Full details can be found at https://tinyurl.com/2wrp8bzn & https://tinyurl.com/4m264yzb

Barrie’s barely elected first-term Conservative mayor, Alex Nuttall, has neither challenged nor contested our corroborated reporting that he sidestepped staff for the City of Barrie to evade the legally obligatory bids and tenders process of procurement and instead entered into a multi-million dollar contract with “Hydra Security,” which is located in Brampton, more than an hour away, where Nuttall’s self-identified “brother," Patrick Brown, is in his second term as mayor. 

There is no obvious reason for why Alex Nuttall retained this service from Brampton, other than his deep connections to Brown. Hydra Security is registered as a service provider for the City of Brampton but only became one for Barrie due to this contract. Several companies in Barrie could have provided those services, which would have generated work to residents.

Brown is a former MP for Barrie and the ejected short-term leader of the Ontario PC Party. He is known to be deeply ingrained in the Indian and Sikh community; his wife, Genevieve Gualtieri Brown, is reported to be of that culture. Both are politically connected within Ontario Progressive Conservative circles through the Gualtieri family. Public biographies note that her mother is Ontario PC MPP Silvia Gualtieri and that she is related to PC MPP Rudy Cuzzetto. 

Those guards were reported to have been hired to monitor the old bus station, which is now a key component of Lakehead University’s downtown redevelopment plans. If those claims were true, the contract would have been excessive and subject to scrutiny for potential ‘padding’—when an excess of security personnel is hired to increase the cost of the services so a ‘gratuity’ can be paid to the director or manager from the hiring company. In most cases, that kickback is around 10% of the cost of the contract, so potentially as much as $200,000.00 in grift.

However, a walk through downtown and video provided reveal that those guards, who are costing taxpayers as much as $2 million, are patrolling the waterfront, through Meridian Place, and even on the streets, where they are reported to be compelling those trapped in our homeless community to move out of the area and also just plain harassing them. This would suggest that the services being sought were not so much security related as something else and that Alex Nuttall sidestepped standard, legitimate procurement policies for some reason aside from his official duties as mayor of Barrie. If this can be shown to be true, either possible offence would be sufficient for criminal charges of fraud.

We want to use the power of the people, especially the taxpayers of Barrie, to compel Suzanne Craig, the Integrity Commissioner for the City of Barrie, and also the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate why our mayor signed an apparent open-ended multi-million dollar contract with a company from a community more than an hour away, rather than further their existing contract or hire another Barrie company that would likely hold him to the rules rather than risk their licenses, when the only reason appears to be that his “brother,” Patrick Brown, has so much influence and financial interest in that community. 

No accusations are being made currently, but this kind of behaviour is indicative of a politician padding their privilege on the way out of office. If you agree this deal smells like three-day-old fish and it warrants official investigations, please sign our petition. Also, please be sure to share this post, as any breach of public trust by anybody in City Hall is a violation against us all.

Full details can be found at https://tinyurl.com/2wrp8bzn & https://tinyurl.com/4m264yzb

Show your support for municipal accountability by demanding an investigation of Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall, who chose to ignore accepted rules of procurement through bids and tenders to sign a $2 million contract with a security company from Brampton, an hour away, where his “brother” is mayor.