A minister under fire, alleged lobbyist connections: Ontario's Skills Development Fund controversy explained

Calls for a government minister to reconcile.

Accusations of intimate connections betwixt lobbyists and the john ford government.

And now a forensic audit handed over to the Ontario Provincial Police for possible investigation.

The latest scandal at Queen’s Park revolves around the Skills Development Fund – a little known pocket of government grants to help train workers.

The Opposition has been demanding Minister David Piccini be fired over his handling of the fund. The province’s auditor general has also been critical of how the government is using it.

Here’s a look at what’s happening and why this file is continuing to dog the Ford government.

Ontario’s Skills Development Fund provides funding to organizations to address challenges in hiring, training or retraining workers. 

In early October, Auditor General Shelley Spence issued a special report with damning findings on how $1.3 billion in the fund was awarded. Calling the process “troubling," she said Ontario has not been fair, or transparent or accountable when it comes to evaluating applications.

Here’s a snapshot of what she found:

Piccini has defended the fund and his close involvement in selecting recipients. He has denied any wrongdoing and continued to award the funding in the weeks since the auditor’s report was made public.

"I think when we see the changes in labour market needs and we see changing realities in every corner of Ontario, it's important that I and government, who are elected by the people, ultimately have the say in where these are going," he said during an October news conference.

The minister has said he accepts the auditor’s recommendations, but has given no indication he will remove himself and his staff from the selection process.

Premier Doug Ford meanwhile is standing by Piccini and has dismissed calls to fire the minister.

The NDP, Liberals and Green MPPs have all slammed the administration of the fund, accusing the Tories of awarding political allies and the clients of lobbyists connected to the government as recipients.

They’ve also demanded Piccini either resign or be fired.

“Instead of being the Minister of Labour, it’s the Minister of Favours,” NDP Leader Marit Stiles said recently. “[Premier Ford] should be ashamed of his minister. He should be ashamed of his government.” 

Opposition leaders have also said the government needs to change the way the funding is awarded.

“The government needs to open the books, and there should be a thorough forensic audit where we actually look at what's happening and whether people are getting value for their money,” Liberal parliamentary leader John Fraser said.

At its core, this is about how billions in taxpayer funding is used, and if it’s being dolled out unfairly to clients of lobbyists connected to the Ford government.

Ultimately, critics are asking if the Skills Development Fund is achieving its purpose — to help out -of-work Ontarians get jobs. The opposition parties are demanding the government produce data to back this up.

And at a time when some 700,000 people in the province are unemployed, they say it’s important the government gets this right.

Opposition parties have taken great pains to say the problem is not the Skills Development Fund itself. 

Similar funds have existed in different forms for years in Ontario, but have been awarded based on recommendations of impartial civil servants who have expertise in distinguishing the strong applications from weaker ones.

Former Liberal cabinet minister Brad Duguid oversaw a similar fund when he was part of the previous government. He said there should be no partisan involvement at all in the selection of recipients.

Duguid said he had a rule for staff, at one point requiring the senior-most civil servant in his ministry to sign off on the fund recipients before it reached his desk.

New revelations on the controversy have been emerging on an almost daily basis for weeks.

We learned on Wednesday that the premier's office asked the OPP to investigate the findings of an audit of a company that received grants from the Skills Development Fund.

Keel Digital Solutions, a software company that provides a platform for mental health care, confirmed in a statement that it was the subject of the province's forensic audit and that it received money from the fund.

The company has defended its record and says it will cooperate with any investigation if one moves ahead.

A spokesperson for the OPP said Friday that the matter has been referred to the service’s anti-rackets branch “to determine whether a criminal investigation is warranted.”

Expect the controversy to dominate Question Period until the government rises for its annual Christmas break in early December.

And then there are questions about the future of David Piccini. 

Even if the premier’s office yields to calls to fire the minister, or if he resigns, questions will linger about the Skills Development Fund itself and whether it needs to be reformed.

Former Liberal cabinet minister John Milloy says at its core, the controversy speaks to a broader problem the Ford government needs to address. 

“We have ministers that don't seem to understand that their job is not to swoop down and make these, these relatively small decisions,” he said. “They don't have the experience and from a political point of view, they have no defence when they do it, if it all blows up in their face.”

Municipal Affairs Reporter

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