Dear Council Candidates for Barrie's 2026 Municipal Election,

First off, thank you for stepping forward to declare your candidacy, and for your dedication to serve our community.  It is exciting to see such a large roster of candidates for all positions in this election.  Considering Ontario's long-term trend of declining participation in local politics, and the number of municipalities struggling to register candidates this year – not to mention that two unchallenged incumbents were acclaimed here last term – your participation in Election 2026 is especially heartening.

More candidates vying for each position means more backgrounds, viewpoints and life experience at the table, more conversations at the door, and a more engaged electorate.  Your voices and efforts during this campaign period are helping to strengthen democracy, regardless of who ultimately wins the seat on Council.

Your voices are important.

And that is why I am writing to you today.  Because in 2022, the actions and antics of a number of people with a stake in the election resulted in the silencing of several new candidates.  This in turn prevented the public from adequately educating themselves about their voting choices, allowed the incumbents to be re-elected without challenge to their platforms or risk of having to answer to their previous term, and grossly undermined the democratic process.

Recently, I have heard stories of some of these same parties finding ways to silence this year’s opposition, which I find infuriating, and I wish I’d spoken up earlier in this year’s campaign.  (Though if you didn’t believe how important your voices were before, the fact that somebody is trying to silence them ought to show you just how important they are!)

But forewarned is forearmed, even in this “final push”, and I hope that knowing what happened to silence the 2022 candidates will help you be wise to some of the tactics that might be used to silence your voice, and to be vigilant about checking the source of – and evidence for – any requests or demands (direct or indirect) that you forfeit your own voice.  Your voices are important.

As I have just implored you to check for evidence, more detail and evidence on this subject is available in Engage Barrie Organization’s EBO's report to membership about its internal investigation into the matter, in the “Slanderpalooza” section of my personal blog, and the background information I've linked to below.

The “TL:DR” Summary:

In September, 2022, a group of people – including two outgoing Council members, three incumbents, and at least one mayoral candidate – used threats, bribery, libel and slander in an attempt to shut down the Mayoral Forum co-hosted by Engage Barrie Organization and CARP Barrie, as well as the Ward All-Candidates Meetings hosted solely by Engage Barrie Organization.

When those two organizations refused to cancel the events, this group turned the libel and slanderous allegations into reasons for the incumbents to refuse to participate in them (and therefore not have to answer to their previous decisions in office), and to intimidate the newer candidates from participating (thus stealing from them the only opportunity the Ward Councillor candidates had to share their voices in public).  As well as to publicly bring Engage Barrie's credibility and reputation into question — just as EBO’s Accountability Team was preparing “Councillor Report Cards”, listing their attendance, votes and actions in Council on certain key issues, plus Code of Conduct violations or conflicts of interests, (or, for one Mayoral candidate, reports on actions in previous municipal and federal terms of office), all as part of our “advocating for accountability and transparency in local government” mandate.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Council members involved in what I now refer to as “Slanderpalooza” were each going to get less-than-favourable reports on their handling of the City’s Workplace Harassment case specifically, in which one of their fellow Council members — also a Mayoral Candidate that election — had been found to have sexually harassed a City staff member.  This “mishandling” included voting against the motion to allow the City’s Integrity Commissioner to investigate the accusation (thus taking away the possibility of his facing any repercussions as Councillor), as well as voting against the motion to get legal advice on alternative actions that could be taken.

One Councillor in particular — notably, the one who instigated Slanderpalooza — had already spent the previous two years misrepresenting her voting pattern and attacking both EBO’s and my credibility on the issue, even when we shared the City’s own video evidence of her votes and other incontrovertible documentation.  Engage Barrie was also documenting a number of her other Code and Municipal Elections Act violations, as well as one very serious conflict of interest.  I was not in the least surprised she would try to kick us on her way out, nor by most of the colleagues who jumped on her bandwagon — though one was certainly a surprise, as someone who likes to present himself as being an “unrepentant fan of evidence”.

(I should make it clear that I am writing this open letter to you solely as myself.  While I was Chair of Engage Barrie Organization leading up to the 2022 election, and was re-elected to the Board as Director at our AGM later that year, I stepped away from EBO when my term ended in 2025.  EBO has not participated in this letter in any way, nor was it made aware of its content in advance.)

The slightly-more-fleshed-out Summary

The threats were to me personally (and had been occurring since I started speaking up about the Workplace Harassment case), to Engage Barrie, and to CARP Barrie (our co-host for the Mayoral Forum), trying to stop us from hosting any of the All-Candidates Meetings.  We did not capitulate.  The bribery was to CARP Barrie, with a significant amount of money being offered to them to ditch Engage Barrie as co-hosts for the Mayoral Forum.  They refused the bribe.  The threats continued.

And so, four days before the Mayoral Forum, and subsequent Ward All-Candidates Meetings, an outgoing Councillor (who knew she wouldn’t have to face any penalties for breaking the City’s Code of Conduct) sent an email titled “Important:  Truth About Engage Barrie” to our co-hosts and the candidates, BCCd to multiple unnamed “community stakeholders”, and local media outlets.  This letter made several unsubstantiated and slanderous accusations against me as an individual, and against Engage Barrie Organization — of which I was Chair at the time.  The most egregious claims included that I had engaged in “direct, targeted harassment” that was “personal”, “vindictive” and “vengeful”, and that Engage Barrie had somehow directed me as Chair to “ruthlessly harass” her.  She called on CARP to host alone or find another co-host for the event (four days later), and heavily implied that candidates should stay away.  (Notably, undermining her own accusations by including screenshots of “evidence” which was actually of her harassing me and EBO on Twitter, among other examples which didn’t involve her at all — i.e., not targeted at her, nor in any way personal, vindictive nor vengeful towards her.)

A few hours later, one of her colleagues on Council (who not-so-coincidentally had access to her original email’s BCC list) jumped on the bandwagon with her slanderous accusations, adding some new ones of his own, calling on CARP and Engage Barrie to remove me from the events and publicly condemn me, and finishing with “I encourage all candidates, especially female candidates and those that are not currently on Council [bold emphasis his] to join me in my decision” to boycott the Mayoral Forum and All-Candidates Meetings if I was going to be involved with them.

All but one of the other Council members who EBO had critiqued for their handling of the Workplace Harassment case jumped on the bandwagon.

After some back-and-forth with CARP and EBO — who wanted us all to stand our ground and not cave to their demands — the “feeding frenzy” that was happening in the email chains with candidates was showing that many would be pulling out if I were involved.  So, in order to save the all-candidates meetings, and try to return the media focus to the candidates, I announced I was taking leave from Engage Barrie Organization, and would not be involved in any capacity with the Mayoral Forum or Ward All-Candidates Meetings.  I thought this was the best way to keep the events moving forward, the candidates’ voices heard, and give the public a chance to make educated decisions come election day.

I stepped away, the others on EBO’s Board and Election Committee took over, “they” got what they wanted — although it turns out, getting rid of the supposedly “terrifying harasser” wasn’t their end goal at all…

Within eleven minutes of Engage Barrie’s announcement that I’d given in to everyone’s demands and taken leave, the goal posts were shifted (by one of the incumbents who’d voted against allowing the Integrity Commissioner to investigate the Workplace Harassment case, of course) — with the email frenzy now complaining that CARP and EBO hadn’t publicly denounced me (for what they knew were untrue and unsubstantiated accusations), or been harsh enough with me, nor had they been compassionate enough to the people continuing to slander the organization.  Therefore the boycott should continue — anyone participating in the all-candidates meetings would reveal themselves to be people who condoned the abuse of Councillors, thus putting candidates in a no-win situation.

In the end, only four of the six Mayoral candidates showed up (with one requiring significant cajoling from the organizers to do so) to the Mayoral Forum, and only ten (two incumbents and eight brave newcomers) of the thirty-two Ward Councillor candidates had their voices heard. 

None of the Councillors who had voted against the Integrity Commissioner investigating the Workplace Harassment case had to risk the possibility of being asked about that or any of their other actions in the previous term.  The Mayoral candidate who was also the accused in that case did not have to risk the subject coming up, nor questions about any of his other behaviour in Council the previous term.  Only eight new candidates — representing only four of the City’s ten Wards — were able to present their ideas to the public.

This hurt not just the candidates, but the public’s ability to make an informed decision on election day.  EBO received many messages of disappointment from the public that they hadn’t been able to hear the candidates discuss their ideas.

In the end, Engage Barrie got some free advertising and a whole bunch of new funding out of the ordeal, while I continue to live my life and do what I do.  We weren’t the ones harmed by this scheme — but our local democracy certainly was.

In Conclusion

And so, I implore you all — not for my sake, not for Engage Barrie’s sake, but for the sake of your campaigns and the democratic process:  do not allow your voices to be silenced this election.  If someone is pressuring you in any way to avoid an event or other situation that allows you to get your ideas heard, look very hard and carefully at who is pushing, and why.  

• What might they not want to answer to?
• What benefit might they gain from suppressing others’ voices?
• How might they benefit from an ill-informed public?
• Why might your ideas be threatening to them?

Check your sources, look for solid evidence to substantiate any claims, don’t believe everything you read.  (The former librarian in me would love for that to be your approach in all things, but especially as you’re campaigning this fall.)

Best wishes to all those campaigning with honesty and integrity.  With any luck, I’ve been able to add some “street smarts” to your efforts.  I am unsure who, if anyone, is organizing all-candidates meetings for the Ward Councillor candidates this time around, but I hope you participate in any and all opportunities to share your ideas for our city.

Your voice matters.  Your ideas matter.  To the electorate, to the city, and to the democratic process.

Sincerely,
Alyssa Wright

P.S. — if, at this point, you are thinking “wait, she told us to look for evidence, but hasn’t provided much to support her own claims here” — well, you just made my former-librarian heart very happy, indeed!  I’ve got one mountain of detail at the Slanderpalooza Deep Dive, complete with links and posts and screenshots to substantiate everything I’ve shared here and more.