Ed Smith, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter & Joel Wittnebel, The Pointer

Less than three months after starting the job, despite his scandal-plagued past and lack of proper experience, David Barrick is no longer the Chief Administrative Officer for the Township of South Stormont. 

His abrupt departure from the small eastern Ontario township, quietly announced Tuesday, March 24, has left residents, municipal officials and media outlets familiar with Barrick’s numerous scandals questioning what occurred behind closed doors. 

South Stormont officials are not providing any details, but the agenda for an emergency council meeting held Monday afternoon suggests Barrick was in trouble, days after The Pointer reported that the OPP blocked reporter Ed Smith from covering Barrick two weeks ago. 

In a brief statement released Tuesday, about 24 hours after the emergency meeting, the Township announced Barrick is no longer the CAO, and expressed gratitude for his work, despite being on the job for less than three months. 

“We are grateful for the positive impact David has made on the organization and wish him continued success in his future endeavours,” South Stormont Mayor Bryan McGillis wrote in the press release announcing the departure. “The Township of South Stormont will offer no further comment on this matter at this time.”

The mayor’s refusal on Tuesday to provide any explanation, came a day after the emergency council meeting. The only item on the agenda for the 4:30 p.m. meeting was a closed session discussion about a personal matter regarding an identifiable employee, “Specifically: Employee Effectiveness”. There was no other detail about why the special meeting to deal with the employee was called. 

Approximately 24 hours later, it was announced that David Barrick is no longer the CAO.

When Brampton council fired Barrick from his CAO role there in 2022, following years of scandal and turmoil, he threatened legal action and demanded the City release a letter praising his time with the municipality—despite the chaos he caused, which is detailed below. Barrick threatened the City with a $1 million lawsuit if officials did not provide him a 36-month severance payment, a positive reference letter and $250,000 in damages for “defamation, moral damages, and damages to his reputation”.

“Mr. Barrick requires a public commentary be issued by Council providing a recognition of his very positive service and outline of achievements as CAO of the Corporation,” a legal letter sent from Barrick’s lawyer to the City of Brampton demanded. “This is vital to Mr. Barrick to try to at least engage in some attempt at repair of his reputation.”

The City of Brampton issued a public statement celebrating Barrick’s time with the City. The release was full of misleading statements and did not address the numerous controversies he caused or enabled, and there was no mention of the reasons council fired him. 

After his departure as CAO in Thames Centre last yesr—a role he held prior to arriving in South Stormont—a similar positive statement was released by the municipality. It thanked Barrick for his time, but did not address any of the allegations detailed to The Pointer by sources including questionable spending and mass staff departures that began after his arrival, following his firing in Brampton. 

Barrick first landed a senior municipal sector job a decade ago at the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, despite having no experience. He served as a Port Colborne councillor on Niagara Region’s council at the time, and was close to Conservative politicians and insiders who handed him the conservation authority management position; Ontario’s Auditor General later reported that his hiring was inappropriate and did not follow proper procedures. 

After he was fired, following allegations of mismanagement when he became the conservation authority’s CAO, Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, who had just been forced to quit as PC Party leader for allegedly sexually assaulting two young women (he denies the allegations) orchestrated the hiring of Barrick as the city’s CAO, despite being woefully unqualified to run the country’s sixth largest city. 

An ongoing investigation into Barrick’s past municipal scandals prompted The Pointer’s reporter Ed Smith to cover the March 11 municipal council meeting in South Stormont as part of a series of articles that will examine his controversial career, to highlight the breakdown of municipal accountability in Ontario ahead of local elections in October. 

On March 11, officers from the Ontario Provincial Police prevented Smith from attending the public council meeting inside the municipal building in South Stormont. Two officers positioned themselves shoulder-to-shoulder at the entrance and refused him entry.

The officers cited a trespass notice, despite no disturbance or incident. They indicated that prior information had been provided suggesting the reporter might pose a threat, repeatedly claiming they had been informed their attendance was necessary to stop a “stalker” from entering the building. Officers appeared surprised when informed by Smith that he is a journalist reporting for The Pointer. 

They did not explain where the information about a “stalker” had come from, or who specifically had requested their presence. 

The OPP’s Sylvain Ladouceur, an administrative Sergeant at the detachment that serves South Stormont, spoke to The Pointer Wednesday about the complaint that led to reporter Ed Smith not being allowed inside the town hall building on March 11. 

He explained that a request was received by the local OPP from South Stormont Mayor Bryan McGillis prior to the public council meeting that day. McGillis informed the OPP that information had been provided to him regarding a “history” between David Barrick and Ed Smith, and the mayor requested Smith be denied access to the property due to that history. 

Sergeant Ladouceur said the incident report he was reading from does not mention anything about stalking or include any details about the history between Barrick and Smith. 

Smith was one of the Niagara residents who obtained documentation through freedom of information requests that showed Barrick’s involvement in the Niagara CAO “Inside Job” recruitment scandal that resulted in the hiring of Carmen D’Angelo, who had been Barrick’s boss at the local conservation authority.

Controversies in Niagara around a group of Conservative politicians prompted Smith’s advocacy efforts to bring accountability to the region, and Barrick who was one of the group of Conservative politicians, was opposed to much of the citizen-led advocacy work Smith was a key part of. 

Smith has worked as a reporter for The Pointer since 2023 and recently sent Barrick questions as part of an investigation into his hiring and subsequent departure in Thames Centre where he served as CAO. 

Smith has never been accused of stalking and has no recollection of any communication initiated by Barrick. 

The March 11 incident quickly drew attention across Ontario, prompting a flood of messages from municipal officials, political observers and concerned citizens, raising questions about transparency, accountability and the concentration of administrative power in the municipal sector.

Under the Criminal Code of Canada, providing false or misleading information to police can constitute an offence. Section 140, known as public mischief, applies when someone intentionally misleads law enforcement into acting on inaccurate information. Other potential offences could include obstruction of justice or fabricating evidence, depending on the circumstances. 

Requests for further comment sent to Mayor McGillis and all members of council were not returned. 

Barrick’s departure comes less than three months after he assumed the CAO role in South Stormont. First hired by the small municipality in November as the Deputy CAO. He worked with the outgoing chief bureaucrat Debi Lucas up until her retirement at the end of last year. Barrick assumed the role of CAO on January 1.

It’s unclear how elected officials in South Stormont were not informed of Barrick’s controversial past and the trail of scandal he has left behind in all three of his previous administrative positions.

Barrick first entered municipal administration in 2013. While serving as a regional councillor for Port Colborne, he was hired with no experience by Carmen D’Angelo, a friend of his, for a senior position with the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority (NPCA). Barrick was also an NPCA Board Member at the time. Both men have close connections with the Progressive Conservatives. Barrick worked as the NPCA’s corporate services director until 2018, when he was fired. In a stunning twist which Ontario’s Auditor General would later criticize as improper following a scathing investigation into the NPCA’s governance issues, Barrick was briefly rehired as the interim CAO of the NPCA. He stepped down after Hamilton and Niagara councillors heavily criticized him for presenting an NPCA budget that could not account for more than $2 million in spending. The spending issues got to the point that residents protested, demanding he be fired. 

The awarding of his original job at the NPCA was flagged by the Ontario Auditor General as an example of unfair hiring practices at the conservation authority.

Barrick was also involved in the corrupt hiring process to get his friend, D’Angelo, the job as the CAO for Niagara Region. The scandal was laid bare by the now infamous “Inside Job” investigation by Ontario’s Ombudsman, Paul Dubé in 2019. 

Though not mentioned by name in the exhaustive report—Dubé refers to him only by his title—it outlines in detail how Barrick worked with other bureaucrats to get D’Angelo the CAO job. Their efforts undermined what was meant to be a fair and impartial process. 

After his departure from Niagara, Barrick landed in Brampton through a process controlled by Mayor Brown.

During his time as  Brampton’s CAO, Barrick:

• 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.
•  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 man was Brett Bell, a long-time Conservative insider with connections to Brown.
•  shifted the Freedom of Information function and the Internal Audit department–vital tools for public accountability over elected officials–under his control.
•  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.    
• hired inexperienced people without the required education for critical engineering positions
•  placed the City’s corporate fraud hotline under the control of close connections he hired
•  altered the results of a damning internal audit report 

The situation in Brampton sparked outrage. For the second time in his career residents protested in the street, demanding Barrick be fired. 

A majority group of councillors stopped attending council meetings alleging democracy was “under siege” in the city. When those councillors were eventually able to take control of decision-making, Barrick was fired in February 2022. 

In June of 2023 the municipality of Thames Centre, a town of  just under 14,000 about 15 minutes east of London, announced it had hired Barrick as the new CAO after a “comprehensive recruitment process”.

Residents and municipal officials from the area who have contacted The Pointer allege turmoil inside town hall began almost immediately. Allegations of nepotism include Barrick’s hiring of his old friend Carmen D’Angelo to be the town’s treasurer and director of corporate services. Residents also allege improper spending, questionable contracts and upheaval among Town staff.

By August of last year Barrick was suddenly gone. In a statement, Thames Centre officials said Barrick resigned, but The Pointer has been told by multiple sources he was fired. After Barrick’s departure from Thames Centre, D’Angelo also left the municipality. 

Executive search firms appear to be partially responsible for Barrick’s repeated hiring, despite his lack of experience and disqualifying past. 

In South Stormont, Barrick’s most recent pit stop, an October 2025 press release from the Town explains Legacy Search Partners conducted a “competitive and thorough third-party executive search” that led to his selection as CAO. He lasted three months.

When he was hired in Brampton, Feldman Daxon Partners Inc., another executive search firm, recommended him for the role. That process was controlled by Brown. An investigation by The Pointer found that during the hiring process, Feldman Daxon failed to mention his involvement in the Niagara Inside Job hiring scandal when Carmen D’Angelo was handed the confidential interview questions and answers by senior staff, to ensure his selection for the CAO job.

The Pointer continues to investigate how Barrick was hired in Thames Centre and South Stormont, and why he no longer has a job. 

The OPP told The Pointer that officers will help determine who falsely claimed reporter Ed Smith had been stalking Barrick. 

The Pointer has requested access for Smith to attend future public meetings in South Stormont, after he was barred from doing so two weeks ago. 

Email: ed.smith@thepointer.com

Email: joel.wittnebel@thepointer.com

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