Brampton city councillors were not told of David Barrick's controversial political history in Niagara during that city's chief administrative hiring process, says one city councillor.

Coun. Jeff Bowman said Friday that during the fall CAO selection process Barrick's connection to controversies at Niagara Region, the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority and the Niagara Regional Police services board was not discussed. Bowman only became aware of them after Barrick had been hired and his connection to the 2016 Niagara Region CAO hiring scandal became headline news last month.

"At no point in the interview process, which was in closed session, was I made aware of any of the stories or reports pertaining to (Barrick)," Bowman said.

While Bowman has no issue with Barrick's two months as CAO in Canada's ninth largest city — nor the fact that Barrick had no prior municipal CAO experience— he would have expected a more frank discussion of a candidate's history.

"I now question the lack of transparency in the way the information on candidates was presented by the executive search team to the council," Bowman said in an email. "I would have expected a more fulsome disclosure from their exhaustive background checks."

That search team, Feldman Daxon Partners, did not respond to an interview request for this story.

The connections between Brampton's city hall and the 2016 affair that saw Carmen D'Angelo become Niagara's CAO were laid bare with the November release of the Ontario Ombudsman's report into the matter.

Ombudsman's Paul Dube found D'Angelo's hiring was an "inside job" orchestrated from within the office of former regional chair Alan Caslin, who was the head of the hiring committee, and involved other regional councillors.

Dube's report found that D'Angelo was downloading confidential documents about the CAO position before and during the hiring process created by Caslin's staff.

Caslin's then-communications director Jason Tamming, now Brampton's coms director, helped D'Angelo craft his written submission to the hiring committee.

The Ombudsman also found an email sent by Barrick, then a Port Colborne councillor, to the regional treasurer Jason Burgess months before the hiring process started urging Burgess to promote D'Angelo as the next CAO among staff to make the transition smoother and curry favour with his soon-to-be boss.

A Brampton citizen's group, Citizen's For a Better Brampton, has called into question the legitimacy of the city's hiring process.

"You have to ask what happened here," said Chris Benjar, co-chair of the group. "Why didn't councillors know about Barrick and Tamming's history? Did they know (Barrick) had no experience as a city CAO?"

Benjar said CFBB supported Brampton mayor Patrick's Brown run for office. He said Brown has been an "excellent mayor" for the city.

"So it would be really disappointing if Brown was behind this," said Benjar.

Bowman said if he or other councillors have concerns about Barrick or Tamming it will be raised with Brown behind closed doors.

In response to questions from The Standard last week about Barrick and Tamming, Brown only said Brampton's city staff are the best in Canada.

This week, Brown told the Brampton online news site The Pointer that city council wanted a CAO with "the same enthusiasm and energy" as council, and that he has not read Dube's report.

Barrick's connections to the plot to hire D'Angelo was one of several controversies he was linked to during this time as Niagara political figure.

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He was a leading member of the police services board when it ran multiple years of budget deficits and pushed out former chief Jeff McGuire with a million dollar buyout.

Barrick did not run for reelection and in November 2018 he was fired from his post as NPCA corporate services manager by then agency CAO Mark Brickell, who in turn was fired by the board comprised of Barrick's political allies.

Barrick was then rehired and appointed to interim CAO. During his three-month tenure, Barrick was roundly criticized by the newly elected regional council for not being transparent about the NPCA's budget.