Collapse of accountability needs to be on the ballot in this year’s municipal elections across Ontario

As we approach critical municipal elections across the province later this year, the crisis in governance throughout the sector needs to be on the ballot. 

Most Ontario taxpayers have never heard of David Barrick. Despite leaving a trail of controversy and scandal across three municipalities, his latest hiring in a fourth municipality illustrates the collapse of accountability in local government.

In Niagara Region, Brampton and Thames Centre, Barrick’s arrival and subsequent departure under a dark cloud does not bode well for taxpayers in South Stormont, where he was recently hired as the community’s Chief Administrative Officer, the same role he was somehow given by the last two municipalities, despite being spectacularly unqualified. 

The twists and turns of David Barrick’s unsettling story tell the tale of a government system that has gone way off the rails meant to keep Ontario’s towns and cities on the right track. 

His name first became synonymous with municipal wrongdoing in Niagara Region, when the now infamous 2019 “Inside Job” investigation was revealed by Ontario’s Ombudsman, Paul Dubé. 

Though his name is nowhere to be found in the bombshell 74-page surgical takedown of Niagara’s top regional bureaucrats at the time, Barrick was featured prominently in Dubé’s investigation report. Referred to only by his position, a regional councillor at the time, representing Port Colborne, Dubé detailed Barrick’s involvement in a dastardly scheme to get another unqualified man, Carmen D’Angelo, a longtime paramedic, hired as Niagara’s CAO, in what was supposed to be a fair and impartial process. 

It was, as Dubé, exposed, rigged from the very beginning. 

Senior staff were directly involved, handing D’Angelo confidential documents—which no other candidates received—to ensure his selection. (The man who gave him the information, and was later fired, Jason Tamming, is now the commissioner of corporate services for the City of Brampton.)

While he served as a regional councillor, Barrick was hired with no experience by his Conservative friends at the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, where he was handed a senior management position…under D’Angelo.

Ontario’s Auditor General later found his hiring there was inappropriate.

After D’Angelo became Niagara’s CAO following the fraudulent hiring process, Barrick eventually moved into his old job running the local conservation authority, where he was accused of handing out car allowances and promotions to friends.  

After Barrick failed to answer questions from Niagara councillors who demanded he explain alarming spending at the conservation authority, his subsequent departure would have been the end for anyone in the private sector who behaved the same way. 

But that’s not how things work in Ontario’s municipal government sector these days. Accountability inside City Hall has been AWOL for at least a decade.

Upon his 2019 arrival in Brampton, alongside Tamming, Barrick immediately began his service to Mayor Patrick Brown, the man that orchestrated the hiring of both men who had been driven out of Niagara. All were tied to the provincial PC Party. 

Barrick quickly gave $218,000 in City of Brampton contracts (with no public explanation) to a former Niagara ally who was unqualified for the vaguely outlined work, then handed a lucrative contract to handle the municipality’s real estate portfolio to a friend of the mayor whose company, which had not even been registered when he was contacted by one of Barrick’s staff about the job, had no experience managing such a task. The lucky man handed the contract, Brett Bell, was a long-time Conservative insider with connections to Brown.

Barrick shifted the Freedom of Information function and the Internal Audit department–vital tools for public accountability over elected officials–under his control. He then ensured the approval of contracts worth over $600,000 to friends of the mayor and a local councillor, Rowena Santos. Much of the work was never done. 

He hired inexperienced people without the required education for critical engineering positions; placed the City’s corporate fraud hotline under the control of his hired flunkies, and altered the results of a damning internal audit report. 

Councillors called him out and residents demanded he be fired. 

It was deja vu. 

When he was running the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority into the ground, residents protested to demand the same thing. 

Residents demanded the firing of David Barrick, when he was the CAO of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, and again when he was CAO of the City of Brampton.

(Left, Doug Draper, Niagara at Large; Right, YouTube screengrab)

In 2023, with six councillors who opposed Brown fed up by Barrick’s scandals, he was fired along with other senior Brampton staff connected to him.

Despite a history that should make him toxic to any municipality, he was hired in June of 2023 as CAO in Thames Centre, a municipality of just under 14,000 about 15 minutes east of London.

Residents who quickly began noticing changes in their small town, including allegations of nepotism, improper expenses, questionable contracts and upheaval among Town staff, contacted The Pointer. 

Then, in August last year when Barrick suddenly left, a release from the Town claimed Barrick resigned, but The Pointer has learned that is not the whole story. 

Ahead of this fall’s municipal elections, a series of stories on the breakdown in municipal government will be published, including a detailed investigation into Barrick’s pattern of alarming, unethical behaviour, his repeated hiring despite a long history of turmoil and scandal, and the dangerous collapse of provincial accountability over the municipal sector under the failed leadership of Doug Ford which has allowed a man like Barrick to survive.

As part of this investigative work, The Pointer’s dogged reporter Ed Smith, who has helped expose Barrick’s conduct since his days in Niagara more than a decade ago, arrived in South Stormont last week. The small, eastern Ontario municipality is the latest to inexplicably decide to give Barrick a job as its CAO, the top municipal official. 

On March 11, Smith planned to attend South Stormont’s council meeting to report on Barrick’s hiring. Due to the ice storm that swept across the region, Smith reached out to the local clerk to ensure the meeting was still taking place. 

It was. 

When Smith arrived, after communicating with the clerk, he was met by two OPP officers who blocked him from entering the Township Hall. According to one of the constables who spoke to Smith, they were called to prevent a “stalker” from entering the building. The name they were given was Ed Smith.

When The Pointer’s reporter Ed Smith arrived at South Stormont Township Hall, he was blocked from entering the building by two OPP officers.

(Ed Smith/The Pointer)

Barrick knows Smith works as a journalist for The Pointer and had contacted Barrick for comment upon his sudden departure from Thames Centre. Barrick did not respond to the request for an explanation, after sources told The Pointer he had been fired.

And now, Smith has been barred from returning to South Stormont’s Townhall under threat of a future trespass notice, with no explanation. 

The ongoing saga of David Barrick is part of the slow creep of anti-democratic practices taking over the municipal system.

It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. 

Municipalities are "creatures of the province”. They follow the lead of Ford and his PC government which is systematically dismantling accountability functions.

Last week Ford announced he was exempting himself, his Cabinet ministers and their staff from FOI legislation, cloaking all of their communications to prevent the public from access. If they want to find out how their taxpayer dollars are being spent, too bad. 

Ontario’s municipal accountability system was already on fumes. 

The Ontario Ombudsman has in recent years left it to municipal councils to police themselves. Local integrity commissioners are at the whim of the same mayors and councillors who are supposed to be held accountable by the people they hire, and can fire. (Patrick Brown oversaw the hiring of Brampton integrity commissioner Muneeza Sheikh, despite their connections and her lack of experience, then after a rival group of councillors fired her, she threatened a $20 million lawsuit before Brown rehired her when most of them did not return to council following the 2022 election.)

In St. Catharines, Integrity Commissioner Michael Maynard admitted Mayor Mat Siscoe broke the rules when he used taxpayer money to attend an election campaign event endorsing Ford for premier, but he refused to sanction him. In Niagara Falls, Maynard has gone out of his way to shield Councillor Mike Strange, who is facing a criminal charge for alleged intimate partner violence, from consequences after directing a local community group to drown out female anti-violence advocates during a council meeting, in exchange for free beer and pizza afterward. 

Niagara Falls residents hoping to hold their elected officials accountable must now pay $1,000 to file an integrity commissioner complaint against them, and council is seeking $4,000 for costs from one of the residents who filed a complaint against Strange.  

While the PCs promise their widely discussed Bill 9 will improve the broken municipal accountability system, the government is actively ignoring the most crucial change, the need to take the oversight process out of the hands of local elected officials.

Sources in the sector have told The Pointer that Ford is balking at the idea of any meaningful reform.  

Voters need to send a clear message to politicians later this year: if their hard earned money is being abused, wasted and misspent by City Hall, while property taxes continue to soar, Ontarians will take the need for accountability in municipal government into their own hands when they go to the polls this fall. 

Joel Wittnebel is the Editor-in-Chief of The Pointer

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