Doug Ford’s Ontario Conservative government is being accused of misusing the $2.5-billion Skills Development Fund (SDF), giving out money to low-ranked applicants who lobbied the government or have ties to the party.
Since returning to the legislature in October, Labour Minister David Piccini has faced repeated calls for his resignation after Ontario’s auditor general found the SDF process of awarding millions of dollars of training funds to be “not fair, transparent or accountable.”
The Toronto Star reported that about $742 million (56 percent of the fund) went to 549 (54 per cent) of applications ranked poor, low or medium over the first five rounds of the program.
For example, $40 million was awarded for training centres for the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), who endorsed the Conservatives in the last provincial election. Another $126 million went to 64 low- and medium-ranked applications that hired lobbyists, and $10 million to a non-profit affiliated with the owner of an adult entertainment club.
Piccini also came under fire after attending a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game with a director of a company that received $37 million from the government since 2021. The company, Get-A-Head, owned by Keel Digital Solutions, has had their forensic audit referred to the Ontario Provincial Police, the government told The Trillium in November.
This spending comes while the province is also making drastic cuts to the funding of public colleges. The SDF scandal echoes the auditor general’s 2023 report, which found that the Greenbelt land swap process was also “not transparent, fair, objective, or fully informed.”
An Abacus Data poll found that 52 per cent of respondents think Piccini should quit or be fired.
This article appeared in the 2025 Dec – 2026 Jan issue.
