Muhammad Hamza, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter & Joel Wittnebel, The Pointer

Despite direction by the Ontario Ombudsman to reopen forensic investigations into alleged financial wrongdoing by Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, his closest councillor ally Rowena Santos—after they cancelled the probes—and City staff, no one on council has taken action on behalf of taxpayers demanding accountability. 

“There is no accountability at City Hall,” Azad Goyat, a Brampton resident and a vocal critic of Brown, told The Pointer. Goyat was arrested in November last year for protesting Brown’s financial mismanagement. 

“Even when the Ontario Ombudsman urged the City not to close the investigation files, they were still shut down. This is public money, and residents deserve transparency.”

Questions have lingered for almost four years about the actions Brown and Santos took to suddenly terminate the probes, shortly after preliminary findings by one of the external investigators exposed their secretive behind-the-scenes conduct to direct hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to friends who were given lucrative contracts for a failed project marred by controversy.   

In August 2022, Brown called a special council meeting and cancelled a total of six forensic investigations probing allegations of corruption around awarded contracts and hirings under his leadership. 

Council had just received an update from Froese Forensic Partners, hired to probe two contracts handed out as part of the failed Brampton University project. The preliminary findings revealed Rob Godfrey and David Wheeler were given unfair advantages when contracts were handed to them, and much of the work that was supposed to be done could not be found, or fell far short of what was expected. Godfrey, who worked with Stakeholder Research Associates (SRA) when the contract was given to him, is a close friend of Brown. Wheeler is a close friend of Santos. Both consultants, according to evidence made public in the update report by Froese, were given information that helped them win the contracts, information not given to other bidders during the procurement process.

Taxpayers eventually forked out $629,000 for the work. Godfrey and his firm were only supposed to be given $170,000, but the investigations, supported by earlier reports provided by City staff, revealed that more than $500,000 was paid out, without council’s knowledge. 

As Froese circled in on Brown and Santos, after highlighting their apparent conflict of interest, the pair, along with three other council allies, took part in a surprise council vote during a snap meeting called by Brown near the end of August, 2022, when the mayor knew there would be enough absences for him to terminate the investigations, shortly before that year’s municipal election.

Residents had been demanding answers ahead of the election, and many questioned how Brown and Santos were even allowed to vote on a matter that directly impacted them, enabling them to avoid a possible finding of wrongdoing, weeks before Brampton had to choose its future council.   

In a blatant attempt to mislead the public, Brown claimed just before he cancelled the investigations that the City’s integrity commissioner could carry out the probes, instead of the external investigators. The City’s clerk at the time, Peter Fay, advised the Mayor that it was not the jurisdiction of the integrity commissioner, but Brown ignored the cautionary advice.

Principles Integrity, which served as the City’s integrity commissioner at the time, told The Pointer it had no jurisdiction over investigations such as the ones that were already underway.   

Brown brought the motion which was seconded by Santos to cancel the investigations and send them to the integrity commissioner, despite being at the centre of the most serious allegations of wrongdoing.

The forensic investigations were ordered in May 2022 by a majority group on Brampton Council initially to look into the mishandling of the failed Brampton University plan pushed by Brown and Santos, following a staff report that showed much of the work was never completed, even though one of Brown’s closest friends received three times more money than what had been approved by Council.

The investigation was broadened in June of 2022 to include other procurements identified by senior staff and council members who raised concerns about the way contracts were handed out under Brown. The controversial current integrity commissioner, Muneeza Sheikh, who had connections to Brown before he had her hired, was the subject of one of the cancelled investigations. 

Councillors wanted to find out how someone with no municipal law experience, who had never before worked as an integrity commissioner, was given the job, and why she charged more than seven times what previous integrity commissioners had charged, on an annualized rate.

Sheikh was eventually fired by the majority group of councillors, but not before she threatened a lawsuit. Then, after Brown was re-elected later in 2022, he had her rehired.

Brown had also orchestrated the hiring of controversial former CAO David Barrick, who was put in charge of one of the largest cities in Canada, despite never even managing a small City Hall department previously; and Jason Tamming who currently holds one of the most senior positions with the City of Brampton, despite his corrupt behaviour in the “Inside Job” Niagara CAO hiring scandal. 

A number of residents who spoke with The Pointer demanded answers about the alarming hiring under Brown and asked for the investigations he cancelled to be completed. 

“Many residents believe that this current council has a transparency issue. Over the past eight years, this council has struggled to deliver for residents due to significant mismanagement of taxpayers’ dollars,” local advocate Idris Orughu told The Pointer, referencing the controversial purchase of the 175 Sandalwood property by the City, and the $11 million contract signed with Argo for an electric bus transit project in the downtown. “(This was done) all without the proper risk analysis, or staff report to protect Brampton taxpayers. Then they redacted all of the publicly available information to hide their actions.” 

The Ontario Ombudsman previously wrote to the City of Brampton recommending the investigations be completed. 

“The Ombudsman encourages the City to revisit its decision to cancel these audits and take steps to ensure any outstanding concerns are comprehensively investigated and addressed at the municipal level,” a May 2023 letter from the province’s top accountability watchdog underscores. 

Brown would go on to lie to residents, claiming the Ombudsman found the audits unworthy of investigation. This is blatantly false; the letter includes no such language. 

“Residents of Brampton deserve full transparency and confidence in how their City Hall is operating. When serious concerns are raised and formal investigations are initiated they should not be paused or left unresolved without clear public explanation,” Brampton resident and community advocate Tracy Pepe said. “The recommendations of the Ontario Ombudsman to resume these investigations should be taken seriously. Accountability is not optional in a democratic system—it is essential to public trust. Residents have a right to understand what occurred, what decisions were made, and whether proper procedures were followed.”

Brampton resident Wesley Jackson, a local lawyer and keen City Hall watcher, echoed the calls for transparency and accountability. 

“Residents of Brampton deserve clear, honest answers about what happened at City Hall. When multiple investigations into alleged mismanagement and wrongdoing are abruptly shut down — by the very politicians who were the subject of those investigations — it raises a blatant and unacceptable conflict of interest. The recommendation from the Ontario Ombudsman to resume these investigations should not be ignored. It exists to protect the public’s right to transparency and to ensure accountability where serious concerns have been raised,” he told The Pointer. “Instead, what residents are seeing is the opposite. The only thing transparent right now is the disregard for voters and the erosion of public trust. No one should have the power to shut down scrutiny into their own conduct, particularly in a public office funded by taxpayers.”

The Brampton University project was pushed by Brown, Santos, and their allied councillors, Harkirat Singh, Paul Vicente, and Michael Palleschi. All of them voted in favour of terminating the investigations into the contracts handed to friends of Brown and Santos, other procurements and the controversial hirings under the mayor.

Brown and Santos had been at the forefront of the Brampton University project that cost taxpayers $630,000. As previously reported by The Pointer, Stakeholder Research Associates (SRA) received more than $500,000. Rob Godfrey, son of Post Media Chair Paul Godfrey and one of Brown’s closest friends, worked for SRA when he was handed the work, despite never being involved in the launch of a post-secondary institution. Senior City staff and the external investigators could not find evidence that Godfrey completed tasks he was paid for, and could not explain how or why he was paid for unfinished work. They also could not explain how he received three times more money than what council had authorized. Brown cancelled the investigations before he could be interviewed. 

Nikki Kaur, a former senior City Hall staffer turned whistleblower was fired after speaking up against the alleged corruption inside City Hall under Brown and providing evidence. She later threatened legal action alleging she was wrongfully dismissed. Kaur told councillors that Godfrey demanded payments that she was pressured to approve despite work that had not been completed.

The other firm that benefited from the since-abandoned university project was the Academy for Sustainable Innovation (ASI), which received a $100,000 contract. David Wheeler, the co-founder of the company, was a close friend and “mentor” of Santos.

When the contracts were approved by council in October 2019, neither Santos nor Brown disclosed their personal ties with Wheeler and Godfrey.

Regarding the work Godfrey and Wheeler were supposed to do, Froese Forensic Partners, wrote in its preliminary investigation report: “Was the work contracted by the city performed, and were the contracted deliverables received by the city? No.”

The investigation team found Godfrey’s firm at the time, ASI, was lobbying to secure the contract and communicating with Brown’s office months prior to the bidding process being initiated in October of 2019.

“Were there potential conflicts of interest for city staff, councilors, and/or consultants? Yes,” the firm concluded in its interim report.

Wheeler’s alarmingly thin body of work on the project included dozens of pages copied and pasted from sources easily found online, while he suggested Brampton University could open by 2026.

The preliminary investigation report included more damning revelations: “Was there compliance with City policies and procedures? No. In our view there was an unfair advantage provided to SRA (Godfrey’s firm at the time) and ASI (Wheeler’s firm at the time) within the procurement process for RFP2019-079 and RFP2019-080, as Dr. Wheeler had knowledge, information and relationships that were not available to other vendors and the time period for submitting proposals, although meeting minimum policy limits, also favoured Dr. Wheeler.”  

When Brown terminated the investigations, former Brampton councillor Jeff Bowman walked out of the August 2022 meeting in protest, calling it a “100 percent, total cover-up of this council of actions taken during this (term of) office…it’s obviously a very high-level cover-up. They know there’s damaging material to come out of these reports and Mayor Brown and his four crutches on Council feel that it’s in their best interests to cancel the reports—not in the public’s best interest.” 

Almost four years later, the direction from the Ontario Ombudsman to reopen the cancelled investigations continues to be ignored. 

Brown did not reply to questions from The Pointer.

Despite the strong push from councillors Pat Fortini and Martin Mederios to resume investigations in 2023 and restore democracy inside City Hall—they were part of a group of councillors who warned democracy was “under siege” by Brown and his allied councillors—they have since been quiet. 

When Brown and Santos along with Councillors Michael Palleschi, Harkirat Singh and Paul Vicente cancelled the investigations in August of 2022, Fortini said that, “We went this far, we got to continue it. This has been going along for a long time and we deserve answers. I think we should continue this, we can’t stop half-way, or three-quarters of the way and just throw money out the door and nobody’s here. Media’s been looking, we’ve been asking, everyone’s asking about this thing. It’s been over a year.” 

Medeiros added that Santos and Brown were in a clear conflict of interest by voting to cancel investigations they were implicated in. 

When The Pointer contacted Medeiros for an interview, he initially committed to providing a comment, but he did not  respond ahead of the publication deadline. 

Email: muhammad.hamza@thepointer.com

Email: joel.wittnebel@thepointer.com

At a time when vital public information is needed by everyone, The Pointer has taken down our paywall on all stories to ensure every resident of Brampton, Mississauga and Niagara has access to the facts. For those who are able, we encourage you to consider a subscription. This will help us report on important public interest issues the community needs to know about now more than ever. You can register for a 30-day free trial HERE. Thereafter, The Pointer will charge $10 a month and you can cancel any time right on the website. Thank you

Learn more about our News Monitoring here.

---