The city of Brampton is back in the tertiary education business after City Council voted to recommence work on Brampton University with the hope of bringing university to the city.
Brampton City Council held its first meeting recently. During the meeting, Mayor Patrick Brown’s prioritized resurrecting the City’s controversial university advocacy.
Brown presented a motion that City staff “be reauthorized to undertake engagement in University Advocacy for the City,” overriding the previous council’s decision to freeze all work on Brampton University after months of heavy debate on the project in council chambers.
BramptonU was stalled after the council discovered that over $629,000 of taxpayers’ funds were remitted to consultants. A major chunk of the work paid for under the project was never identified, and an audit of the project revealed that consultants had connections to both the Mayor and Coun. Rowena Santos.
But the Mayor cancelled the audit in a motion before the work was completed. In a draft report, the audit firm said it had a number of interviews left uncompleted before the audit was stopped, including with BramptonU consultants Rob Godfrey, a personal friend of the mayor, and David
Previously, Santos had cleared her connection to Wheeler with Brampton’s integrity commissioner prior to the findings of the audit draft report.
BramptonU’s website calls the project “a process to bring a full university to Brampton.”
Part of the statement on the website read: “The goal for BramptonU is to transform it from a process into a living, breathing university, offering leading undergraduate and graduate degrees in skills to prepare for in-demand jobs of the future.”
Gary Collins, Mayor Brown’s person said the motion would end City staff “putting pens down” on Brampton’s university advocacy.
He said: “The previous University advocacy under Brampton U resulted in the City getting a medical school and Mayor Brown is not going to stop there. He will keep advocating for our own University.”
According to Collins, no funds were demanded through the advocacy motion “as the submission to the province was already completed.”
The draft report discovered there was “a potential conflict of interest for Councilor Santos” on the university project because of her ties to Wheeler. Santos and Brown have both described the audit as a political “witch hunt,” while Jeff Bowman, a former councillor called Brown’s motion to discard the investigation “a cover-up.”
Mayor Brown has been committed to his desire to bring tertiary institutions to Brampton, despite issues over how and when consultants were paid.
Brampton’s university dreams suffered a setback in October when a proposal for University of Guelph-Humber to bring its campus to the city was cancelled by the university over space constraints at the City’s planned Centre for Innovation (CFI).
Collins said: “We heard from residents very clearly during the election that they want a University in Brampton.
“Residents were livid that political games against Councilor Santos by now defeated or retired Councilors resulted in this key project being sidelined.”
Councilors Martin Mederos and Pat Fortini, who have both been vocal about their concerns with the cost of the university project, voted in favour of Mayor Brown’s motion. Collins disclosed the Mayor “is very glad the new Council is being more ambitious and agreed to push for a University unanimously.”
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