It’s been no secret that Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and Ontario Premier Doug Ford didn’t have the best of relationships during the first year of Brown’s mayoral tenure.

The mayor and premier met for breakfast on Feb. 27 to discuss priorities in Canada’s ninth-largest city. It’s only the second time they have met face-to-face since Brown assumed office in late 2018, but the second time they’ve met in just over a month.

“Had a good breakfast meeting with @fordnation this morning to go over #Brampton’s priorities. We had a productive discussion on our health care emergency, CCTV cameras & post secondary education. Our City Council has an ambitious agenda to move Brampton forward! #onpoli #brampoli,” said Brown in a tweet following the meeting.

Brown and Ford didn’t meet at all in 2019, but it appears 2020 has rung-in a new conciliatory tone in the relationship with their first meeting coming on Jan. 24 ahead of a guns and gangs funding announcement in Mississauga followed up by this most recent tete-a-tete.

Ford replaced Brown as Progressive Conservative (PC) Party leader only months before the June 2018 provincial election after the latter resigned amid a sexual misconduct controversy, which Brown has denied and remains engaged in an $8-million defamation suit against CTV News over its initial reporting at the height of the #MeToo movement.

Brown admitted in December that he and Ford “have differences of opinion on a number of issues that I think are well-known in the media.”

In November 2018, shortly after Brown was elected mayor, he released a tell-all book about his time with the PC Party and eventual departure which drew the premier’s ire.

“I wouldn’t have put a book out like that,” Ford said at the time. “He really, really went after people. It’s disappointing, I have to question his leadership.”

“He definitely did a disservice to the people of Brampton,” added the premier.

Speculation of a rift between the two began after Ford cancelled the Peel Region chair election in which Brown was set to run a day before the nomination deadline. The premier poured fire on those rumours by cancelling funding for a planned Ryerson University campus in downtown Brampton the day after Brown was elected.