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Brampton, Linda Jeffrey has handed Susan Fennell, the scandal-plagued mayor of Brampton, an embarrassing defeat.
She said Fennell’s loss was a signal that Brampton taxpayers “sent a clear message that they want a better Brampton … We needed real leadership.”
“Certainly, people were very angry,” Jeffrey said of Fennell, moments after arriving at her victory party and describing what she was hearing at the door.
Asked what her first order of business will be, she said: “To lower the mayor’s salary … bringing in some accountability.”
Jeffrey, a former Brampton MPP, will now have a clear mandate to clean up a dysfunctional mayor’s office left by Fennell, who was at about 12-per-cent support compared to Jeffrey’s 49 per cent. She and challenger John Sanderson made accountability key planks in their platforms, following a spending scandal involving Fennell.
Jeffrey was introduced onstage on Monday evening by former Ontario premier Bill Davis, a longtime Brampton resident.
This will be Jeffrey’s second go-round on Brampton council. She was first elected as a councillor in 1991 and served with Fennell, often butting heads, before Jeffrey won a seat at Queen’s Park in 2003.
As an MPP she rose to the ranks of cabinet in the Liberal government of premier Dalton McGuinty. She served as minister of labour, natural resources and municipal affairs and housing.
She said her decision to resign as an MPP and run for the mayor’s job came after she was pressured to help clean Brampton up; she admitted recently that she is not fond of municipal politics.
Jeffrey has promised to cut the mayor’s pay by about $50,000 and will push for a lobbyist registry. She also focused on equity and inclusion — about 67 per cent of Brampton residents belong to visible minority groups. She’s pledged to bring a university to the city and wants to see all-day, two-way GO service to help ease crippling traffic congestion.
Sanderson, who captured 22 per cent of the vote, had been on Brampton council since 2006, after running his family’s waste management business. The Sanderson name is well known throughout the city because of his family’s community service — Sanderson was named Brampton’s citizen of the year in 2005.
He was one of Fennell’s main opponents on council this term, and brought forward the motion for the forensic audit of council spending. His platform focuses on incentivizing small, medium and big businesses to set up in Brampton.
The city has been consumed by a spending scandal that rocked the mayor’s office. City documents showed that Fennell and her staff expensed $186,000 over three years on items such as $1,300 for Fennell’s Mandarin lessons, $2,100 for personalized barbecue aprons and $1,500 for tickets to the city’s Rose Orchestra.
Disclosures of official travel spending showed the mayor and her staff spent $185,000 over five years, including expenses of more than $1,800 each for flights to places such as Ottawa, Saskatoon and Bagotville, Que. Hotel stays, some for more than $700 a night, were also revealed in documents.
Fennell and her staff also rang up $663,000 on city-issued credit cards over seven years, including numerous personal charges for items such as jewelry and airfare. Some of the expenses have been paid back.
An outside auditor was called in to examine the spending and made recommendations as to how much should be paid back by council members.
On Friday, an appeal arbitrator dramatically reduced the amount Fennell must pay back and lowered the payback amounts for most councillors.
The scandal took a political toll on Fennell as her popularity in the polls plummeted.
On Monday, she told supporters, “I feel like a winner tonight.”
She said she was grateful to have been mayor and had “no regrets,” despite the “alleged spending scandal” that she described as a “terrible cloud.”
“I have come here to wish Linda success,” Fennell said. “Over four terms we brought this city to be debt-free. We have rec centres being added. Brampton is on a firm financial footing. We are so diverse. I love the people and I love the job. Tonight the people have spoken and they have chosen a new mayor.”
While council became consumed with the mayor’s office in the past term, staff struggled with some key issues in a city that has been growing quickly. A proposal call by the province offered the city — the largest in Canada without its own university — a chance to build its own post-secondary institution.
But the city learned this summer that the application on which it had partnered with Centennial College did not comply with requirements.
Council was slow in confirming what it wants to do about the proposed light-rail line that Metrolinx proposes to run north from Port Credit into Brampton’s historic centre. The project’s future in Brampton remains undecided.
A capital project review also found — after reporting requirements were inexplicably dropped — that the city had lost track of progress on tens of millions of dollars’ worth of approved and funded projects. Some of the money has since been accounted for.
