WATCH ABOVE: Global’s Christina Stevens spoke with Brampton’s Mayor-elect Linda Jeffrey moments after she was declared the winner in Brampton’s mayoral election.
TOROTO –Brampton residents have elected a new mayor as Linda Jeffrey defeated scandal-plagued incumbent Susan Fennell.
“Tonight the voters of Brampton have spoken, and with your help we have turned a new page,” Jeffrey told a cheering crowd.
The former MPP and Liberal cabinet minister resigned in March from her position of Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to run against Fennell in the Brampton election. She took almost 50 per cent of the vote, defeating former city councillor John Sanderson, who finished with 22 per cent of the vote, and Fennell, who took just 13 per cent.
The Brampton election had been focused on a forensic audit released in August that showed Fennell violated spending rules more than 260 times in a seven-year span.
Fennell contested the audit’s findings. She announced on Friday that an arbitrator’s report had cleared he of many the expense violations revealed in a municipal audit released earlier this summer, saying she owed just $3,000 of the over $170,000.
“It is a future filled with hope and optimism, it is a future that is not weighed down by the past,” Jeffrey told a packed house in Brampton. “Tonight’s win on our platform is based on the hundreds of conversations in peoples’ living rooms, in their backyards and their basements.”
Jeffrey campaigned on a pledge to improve accountability and transparency at Brampton City Hall, by asking for a review of the city’s finances, expenses for councillors and senior staff, as well as new code of conduct.
“To the new councillors that have been elected and those that have been re-elected. I want you to join me in an open, transparent and accountable city hall,” Jeffrey said.
Jeffrey promised to improve transit in Brampton by working the province to implement all-day, two-way GO train service (a provincial Liberal campaign promise), and to fast-track the widening of highway 410.
Jeffrey led in the polls through much of the campaign, over Sanderson and Fennell who polled at a distant third.
In Toronto, John Tory was elected over Doug Ford and Olivia Chow.
*With files from Global’s Christina Stevens
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