The Missing Letter “P”, Open Ward Races, and Advance Polls

October 5, 2022

(Photo: Picture of an election sign with missing letter “P” that is quickly being replaced by the campaign team).

There are six candidates vying for Mayor of Brampton. This includes incumbent Patrick Brown and the five challengers:

• Vidya Sagar Gautam, A screening Manager at the Toronto Pearson Airport;
• Gurdeep (Nikki) Kaur Jheeta, A controversial employee from the City of Brampton;
• Prabh Kaur Mand, No information provided on City website;
• Tony Moracci, Retired Businessman; and
• Bob Dosanjh Singh, Owner and host of Sanjha Punjab Radio and TV.

Evidence that the municipal election is upon us occurs when election signs fill residential lawns and street corners. In a disastrous blunder with the Gurdeep Kaur’s campaign, her campaign team mistakenly left out the letter “P” in Brampton, making the spelling of Canada’s ninth largest city entitled “Bramton”. This is the same Gurdeep Kaur who made headlines with false allegations against Councillors and senior city staff. The cost of the investigations is estimated to have cost taxpayers $1 million dollars.

The Three Vacant Seats

Apart from the Mayor’s race, there are seven current incumbents vying to retain their seats on Council with a variety of challengers.

This translates to three seats being wide open for newcomers. The are no incumbents in the Wards 2 and 6 seat vacated by Doug Whillans, Wards 3 and 4 seat vacated by Jeff Bowman, and Wards 7 and 8 seat vacated by Charmaine Williams. You cand find the ward maps by clicking here.

With no incumbents, these vacant seats have generated a large number of hopeful candidates seeking to represent Brampton. There are nine candidates for City Council in Wards 2 and 6, six candidates for Wards 3 and 4, and thirteen candidates for Wards 7 and 8 (with two candidates sharing the same last name). This will make some interesting and challenging choices amongst the electorate. To find out more about who is running in your area, click here.

Advance Polls

This year, Diwali and Bandi Chhor Diwas are on the same day as Voting Day on Monday, October 24. Many municipalities have advance polls that allow voters to cast their ballots if they have a conflict on municipal election day. The City of Brampton’s advance polls can be located here and are on this weekend (October 7,8 and 9) and next weekend (October 14 and 15).

Some Sikh community leaders are suggesting that this puts their communities at a disadvantage.

A Change.org petition was started by the Indo-Caribbean Canadian Association that recommends: “that the Ontario Government immediately amend the date of the 2022 municipal election in Ontario (October 24) due to the conflict with the significant religious and cultural observance of Diwali.”

The petition outlines that the Ontario Government has previously moved the election dates to avoid Orthodox Jewish holidays and Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the month of Ramadan.

In Brampton, more than 40 percent of the population is South Asian, the City said it was getting ahead of this and sending information to places of worship and culture centers in languages including Punjabi, Hindi and Gujarati as part of outreach to diverse communities.