Ontario Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development David Piccini speaks to media at Queen’s Park, Oct. 20.Laura Proctor/The Canadian Press
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says that his Labour Minister will co-operate with an Integrity Commissioner probe into the minister’s handling of the province’s $2.5-billion Skills Development Fund – but was silent about his future in cabinet.
The office of Integrity Commissioner Cathryn Motherwell confirmed late Thursday that Labour Minister David Piccini will face an investigation prompted by opposition complaints alleging he violated ethics rules in selecting recipients for the fund, which hands out cash to unions, employers and other organizations for training programs.
On Friday, Mr. Ford took just two questions from reporters at a news conference in Buffalo, N.Y., alongside New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, where the two leaders pledged to co-operate on expanding nuclear power.
Asked whether it was time for Mr. Piccini to step down or be fired, Mr. Ford replied: “Well, I know he’ll co-operate with the Integrity Commissioner.” The Premier then went on to say the fund’s programs had trained 750,000 people and that 100,000 of them had found jobs.
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A month ago, Mr. Ford had brushed aside opposition demands that Mr. Piccini quit or get the boot. The Labour Minister has been at the centre of a political storm since an October report from the province’s Auditor-General concluded that the distribution of $1.3-billion in training grants from his ministry’s Skills Development Fund was “not fair, transparent or accountable.”
The report found that political staff in the Labour Minister’s office approved hundreds of millions of dollars for groups with lower scores on their applications, while higher-ranked applicants were passed over. The audit also questioned the use of lobbyists by some applicants to secure funding, and said that in other provinces with similar programs, political staff in a minister’s office are not involved in specific funding decisions.
A Globe and Mail analysis showed that $231-million in Labour Ministry cash had gone to clients of six lobbying firms with links to Mr. Ford, including one founded by his campaign manager, Kory Teneycke. The Globe also found that lobbying for the skills fund increased after Mr. Piccini became the minister in 2023.
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Opposition critics have seized on reports that skills funding went to organizations whose top brass were large donors to the governing Progressive Conservative Party, and, in one case, to a group that trains staff for a Toronto nightclub venue that also offers “burlesque performances.”
The Integrity Commissioner’s probe will look into whether Mr. Piccini broke the Members’ Integrity Act, which prohibits conflicts-of-interest and the use of inside information or influence to further private interests, or whether he violated Ontario parliamentary conventions. The investigation will cover the skills fund’s fourth and fifth rounds, which date back to 2023.
On Friday morning, Mr. Piccini posted on social media about a visit to a training program that received Skills Development Fund cash. In an e-mailed statement, his spokesman, Michel Figueredo, said the minister was “continuing to assist the Integrity Commissioner with her work on this file.”
Both the Liberal and NDP complaints to the Integrity Commissioner refer to the case of Keel Digital Solutions, a company facing an Ontario Provincial Police investigation after a forensic audit of money it had received through a contract with the province’s Ministry of Colleges and Universities turned up what the government called “suspicious activity.”
Keel, which operates an artificial intelligence-driven online counselling platform for students and police officers, also received $7.5-million in grants from the Skills Development Fund. It was still receiving cash as recently as October, even though it was facing a forensic audit that the government would later forward to police.
The company’s links to Mr. Piccini have come under scrutiny. Last fall, Mr. Piccini attended the Paris wedding of Keel’s lobbyist. And in 2023, before he was minister, he was seen rinkside at a Maple Leafs game with a director of the company. Mr. Piccini has said he paid his own way for both the game and the wedding.
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Jay Fischbach, Keel’s chief operating officer, declined to comment Friday on the Integrity Commissioner probe. Keel has previously said it was being a made a “scapegoat” for the training fund scandal and that it was not aware of any red flags in the audit process.
Marit Stiles, Ontario’s NDP Leader, repeated her calls on Mr. Piccini to resign, or for Mr. Ford to fire him, and welcomed word of the Integrity Commissioner’s probe.
“I don’t think this is going to go away. There are very clear lines here between the Minister of Labour and donors and lobbyists who are connected to the Premier,” she said in a video call with reporters on Friday.
The penalties the Integrity Commissioner can dispense are limited to making recommendations that the Legislature reprimand, suspend or expel an MPP. But Ms. Motherwell is expected to issue a detailed investigative report, which will be made public.
In the summer of 2023, the previous Integrity Commissioner, J. David Wake, recommended a reprimand after finding that the municipal affairs and housing minister at the time, Steve Clark, had failed to properly oversee his staff in their aborted removal of land from the province’s protected Greenbelt.
Those findings followed on the heels of an Auditor-General probe that concluded a small group of landowners stood to gain an $8-billion windfall from the move.
Mr. Clark, who has since returned to the front benches as House Leader, left cabinet. Mr. Ford restored the Greenbelt land that fall, and the RCMP then launched a criminal investigation. But the government ensured that the recommended reprimand for Mr. Clark never made it to the floor for a vote.
With a report from Laura Stone