Ontario Labour Minister David Piccini during a funding announcement in Hamilton, in August.Carlos Osorio/The Canadian Press
Organizations that won millions of dollars in grants from an Ontario worker training program at the centre of a political storm have increasingly hired professional lobbyists over the past five years, including several government-relations firms with close ties to Premier Doug Ford.
According to an analysis by The Globe and Mail, the proportion of companies, unions and other groups that received cash from the Skills Development Fund and hired lobbyists shot up 60 per cent since the program was launched in 2021.
The fund and the role of lobbyists have been the subject of questions from opposition parties at Queen’s Park since the release of a report by Ontario Auditor-General Shelley Spence last month. Her audit concludes that the distribution of $1.3-billion in grants under the program, which gives money to organizations to train workers, was “not fair, transparent or accountable.”
The report says the Labour Minister’s political staff overruled evaluations by non-partisan bureaucrats and doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations with lower scores on their applications, while higher-ranked applicants were overlooked. Plus, the audit said, dozens of groups hired professional consultants to lobby the Labour Minister or his department before they were selected. But the report did not name lobbying firms or recipients.
Labour Minister David Piccini’s office has for weeks refused repeated requests to provide a comprehensive list detailing how much money each recipient was awarded in all of the program’s rounds and how their applications were ranked by bureaucrats. That refusal has helped fuel charges from the opposition that the fund is used to reward connected lobbyists and large Progressive Conservative donors.
The Globe analyzed the program using partial information from the government and cross-referenced it with data from Ontario’s public accounts, lobbyist registry and political donations database.
A total of 28 per cent of recipients of Skills Development Fund grants in 2024-25 hired consultants to lobby the Labour Minister or his department, an increase from the first two years of the program, when 17 per cent retained lobbyists.
The numbers show that more successful applicants for funds from the program had hired consultants to lobby Mr. Piccini, who took on his role in 2023, or his ministry, than when the program began under previous minister Monte McNaughton.
The Globe’s analysis found that the Labour Ministry gave a total of $231-million to groups that had hired six lobbying firms with close ties to Mr. Ford since the Skills Development Fund was launched.
Because the government has refused to provide a list of how much funding recipients were given in the first three of the program’s five rounds (from 2020-21 to 2023-24), The Globe has relied on data from the province’s public accounts. This means the totals could include money provided by the Labour Ministry via other programs, as well as the training fund.
Because of this, The Globe found $1.8-billion in payments from the Labour Ministry dating back to 2020-21, which amounts to $500-million more than the total handed out under the training stream of the Skills Development Fund that was reviewed by the Auditor-General. In the two rounds of funding for which the government provided precise figures, The Globe’s analysis found that 40 per cent of the cash went to organizations that had retained lobbyists.
Executives at each of the six lobbying companies – Rubicon Strategy, Upstream Strategy Group, Endgame Strategies, ONpoint Strategy Group, Atlas Strategic Advisors and Loyalist Public Affairs – have served as top advisers to Mr. Ford. Rubicon, whose clients received more overall funding than those of any other lobbying firm, is run by Kory Teneycke, who masterminded Mr. Ford’s three consecutive majority victories.
In addition, top officials at some of the organizations that hired lobbyists and won funding have also made sizable donations to the Progressive Conservatives since Mr. Ford’s government was elected in 2018. According to the Elections Ontario records, individuals with the same names as senior leaders at eight of the top 10 recipient organizations who had also hired lobbyists donated a total of more than $100,000 to the PCs.
Mr. Piccini has insisted he is right to have approved lower-ranked applications to respond to government priorities. However, the Auditor-General said other provinces with similar programs do not allow for this kind of political interference.
The political fallout has continued for weeks, with opposition parties repeatedly calling for Mr. Piccini’s resignation.
This week, responding in Question Period, the Labour Minister said that since the fund was launched, the government has “implemented a number of measures to improve the strength of the program.”
Labour Minister David Piccini speaks at a press conference in Kitchener, Ont., in September.Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said The Globe’s findings that lobbying activity had dramatically increased over the life of the program support her contention that the Skills Development Fund was being run to benefit insiders.
“I think what it says is that word got out that if you wanted to get the minister to pull our application from the bottom of the pile, you needed to connect yourself to one of his buddies,” Ms. Stiles said in an interview.
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Liberal MPP Stephanie Smyth said this week she was asking the province’s Integrity Commissioner to investigate Mr. Piccini for potential violations of ethics rules. The NDP is also preparing its own request related to the Skills Development Fund.
In a statement, Ms. Smyth said her complaint centred on media reports that Mr. Piccini attended the Paris wedding last month of lobbyist and PC donor Michael Rudderham, who had acted for two fund recipients but who is not affiliated with the six lobbying firms with Ford links identified by The Globe’s analysis.
She said the Integrity Commissioner should probe whether Mr. Piccini had used his office “to benefit a friend or donor.” Mr. Rudderham did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Piccini’s office has said that he paid for his own accommodations.
Michel Figueredo, a spokesman for Mr. Piccini, did not respond to questions about the increase in lobbying among recipients of Skills Development Fund grants or critics’ accusations that the government is funnelling public money to insiders. He said in an e-mail that the minister would co-operate with any Integrity Commissioner investigation.
Mr. Figueredo said donations have no bearing on eligibility or evaluations for government programs. He said the Skills Development Fund has helped more than 100,000 people find work within 60 days of completing training.
The perception that lobbyists boost organizations’ chances of receiving government funding is troubling, said Ian Stedman, an associate professor at York University who specializes in government ethics. He called on the province to ban lobbying by applicants to the Skills Development Fund and other grant programs.
“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” Dr. Stedman said.
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Lobbyists and some organizations who received grants defended the program, and the use of professional lobbyists.
Rubicon Strategy president Patrick Harris said the company “is proud to support organizations with their advocacy objectives,” but declined to comment on “specific client matters.”
The other five lobbying firms with known connections to Mr. Ford did not respond to requests for comment.
They include Upstream, whose founding principal is Michael Diamond, the manager of Mr. Ford’s 2018 leadership campaign. Patrick Tuns, who founded Endgame, also helped with Mr. Ford’s leadership bid.
The principal of ONpoint is Nico Fidani-Diker, who is a former senior aide to Mr. Ford. Atlas was founded by Amin Massoudi, another former top adviser to the Premier, and Loyalist was started by Chris Froggatt, who was a top strategist during Mr. Ford’s leadership campaign.
OZZ Electric, an electrical company that specializes in large projects, hired Rubicon to help develop a buy-Ontario strategy for its smart-meter business and assist with programs to upgrade its work force’s skills, president Steven Muzzo said.
The lobbying firm “advised us on a strategy to achieve our objective which included introduction to the SDF program,” he said in an e-mail. A Rubicon lobbyist has represented the company since 2022.
OZZ Electric has received more than $13-million from the Skills Development Fund and the Labour Ministry since 2022-23, according to government records. Mr. Muzzo said the company used the funds to set up two training centres.
Another Rubicon client, Hamilton-based Ontario Shipyards, has received more than $21-million since 2021. In an e-mailed statement, it said the fund helped upgrade workers’ skills and allowed it to compete nationally for contracts.
In the e-mail, sent by administrative assistant Alia Dol, the company also said retaining lobbyists “is the norm” in the shipbuilding industry and that political donations from its executives were given “in their capacity as private citizens and in compliance with political financing requirements.”