Entertain a thought experiment, dear reader. Please indulge me.
Envision a municipality that encounters serious allegations involving one of its senior administrators. Concerned, it commissions outside experts, reviews documents, interviews witnesses, and spends a good deal of taxpayer money seeking an independent answer, just to make sure that internal policies, the rules of good governance, and institutional ethics haven’t been breached. The review concludes that the administrator was in full compliance, effectively that neither the letter nor spirit of the law, nor the public trust has been violated. The senior administrator is cleared.
What happens next?
One would think that would settle the matter. And in a world grounded in evidence rather than assumption, it probably would. The investigation would have served its purpose. Public money would have purchased something valuable: a definitive answer. The municipality would turn the page, the administrator would return to work, and the community would move forward, firm in the knowledge that the system had done exactly what it was designed to do.
Ours, however, is not a perfect world.
Sometimes the investigation ends, but the allegation does not. Sometimes the official report filed by the neutral third party hired to get to the bottom of things quietly takes its place on a shelf, destined to gather dust, while the original claims continue to circulate, gaining new audiences each time they are repeated. Over time, the investigation itself becomes little more than a footnote, while the original accusation, disproven though it may be, continues to occupy center stage.
The fact that such a thing can happen raises a troubling question. If an independent investigation is commissioned to establish the facts in a serious matter of governance, what purpose does it ultimately serve if its conclusions carry less weight than the allegations that prompted them, if not in the official record, then with some members of the press? Put another way, what if some news outlets choose to disregard the outcome and instead keep printing stories based around the original allegation, as if the investigation never even took place?
Case Study: David Barrick
The career of veteran municipal executive David Barrick offers a solid opportunity to examine that question. Although, lamentably, Barrick is not the only public servant whose name has continued to generate headlines long after the facts had been settled, he serves as an especially instructive case for discussion on this matter.
Throughout his career, David Barrick has worked in some of Ontario’s most politically challenging municipal environments. Thames Center. Brampton. The Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority. And like many a senior public administrator before him, he has been the subject of some degree of public criticism and media attention. That, by itself, is neither unusual nor inappropriate. Senior municipal leaders oversee significant budgets, major infrastructure projects, scores of employees, and routinely make big decisions that directly affect the people and communities they serve. Accountability, and by extension, a certain amount of scrutiny, are just parts of the job.
What makes David Barrick’s experience noteworthy is not that allegations were raised. What makes his story noteworthy is what happened after they were dealt with properly, through official channels, as the subject of an independent examination.
It is also worth noting that these episodes did not unfold in a political vacuum. The allegations associated with Barrick’s career arose during or immediately preceding highly contentious municipal election cycles, periods in which public debate is often at its most polarized. The allegations connected to the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority came to light during the lead-up to the 2018 municipal elections. Similar allegations surfaced in Brampton during the 2022 mayoral election, where one of the individuals advancing those claims was herself a candidate for mayor. Following the election, that candidate was dismissed from her position with the City of Brampton.
More recently, some of those same themes have resurfaced in media coverage during the 2026 municipal election cycle. Whether intentional or not, the timing illustrates why independent investigations exist in the first place: to separate verifiable facts from the political narratives that can emerge during election campaigns.
During his tenure with the City of Brampton, allegations concerning Barrick’s conduct were reviewed through an investigation conducted by Deloitte, one of the ‘Big Four’ global accounting and professional services firms and an organization well known for its rigorous standards. The review concluded that Barrick had acted in compliance with all municipal policies, procedures, and bylaws. At that point, the City issued an unreserved public apology, acknowledging that the investigations were unfounded and had caused harm to his personal and professional reputation.
Sounds pretty much by the book so far, doesn’t it?
Separate concerns associated with Barrick’s time at the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority (NPCA) also attracted some attention. Again, this is not out of the ordinary for a person in the position of Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), as Barrick was in Brampton as well. High-ranking public servants are often subject to oversight, questioned by the press, or even pointed to by concerned members of the public when controversy rears its inevitable head. Their role is to keep quiet, adhere to the official process, and let the chips fall where they may, something David Barrick did consistently. The matters at the NPCA were ultimately examined by the Ontario Provincial Police, which confirmed no wrongdoing. Auditor General reviews similarly identified no issues pertaining to his official behaviour.
These findings did not eliminate every single disagreement surrounding the organizations in which Barrick served, nor should anyone expect them to. Municipal government is inherently political. Councils disagree. Residents disagree. Editorial writers disagree. That is the nature of democratic government, as well as a free press.
Independent investigations, however, serve a very different purpose. They are commissioned to answer specific factual questions through a demanding, impartial process. Once those questions have been thoroughly examined and the final report filed, the findings deserve serious consideration, whether they confirm or dispel anyone’s preconceived notions.
Otherwise, a difficult contradiction begins to emerge.
When Official Findings are Ignored
Municipalities commission independent investigations because objective oversight strengthens public confidence and helps establish an authoritative factual record. But that objective is only partly realized if the findings receive far less attention than the allegations that prompted them. When accusations continue to be revisited while independent conclusions quietly recede into the background, the public conversation can become disconnected from the official record.
The public may then be left with a strange and distorted picture. It sees the accusation in bold type, repeated across months or years (in the case of Barrick, a periodical called The Pointer seems to genuinely enjoy repeating a tilted narrative over and over), while the findings of Deloitte, the OPP, or the Auditor General, which answered the allegation, may only appear once, perhaps briefly, before disappearing from view. The result is not necessarily an outright falsehood. It is something subtler, and in some ways more difficult to correct: a story told with the ending essentially left out.
Context also matters. One of the individuals who publicly advanced allegations concerning Barrick’s tenure at the NPCA has since written for The Pointer, the same publication that continues to revisit those allegations long after they have been officially settled. Think of the chain of events there:
- An individual makes an allegation against a municipal official
- An independent review is conducted looking into the allegations, ultimately clearing the municipal official of wrongdoing
- The individual who made the allegation then begins writing for a media outlet
- That same media outlet publishes a series of articles highly critical of the municipal official after the review has concluded, repeating the allegation but not the findings
More than anything else, this illustrates precisely why readers ought to consider the broader context in which allegations are repeated, particularly when those allegations have already been examined by independent authorities.
A free press has every right to revisit the record of a public official. In many cases, it has a duty to do so. But revisiting a matter fairly requires more than repeating the most serious claims ever made about the person involved ad nauseam (especially when the outlet in question now platforms one of the very people who made the claims in the first place). It also requires acknowledging what became of those claims once outside investigators, be they private firms or representatives of the law, examined them in detail and made a public determination.
An allegation against a CAO is news; that is true. But so is its resolution.
When the former is repeatedly emphasized, and the latter is reduced to an aside, readers are not being given the complete story. Rather, they are being shown the opening scene again and again, while the final act remains offstage.
For someone in David Barrick’s position, the consequences are not theoretical. Senior public servants frequently cannot answer every article, disclose every document, or publicly debate every former colleague, political opponent, or critic. The rules of their profession demand restraint. There are laws on the books regarding this. Confidentiality obligations. Nondisclosure agreements. Statutes regarding personnel. In most cases, the administrator must remain silent, while others, such as those making the allegations in question or interested members of the press, continue speaking.
Silence, of course, creates room for interpretation in the eyes of many. It can be mistaken for weakness, uncertainty, or even guilt. Yet in public administration, keeping quiet may be the most responsible, nay, the only course available.
That is precisely why independent investigations matter so much. They are meant to speak where the public servant under scrutiny often cannot. They provide a record prepared by people with access to the relevant documents, witnesses, and evidence required to reach an informed and fair-minded conclusion. They and their findings cannot be treated as disposable simply because the original allegation makes for a more compelling headline.
It is also noteworthy that Barrick has continued to be recommended for senior leadership positions through independent executive recruitment processes specifically designed to evaluate experience, performance, and potential organizational risk. The fact that he has continued to emerge as a recommended candidate suggests that those conducting professional due diligence have viewed his record favourably.
The Larger Cost
I would also be remiss if I did not mention that there is a higher cost to be considered. Municipalities, both big and small, utterly depend on capable people being willing to accept difficult jobs to act as administrators. The CAO must answer to the municipal/city/town council, in addition to leading staff, managing public resources, and, critically, remaining neutral when the political winds change around them. It’s demanding work under the best of circumstances.
Now add in another possibility to this already stressful, demanding profession: that even after an allegation has been investigated and dismissed, it may continue following the public servant from one appointment to the next, kept alive through selective retelling.
How many experienced professionals will volunteer for that?
As a result of this, let’s call it a ‘selective’ brand of journalism, would-be and prospective public servants may think twice before entering the profession. Farther down the road, should this practice persist, municipalities may face longer executive searches, greater turnover, weakened institutional memory, and delays on important projects. Communities and their residents might pay the price in the end, not only through the public funds spent on recruitment, but through the instability that follows when capable leadership becomes harder to attract and retain.
The David Barrick example offers a useful lesson in this respect because the gap between some media coverage, exemplified by The Pointer, and the actual official record is so clear. Allegations were made. Independent bodies examined them. Findings were issued. In Brampton, a formal public apology followed. At the NPCA, police and Auditor General reviews found him to have done nothing wrong. Those facts deserve to remain part of every serious journalistic account of what happened.
All that being said, good municipal governance depends on independent scrutiny. A healthy democracy depends on a free press. But neither is strengthened when a third-party investigation conducted by a credible and duly appointed authority is treated as crucial and necessary to uncover the truth the moment it begins, then nearly forgotten once it reaches a conclusion unpalatable to a certain news outlet.
If the allegation remains newsworthy, the conclusion must remain newsworthy, too.
Anything less leaves the public with only half the story.
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