
•  Gore Meadows-Outdoor Construction—$17.5 million approved, with just $150,160 used; 99 percent of the budget remains uncommitted and unspent. The project was supposed to start in 2020.
•  Traffic Intersection Cameras—$11.6 million was budgeted in 2023 to install traffic cameras. Of this amount, only $591 had been spent by the end of last year.

A recent financial analysis by the C.D. Howe Institute found cities frequently warn of growing deficits and justify a property tax hike to fund city projects, only for financial reports to later show an unexpected surplus, even as many of those projects are halted for years with unspent balances.

The report, written by Dahir and fellow financial analyst William B.P. Robson, president and CEO of C.D. Howe Institute, explained the pattern of how Ontario’s municipalities craft their budgets based on different accounting standards. It cautions that municipalities often use cash-basis accounting to prepare the budget by recording transactions as “cash changing hands” and treating long-lived capital assets as if they were “one-off purchases,” while, on the other hand, for financial statements, they follow Public Sector Accounting Standards (PSAS), which calculates the long term cost of major projects like roads, bridges and subways.

By contrast, provincial and federal governments use the same accounting system for both budgets and financial statements by comparing past and current results.

C.D. Howe’s red flags apply to Brampton’s approach, which has created a sense of budget panic by promoting a narrative that tax increases are essential to fund critical projects, while the City’s own financial statements show at least $1.2 billion for capital projects has never been spent.

In an interview with The Pointer, Dahir described Brampton’s financial reporting as confusing, calling it complex for councillors and the public to follow what exactly is going on with the City’s finances.

“I take it you've dived into the financial statements and budgets of Brampton. I imagine it was quite confusing looking at what they present at the start and what they present at the end," he said.

“They typically present (the budget) on a cash basis, separating out operating spending and capital spending… whereas at the end of the year they report the results on an accrual basis. And so that mismatch does sort of undermine engagement, people don't quite get that it's a confusing mess. It's hard to follow exactly what's going on.”

He continued: "So at the start of the year, you have hundreds of millions of dollars in projects, and at the end of the year, in the financial report, they're not there. The chief consequence of that is, ‘how can I engage in this, as a member of the public, and take action to answer such questions like, hey, what is the deal with this $1.2 billion in funding?’, if you have a hard time grasping the full picture of the City's finances for the year."

Dahir pointed out that Brampton’s finance department’s use of figures, like $1,198.1 million instead of simply stating $1.2 billion, might mislead the public.

"This sort of graphic interpretation, you know, the nice little graphics they create for their documents, might actually just be more confusing than they're supposed to make it easier to read."

He questioned why this was done.

"But when you're switching the units, if you're using millions or thousands or whatever (instead of billions) it can get quite overwhelming."

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