Brampton studying AI for City business; residents in the dark about costs, privacy & discrimination concerns

“Let’s build the future of Brampton together.” 

The invitation came from Councillor Gurpartap Singh Toor as he signed off from a brief one-minute video announcing the City of Brampton’s open call to the “local tech community” to submit concepts of how artificial intelligence could be integrated into City business.

The two-year “proof of concept” program asked tech companies to submit AI prototypes to be tested in a variety of City departments. It is being marketed as a chance to modernize municipal service delivery, but aside from a list of broad ideas outlined on a City webpage, how municipal officials plan to choose these AI tools, what checks and balances will be in place to monitor their implementation, and how much all of this could cost Brampton taxpayers, remain unclear.

Councillor Gurpartap Singh Toor announces the opening of submissions for the City of Brampton’s AI Proof of Concept program. The City has declined to share how many submissions were received and which ones the City is actively pursuing.

(City of Brampton) 

Typical of Mayor Patrick Brown’s administration, which has a long history of questionable procurements, stifling public dialogue on critical issues, and pushing ahead with ill conceived projects while failing to outline out a clear plan to taxpayers, the City has provided limited information about the program and the future procurement.

Brown has a long history of questionable promises and procurements, with friends and others in a clear conflict of interest landing lucrative work from City Hall under his direction.

His promise of a “world class” cricket stadium, a tunnelled LRT into downtown (which is still without a funding commitment), and the welcoming of a standalone university in the City are only a few of Brown’s big promises that have failed to move forward. The university plan, the hiring of a friendly integrity commissioner, work secretly handed to friends, and a number of other controversies were being probed by third party investigators, before Brown cancelled the investigations in 2022.   

The wide range of potential work to be carried out by AI platforms is outlined on the City website and appears to be a casually rolled out initiative, not a properly formulated strategy backed by extensive reporting and analysis. 

Many major corporate entities and public institutions have already rolled out a range of generative pattern recognition technologies and content scraping tools that perform analytical functions to replace what humans have previously done. This has sweeping implications on data privacy, employment and service delivery for Bramptonians. 

In a one-minute video posted to the Facebook page of the City’s Economic Development Office, Councillor Toor explains Brampton is looking for Canadian AI start-ups or “research institutions” to submit prototypes for consideration and testing by the City before deciding on whether progressing to full-scale implementation.

“Whether it is something as simple as identifying potholes on our streets, or screening building permits to help deliver much needed housing in our city, we’re looking for innovative solutions for our local municipal sector areas.” 

According to the webpage dedicated to the program, the City is seeking proposals in a number of areas, including: financial forecasting; customer service and financial monitoring; human resources learning and development for municipal staff, including AI powered training; and the use of AI to review “relevant enforcement data, such as patrol logs, ticket records and complaint trends” in order to “generate personalized, resident-friendly closure messages” for bylaw complaints; and the creation of an AI tool to screen, triage and schedule hearings related to administrative monetary penalties.

Submissions for the two-year program opened on October 23 and closed soon after, on November 13.

The City did not answer questions from The Pointer about how many submissions were received, which subject areas these submissions related to, or which are actively being pursued. 

The City has not addressed what, if anything these “solutions” will cost taxpayers if the proof of concept is accepted and implemented long-term. There has been no indication given whether any of these solutions could result in the loss of jobs at the municipality. One of the solutions referenced by the City involves the creation of a 

“311 self-service AI customer service agent”, which according to the City website will “transform how Brampton residents access city services by providing immediate and personalized responses to common inquiries and service requests.”

 The lack of details about the City’s AI Proof of Concept program is another example of residents being starved for information about how their tax dollars are being used under Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown.

(The Pointer files)

Submissions for the program closed nearly four months ago, but no information has been provided to the public about what is being done with any of the proposals submitted.

A closed session report went to councillors on January 21 to provide a “program update”. No information was shared publicly. It is unclear why the matter was taken into a closed session, away from public view.

A Freedom of Information request filed by The Pointer to obtain documents related to the program returned only two records totalling 19 pages. The first is a confidential report from October 1, 2025 (five pages), and the report included on the January 21 closed session agenda (14 pages). Both documents were withheld as, according to the City’s FOI office, they related to in camera matters. 

Section 6(1)(b) of the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act allows a municipality to withhold records if releasing them “reveals the substance of deliberations of a meeting of council” held in closed session.

According to the Municipal Act, municipalities are allowed to close meetings to the public for a limited number of reasons, including: matters related to the security of the property of the municipality, the acquisition or disposition of land, labour relations, litigation and advice that is subject to solicitor client privilege, to discuss information supplied in confidence by another level of government, matters related to trade secrets or other information supplied in confidence by corporations, a plan to be applied to ongoing negotiations and education or training sessions.

At the January 21 meeting when the report was listed on the closed session agenda, the exemption related to trade secrets was used as justification.

Ontario’s Ombudsman has for years made clear that municipalities are not allowed to use trade secrets as a blanket justification for keeping an entire issue in camera. If there is a portion of the decision making process that involves discussion around trade secrets or any proprietary information a third-party company would not want disclosed publicly, only that part of the process or debate can be dealt with behind closed doors. Everything else, including discussions around the setting of a budget for a program, have to be dealt with in full view of the public.  

The only information available about the program’s progress is through a few short sentences included on the website. 

“Proposals will be reviewed and selected for testing by the City’s Information Technology Division to ensure alignment with City objectives,” the website notes. “Proof of Concepts will be launched, evaluated and reported to Council at key milestones.” 

There is no indication as to whether those reports will be handled in open session.

The City has not explained what level of access companies were, or will be given to the trove of taxpayer data stored at City Hall.
According to the FAQ page for the project, interested parties were encouraged to use “any data that is available to you”. 

“City data will only be provided to vendors that have been selected to move to the next phase,” the website explains. But, it also details that “if required, the City will assist in preparing datasets to support the creation of the AI PoC (proof of concept), while adhering to data privacy and cybersecurity policies.”
It’s not clear if this is meant for all interested companies or just those selected to advance to the next phase of the program.

Sir Mark Walport, the UK government’s former Chief Scientific Advisor, previously said: “Public trust is a vital condition for artificial intelligence to be used productively.”

Those words were repeated by Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim during a speech at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) annual conference in 2024. She told the hundreds of local leaders in attendance that for municipalities “to successfully improve the delivery of programs and services through AI, maintaining the public’s trust will be paramount.”

Mayor Brown along with councillors Rod Power, Michael Palleschi, Najvit Kaur Brar, Harkirat Singh, Dennis Keenan, Rowena Santos and Paul Vicentre were all in attendance at that conference. 

In her speech, Kosseim acknowledged that AI can offer a number of benefits for municipalities, referring to the $400,000 saved by the City of Vaughan using AI to track weather conditions and optimize its use of road salt; the City of Toronto using an AI tool to reduce congestion through traffic cameras and traffic light changes, and the City of Calgary, which used AI to detect cracks and potholes to improve repair times.

The optimism came with a warning, however, as AI has a number of shortcomings that must be recognized and accounted for. Anyone who has caught Google’s AI or Chat GPT in an obvious error knows these tools are far from perfect. 

Kosseim stressed that a big concern for municipalities should be that “AI can replicate and amplify real-world bias and discrimination based on historical datasets that algorithms are trained on.” She pointed to examples in the U.S. where one hospital implemented AI to try and predict who was more likely to require extensive medical care—the algorithm was skewed toward white patients over Black as the data set was based on historical spending figures i.e. who could afford medical care. She also used the example of Amazon, which attempted to use AI to accelerate its hiring process.

“(It) was found to be inherently biased against women candidates, because of the 10 years worth of male dominated CVs it was trained on,” Kosseim explained. 

In such a diverse city like Brampton, and with a municipality that has already found to have issues with anti-Black racism, what biases could these AI tools generate? Is this even being considered by the City of Brampton?

Again, municipal officials have provided no information to explain if this is even part of their study process.

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