In less than a month, Brampton will decide who runs its city for the next four years. Voting day is Monday, October 26, part of the province-wide Ontario municipal elections, and the ballot carries the mayor’s chair, five regional councillors, five city councillors and school board trustees. Candidate registration closed August 21, and the field is set.
This is one of the most watched municipal races in the country. Brampton is Canada’s second-largest majority-racialized city, its fastest-growing big city for years running, and home to one of the largest Caribbean communities in the country. What happens at Brampton City Hall lands directly in our neighbourhoods. Here is what you need to know.
The incumbent: Patrick Brown wants a third term
Mayor Patrick Brown, first elected in 2018, has filed for a third term. His office confirmed the run on May 1, and he filed his papers at City Hall framing the campaign around public safety and what he calls transformational projects: construction of Brampton’s second hospital and extending the Hazel McCallion light-rail transit line into the city.
Brown is one of the most recognizable municipal politicians in Canada, and one of the most controversial. He previously led the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, resigning in 2018 amid sexual misconduct allegations he denied, and was later disqualified from the federal Conservative leadership race over alleged financing rule breaches. None of it has dented his Brampton base. In 2022 he won with 50,652 votes, more than double his nearest challenger.
His pitch this time leans heavily on safety. Brown has been a vocal supporter of Peel Regional Police, and on September 29 the Peel Regional Police Association, the union representing nearly 4,000 Peel officers, officially endorsed his re-election. Association president Adrian Woolley called him “a stronger advocate, a stronger voice, a harder working mayor,” noting that 175 new Peel officers were hired in Mississauga and Brampton this year and that officers per resident have increased under Brown’s tenure.
Brown and council also pushed hard on bail reform after the killings of Brampton women Darian Hailey Henderson-Bellman and Savannah Kulla, both murdered by former partners who had been released on bail. Those calls became federal policy earlier this year, with sweeping changes making it harder for dangerous offenders to get back on the street.
The challengers
Brown faces seven challengers for the mayor’s chair, including Jagruti Bhatt, Vidya Sagar Gautam (who also ran in 2022), Sandeep Somal, Gaurav Walia, Gursimranjit Singh, Tirth Vinodkumar Patel and Avi Dhaliwal. Name recognition is Brown’s moat. Every challenger is running against an incumbent who has held the office for eight years and survived every scandal thrown at him.
Down the ballot, the council races are where the real turnover could happen. All five sitting city councillors have registered for re-election, including Rowena Santos, Navjit Kaur Brar and Dennis Keenan, but several wards have crowded fields. In Wards 1 and 5, nine candidates are chasing the city council seat, including incumbent Rowena Santos and Staceyann Brooks, a Jamaican-Canadian community advocate who also ran in 2022. For Caribbean Brampton, that is a name to watch.
The accountability file
No honest preview of this election can skip the controversies, because the challengers certainly will not.
City payroll has become a major line of attack. In 2017, Brampton’s Sunshine List salary expenditure was about $90 million. Under Brown it has reportedly grown to roughly $270 million, with 2,117 city employees now earning $100,000 or more. The number of six-figure earners at the city grew by about 80 percent in less than seven years. Questions have also been raised about more than $430,000 spent on social media over a three-year period, and about the optics of the mayor’s overseas travel during a period of rising household costs.
Labour relations have been rocky. In 2024, CUPE 831, representing more than 1,200 municipal workers, sought wage increases of four to six percent over five years. The city pushed for three percent, triggering a brief strike, and Brown later called the union’s demands “unacceptable and irresponsible” on social media, even as comparisons showed some Brampton workers earning less than counterparts in neighbouring municipalities.
Then there is the sign saga. Freedom-of-information documents revealed chaos around election signage from the 2022 race: Brown himself racked up 333 violations and $8,325 in fines. Eight council members then voted to excuse their own sign fines, a move critics called a likely violation of provincial conflict-of-interest law, before public backlash forced them to rescind it.
And despite legal direction to do so, council took no action to reopen probes into alleged wrongdoing involving Brown and Councillor Santos, feeding a broader narrative about transparency at City Hall.
What is actually at stake
Strip away the personalities and the election comes down to a handful of concrete questions.
The second hospital. Brampton has been fighting for expanded hospital capacity for years. The city says construction is moving. Voters will judge whether “moving” is fast enough for one of Canada’s fastest-growing cities.
The LRT. Extending the Hazel McCallion line into Brampton would reshape transit in the city. It is also the kind of multi-billion-dollar project that lives or dies on political will across multiple levels of government.
Housing and affordability. Like everywhere in the GTA, Brampton is getting more expensive. Ward-level concerns range from downtown revitalization and parking in Wards 1 and 5 to traffic congestion and school overcrowding in Wards 9 and 10.
Public safety. It is Brown’s strongest card and his opponents’ hardest target. The police union endorsement helps him. The accountability questions hurt him. Voters get to decide which matters more.
Arts and culture. At a September 15 town hall hosted by the Brampton Arts Organization, Brampton Library and CBC News, mayoral candidates faced questions on the creative economy. The arts coalition is asking for stable investment, affordable creative space and a real seat at the planning table. For a city whose culture is its calling card, from Caribbean Carnival to its music scene, that conversation matters.
The Yardie takeaway
Brampton’s Caribbean community is big enough to swing ward races and shape the mayoral outcome. We show up for Carnival, for cricket, for sound system culture. The question is whether we show up on October 26.
Municipal elections decide the things you feel every day: the bus route, the community centre hours, the pothole on your street, the park your kids play in, whether the second hospital gets built before your mother needs it. The provincial and federal elections get the drama. The municipal one gets your daily life.
Mark the date. Check your ward. And vote like the city belongs to you, because it does.
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