Five candidates showed up for the Brampton mayoral debates at the Springdale Library, Brampton Board of Trade and the Royal Palm Banquet Hall for the Better Brampton Debate. While Patrick Brown showed up briefly for an earlier Brampton Arts debate, he left immediately before he could be questioned by other candidates, the moderator or the media.
Some of the candidates including Wesley Jackson, Paul Tariwal, Prabh Gill and Sandeep Somal, all say Brown’s failure to appear is “disrespectful” and undermines the democratic process. His record as mayor has been highlighted by scandals, external investigations and broken promises.
Latest Episode
The second episode of Ballot Vox ahead of the October 26 municipal election breaks down the mayors' races in Mississauga and Brampton, two of Canada’s biggest cities. In Mississauga, Bonnie Crombie and Carolyn Parrish, the last two mayors, are facing off in one of Ontario’s most widely watched contests. Councillors Dipika Damerla and Alvin Tedjo also want the job. Find out what they are promising voters.
In Brampton, will Patrick Brown’s terrible record get punished, if one of a group of inexperienced contenders breaks through? Join us.
Former councillor Gurpreet Dhillon has taken the first step to sue the City of Brampton, claiming it continues to defame him by keeping a discredited integrity commissioner’s report on the City website, despite his accuser writing a letter three years ago that was sent to Brampton officials notifying them that she had withdrawn her allegations against Dhillon and apologized for the harm she caused due to her false accusations. He is asking the court to order the report be removed.
The Pointer has obtained the full letter from the accuser admitting she made false allegations against Dhillon.
The federal government’s plan to bring private investment into Canada’s four largest airports is being presented as a way to unlock billions of dollars for infrastructure and strengthen connections across the country. As Ottawa works out how the long-term arrangements would operate, the impacts on passengers, airport workers and the local municipalities is murky.
Despite Mayor Patrick Brown’s opposition to city hall funding for a desperately needed second hospital, council committed to set aside its share for the required local contribution. But the project remains unfunded, its final cost is still not public and no money for it has been set aside in the provincial budget. This hasn’t stopped Brown from misleading voters ahead of the October 26 municipal election, claiming construction at the Peel Memorial site is about to begin and funding is secured. This is blatantly false.
Mayoral candidates hoping to unseat Brown are promising audits, transparency to the public and hard deadlines.
In Mississauga, an 11-year-old is making a difference. In 2020, when Iyah moved to the Lisgar neighbourhood, she found a new home at Osprey Marsh—a green oasis that she is now protecting with her mother, one water test and piece of trash at a time.
With the West Coast Pacific Link pipeline now designated as Canada’s first project of “national interest”, the Liberal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney is betting that faster approvals can unlock a new generation of major infrastructure. As Bill C-39 moves to reshape environmental assessments, critics are asking since speed is now the priority, how will the environmental costs, Indigenous rights and the long-term consequences of fast-tracked projects be properly addressed beforehand?
As Ontario pours billions into highways and development while reshaping the institutions responsible for protecting its watersheds, six Ontarians were recently recognized by the Ontario Headwaters Institute for protecting the wetlands, waterways and ecosystems that communities depend on.
On September 23, their stories served as a reminder that like every drop that gathers in a vast lake, lasting change is built one small act at a time.
Mississauga’s gamble to jumpstart housing could come with a steep price as Council raced to qualify for an $8.8 billion provincial-federal funding program by slashing the fees builders pay to cover infrastructure around new homes.
Critics' concerns came to fruition after the province awarded the City significantly less than what was asked for, to make up for the revenue loss, and warn the strategy risks shifting billions in infrastructure costs onto taxpayers while offering no guarantees that savings handed to developers will ever reach renters or homebuyers.
Brampton taxpayers have covered nearly $90,000 of flights, hotels, meals and other lavish costs for Mayor Patrick Brown and councillors to travel across the country, and in some cases the globe, to meet with upper levels of government. Despite the excessive spending, it’s unclear what Brampton taxpayers are getting in return.
Brown’s closest ally, Councillor Rowena Santos, surpassed all her colleagues by a long shot, billing taxpayers for expensive flights and stays at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa for a single day of meetings while other councillors chose to rent a car and stay at more affordable hotels.
What happens when the public record tells a different story from the one residents have been given? In Huron Shores, a 19-month review of municipal records, engineering reports, funding applications and Council proceedings has raised questions about the deterioration of the historic Dean Lake Bridge that the public never got the answers to.
As Ontario heads toward its municipal elections this October, one grassroots group is making the case for why residents deserve ‘the whole record’ before deciding who should earn their trust—and their vote.
Two reports published a day apart had the same dire warning for humanity: instead of meeting climate targets, the world — and Canada — will push past its temperature thresholds, unleashing dangerous climate impacts. But scientists have one reminder: buckle those seatbelts; we need to change the path, not ‘reduce ambition’.
Brampton lawyer Wesley Jackson has a plan for Brampton. A longtime resident, he is tired of watching council after council mired in controversy and division, failing to move his community forward.
His platform highlights the core issues Brampton residents face today, and the opportunity to take bold action in one of Canada’s fastest growing municipalities.
The Pointer's election podcast Ballot Vox is back ahead of the municipal vote on October 26. The first episode covers the major issues voters in Mississauga and Brampton want solved in two of Canada's biggest cities.
In a public letter to Industry Minister Melanie Joly, Unifor National President Lana Payne has asked to clarify the government’s role in the Stellantis-Roshel Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to sell the Brampton auto assembly to the Canadian-based manufacturer of military vehicles.
Contract negotiations between the union and the automaker broke down earlier this month after it was made public that Stellantis had reached a deal with Roshel to sell the plant.
Expense records show Councillors Rowena Santos and Paul Vicente paid a company called Piphany Capital Corp $65,680 combined for social media and website work since the start of this term.
The company’s sole director, Fazal Khan, previously ran Brampton Focus, a media group both councillors helped fund without competitive bidding in 2019 amid a still-unresolved ethics complaint.
Ten months into the Doug Ford government’s takeover of Peel’s school board, the financial books may have been rearranged without public consultation after years of provincial underfunding but there is a bigger threat impacting students directly as they head back to school: the levels of lead in their drinking water.
As Ontario continues to stand by a lead standard that allows twice as much of the ‘toxic metal’ in drinking water as the federal guideline, critics continue to ask: when will safe water become as much a priority as a balanced budget?
Fired by the Niagara conservation authority.
Fired by the City of Brampton.
Lasts one year in Thames Centre.
Fired by South Stormont.
Hired by the City of Whitehorse.
People power has worked once again in a Peel municipality. On September 16, Mississauga council unanimously approved a one-year pause on large-scale data centre development following months of resident opposition to a proposed 40-megawatt facility—becoming the second Ontario municipality to impose a moratorium on AI data centres that are hungry for electricity and water.
The embattled former Brampton MP, who has been sued in more than a dozen legal actions this summer alleging hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgage and real estate fraud, used two Sikh places of worship, both well attended Gurdwaras—one in Etobicoke, known as the Sikh Spiritual Centre Toronto, and the Nanaksar Gurdwara in Brampton—to secure $15 million in loans.
The private lenders are now suing Grewal, along with two Gurdwara executives, after more than $1.5 million in payments ($300,000 a month) to cover the 24 percent loan rate, were missed. It’s unclear what the millions of dollars received from the loan was used for.
As Unifor and Stellantis still negotiate a possible contract renewal before September 20, the idled plant seems to have a new buyer. Although unconfirmed as of yet, Canadian arms manufacturer Roshel has expressed interest in acquiring the Brampton plant.
Several questions still remain—what will happen to the workers who are currently out of a job, and will Unifor agree to work with a company that is non-unionized?
After 12 years representing Wards 3 and 4 on the Peel District School Board, trustee Kathy McDonald is giving up the seat to run directly against David Green (who has held the chair’s seat leading up to the election campaign) in Wards 1 and 5. She says it is the only way to remove what she calls one of the biggest obstacles to good governance at the PDSB.
The race surfaces after years of McDonald’s sustained opposition to Green’s controversial leadership and an assault allegation against Green stemming from an altercation with McDonald that is before the courts. The province took over PDSB for failed management under Green’s leadership for the second time.
Peel has some of the lowest municipal voter turnout in Canada. Ahead of October’s election, The Pointer spoke with some residents, researchers and organizations trying to reverse the trend.
Some barriers to voting are practical matters, while others go deeper than any single campaign can fix.
In merely six days, the Mark Carney government accepted the risk of Webequie Supply Road construction possibly increasing “physical and sexual violence towards Indigenous women and girls” in the name of “public interest” on the condition that proponents meet certain requirements. Advocates are now asking why Canada has not learned from its past.
Peel Regional Police has become the first GTA service to fly a helicopter under Ontario’s new Joint Air Support Unit, framing it as a tool to track stolen vehicles, find missing people and respond to major incidents.
The rollout comes as the force’s budget has climbed 80 percent since 2021. Advocates say the money would do more good addressing housing, poverty and youth programs.
With a growing gap between the support students need and the resources available inside classrooms, the Peel District School Board is grappling with a projected $10.9-million deficit and a $7.5-million year over year reduction to its Special Education Fund.
While the PC government implements new Student and Family Support Offices across the province and continues its supervision of Peel’s two major boards, parents want more educational assistants, teachers and specialized educators to meet the increasingly complex needs of students.
Lawyer Rajkiran “Robbie” Sidhu, who has been suspended by the Law Society of Ontario until he faces a tribunal panel at the end of the month, claims his real estate work at the Mississauga-based firm, RSG Law, founded by former Brampton MP Raj Grewal, was controlled by the former politician. Sidhu accepted millions in fake cheques before the fraudulent funds ended up in RSG’s trust account while Grewal was drowning in debt.
Allegations of brazen fraud continue to mount against Grewal, who has allegedly been moving the proceeds of illegally obtained funds, according to some of the more than dozen lawsuits filed against him this summer.
While senior police officials have labelled impaired driving “a scourge” in Peel, the crime is being perpetuated by their own sworn members. In 2025, five officers were caught driving impaired while off-duty. In one instance, a dog died when the officer crashed into the divider between the express and collector lanes on Highway 401.
Peel Police have not named the officers or made any public statements about their shocking conduct.
While politicians on both sides of the border trade barbs over the name of Lake Ontario, conservationists are protecting the land around the pristine waters that feed into it.
On August 25, Ontario Nature announced it had acquired 18 acres in eastern Ontario, permanently protecting an environmentally sensitive tract within the Frontenac Arch, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve widely celebrated as one of Canada’s most biologically rich and diverse landscapes, at a time when unchecked development is being prioritized over nature.
The sunsetting of a long-running scholarship at Brock University for students born in the Guernsey islands is part of a larger pattern of failing to honour the man who gives the university its name and ignoring the contributions of Indigenous peoples.
Just a month before “the world’s largest investors” will convene in Toronto for the first-ever Canada Investment Summit, the Mark Carney federal government made attempts to dismiss a climate lawsuit that began with three young Canadians challenging his decision to weaken the 2030 emissions plan.
On August 27, the applicants pushed back, saying their case is not about telling the government what policies to choose but rather about following the law.
Since the announcement on August 14 that foreshadowed the closure of the Stellantis Assembly in Brampton, thousands of residents directly connected to the operation have been on pins and needles. Both Stellantis and Unifor have been silent on details as they enter negotiations before the current collective bargaining agreement expires on September 20.
If the Brampton plant is shuttered, it will cement the loss of thousands of auto-sector jobs in the region.
In August, Premier Doug Ford touted his PC government’s track record of helping municipalities address the mental health and addiction crisis.
At the same time, the leaders of Ontario’s big cities said things have never been worse and demanded increased funding to help them get services to those in need.
After a bruising 2025, Canada’s electric vehicle market is showing signs of recovery following Ottawa’s revival of the federal rebate program and a new crop of cheaper models. The biggest surprise was in Ontario, where EV sales have surged to a record high even without a provincial rebate.
Two months later, Ottawa repealed the EV sales standard, prompting experts to question if Canada’s recent EV success might be short-lived.
After more than four thousand wildfires across Canada had burned during the summer, the federal and provincial governments announced investments to protect nature; while simultaneously advancing legislation and projects that will permanently alter landscapes across the nation.
While governments can hold businesses accountable for greenwashing, who calls out public institutions when they do the same? The Competition Bureau is being asked to investigate recent contradictory actions.
Brampton Library workers have voted to accept a new collective agreement, ending a months-long dispute that saw 97 percent of CUPE Local 1776 members back a strike mandate in June.
The deal addresses wage and scheduling concerns raised by the roughly 180 workers who staff Brampton’s nine library branches.
The jarring revelation comes after The Pointer has incurred tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees defending the lawsuit filed by Grewal which alleges defamation and demands all articles published by The Pointer about the dozens of cases and lawsuits filed against him since May be removed.
In its Statement of Defence The Pointer argues Grewal’s legal action is a classic SLAPP suit, meant to intimidate the media and prevent readers from obtaining important public interest journalism.
On August 13, Ontario Premier Doug Ford released the Data Centre Playbook, kicking off a one-month public consultation period, just days after two municipalities voted in favour of halting new data centre developments, as the Green Party of Ontario called on the PCs to issue a province-wide moratorium.
The shaky plan lacks enforceable standards, clear distinctions between data-centre types, municipal authority, Indigenous consultation and environmental safeguards.
Brampton council agreed on a LRT route along Main Street over seven years ago, and a vote unanimously approving a tunnel option is over three years gone. There has been no word of construction and despite the claims of Mayor Patrick Brown, no funding has been secured to break ground on the multibillion-dollar project after he first promised a tunnel in 2019.
It appears Brown and several of his fellow councillors will be entering another municipal election having failed to deliver on the project they revived in 2018.
When the federal government approved the first road to be constructed to the mineral-rich Ring of Fire, it admitted the project could cause ‘irreversible’ damage to the environment and Indigenous ways of life, yet determined its economic advantages outweighed those effects. It was a decision made by Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin just six days after a six-year-long consultation process concluded.
The Friends of the Attawapiskat River are now taking Dabrusin to the Federal Court, asking judges to reconsider the ‘unreasonable’ decision.
Bonnie Crombie is returning to Mississauga’s political stage with a promise to make life more affordable. Her plans to cut taxes come as the municipality faces rising costs, major infrastructure projects and a rapidly growing need for housing.
She will appoint an independent auditor to uncover where taxpayers’ money can be saved, after two years of out-of-control spending.
Just days after Neskantaga First Nation residents returned home from a wildfire-related evacuation, they were forced to pack their bags again. This time because a contractor’s mistake flooded their only nursing station with raw sewage.
It is the worst-case scenario for Brampton auto workers. Three years after the Brampton plant went idle, and more than a year after a promised retooling was put on hold, Unifor officials say the automaker is weighing a permanent closure of the auto assembly that has been churning out vehicles in the city for four decades.
While Stellantis says it has “nothing to announce”, signs of an exit began shortly after the U.S. tariff threats.
One of Ottawa’s long-awaited programs, years in the making, was announced last winter with a $40 million promise of putting young Canadians at the centre of climate action while tackling unemployment.
More than nine months later, plans for the Youth Climate Corps collect dust on federal shelves along with at least two disbanded Youth Councils that provided young voices a seat at the table where national policies that dictate their future are built.
As Ontario's provincially supervised school boards finalize their next budgets, one pattern keeps repeating: the public finds out last. Parents, teachers and community advocates say DPCDSB filed its 2026-2027 budget with no chance for them to weigh in, the latest sign of how much oversight has narrowed since the Ministry took control.
Just weeks earlier, Peel's other supervised board, the PDSB, which was also taken over by the provincial government, offered a rare look at what happens when the books do become public, and what the numbers can reveal about where the cuts really land.
Twenty PC MPP’s—10 of them from Peel Region—have billed taxpayers more than $121,000 for Toronto hotel stays over the past three years despite living within 50 kilometres of Queen’s Park. It’s a sign of what NDP Leader Marit Stiles describes as a “culture of entitlement” within Premier Doug Ford’s government.
Brampton East MPP Hardeep Grewal accounts for more than one-fifth of the total costs, spending over $27,000 on hotels while public disclosures do not say where he stayed or why the accommodations were necessary.
Peel Police has rolled out an AI voice assistant to screen non-emergency calls. The system will handle a share of the region’s 273,000 annual non-emergency calls and, on paper, free up more operators to handle actual emergencies through 911.
Researchers warn the generative technology may fail to understand the needs and dialects of Peel’s diverse population.
The AI boom is arriving faster than rules meant to govern it. Across Ontario municipalities are facing proposals for massive data centres that could reshape local demands for electricity, water and infrastructure as Queen’s Park and Ottawa promote AI as an engine of economic growth.
Just days after a Mississauga resident wrote to Mayor Carolyn Parrish to coordinate a regional response to the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, the Ontario Green Party called on the Doug Ford government to halt new data centres until it has rules to govern this energy-hungry technology.
Almost all of Brampton Library’s unionized workers (97 percent) have voted to authorize a strike over understaffing, erratic scheduling and wages that have not kept up with inflation. CUPE Local 1776 says the strain has already forced program cancellations, while CEO Todd Kyle says service levels have held, despite tight municipal budgets.
Both sides say they want a deal at the table, not a walkout.
A seven-year legal fight led by young climate activists is entering its next chapter as Ontario battles its worst wildfires on record.
The Mathur et al. v. His Majesty the King in Right of Ontario case, which began as a Charter challenge against Ontario’s weakened emissions targets, has grown into a broader constitutional test over whether governments can be held accountable for climate decisions that shape the lives of future generations.
Justice Fred Myers of Ontario’s Superior Court has seen enough. In a blistering condemnation issued Tuesday, the judge, who is handling many of the dozens of cases against former Brampton MP Raj Grewal, has accused the lawyer of “brazen fraud”.
The Law Society of Ontario has also posted a notice publicizing Grewal’s inability to practice law until a final decision is made by the tribunal that will decide whether or not the beleaguered former politician will be able to work as a lawyer going forward. He is facing dozens of cases and lawsuits alleging widespread real estate and mortgage fraud.
