‘Half-baked pay-to-play scheme’: Ontario ministers, opposition spar as more Skills Development Fund grants come to light

The calls for the Minister of Labour to resign entered their fourth day in another tumultuous day at the legislature.

Opposition parties called for the resignation of Ontario’s labour minister for the fourth straight day, while two other government ministers dealt with questions over the controversial Skills Development Fund in a tumultuous day at the provincial legislature.

NDP Leader Marit Stiles said during Question Period that money from the $2.5 billion fund could have been better spent, as it emerged more multi-million dollar grants appeared to have personal or political connections to figures from the governing Progressive Conservative party.

“The minister of labour admitted he hand-picked winners and losers,” Marit Stiles said. “This half-baked pay-to-play scheme is not a substitute for a real plan to get people working in the province of Ontario.”

Ontario Liberal Parliamentary Leader John Fraser appeared surprised at the pace of discoveries about fund grants, which Ontario’s auditor general has said were decided by political, not non-partisan, staff in a way that was “not fair, transparent or accountable.”

“Wow, minister, we can’t make this stuff up. It just keeps coming. We’re having a hard time keeping track. Slow down,” John Fraser said in Question Period.

Piccini responded with his own examples of grant recipients, whom he said had donated to opposition parties, and said, “I’m not going to slow down. I’m never going to slow down for the workers of this province.”

• ‘Get their hands off that fund’: Ontario labour minister faces third day of resignation calls

The Skills Development Fund has been a signature program for the government to retrain workers amid economic shifts, though critics have questioned it amid a steady drumbeat of examples of money going to recipients with political and personal ties to the governing party.

It emerged Thursday that Long-Term Care Minister Natalia Kusendova-Bashta described herself as a member of the congregation at a Mississauga church that was part of a group of applicants that received a grant of about $3.2 million in 2023 and another $900,000 in the following year. Kusendova-Bashta was married there in 2021.

The Church of the Virgin Mary and St. Athanasius joined with Mississauga Career College for a program that trained and placed some 242 people in personal support worker jobs—more than the target of 226, said Peter Saad, a lawyer on the college’s board of directors who described the funding arrangements.

“The church is a staple of giving back to the community, and it has been for years,” Saad said in an interview, saying he believed that the application stood on its own merits and Kusendova-Bashta was not even aware of the application and was not yet a minister.

“We worked tirelessly with the department. We had a lot of guides. We had a lot of back and forth,” he said.

Saad said that he, too, is “politically active.” Elections Ontario records indicate that he gave some $23,000 to the Ontario Liberals and $36,000 to the PC Party in the last five years—but said he didn’t believe that played a role either.

“If you follow that logic, our funding should stay up or go up. We exceeded our KPIs, and we went down,” he said.

On Thursday evening, Kusendorva-Bashta issued a statement, saying, “The church where I choose to worship and get married at is a personal matter and not for public discourse. To be clear, the SDF funding was used by the co-applicant, the Mississauga Career College to train hundreds of PSWs, largely newcomers to help them start highly rewarding and highly necessary careers in the health care field.”

“The Mississauga Career College is not in my riding and I was not involved with any funding decisions.”

That wasn’t the only place of worship that received funding. The Sri Guru Nanak Sikh Centre received some $350,000 to train newcomers, according to a government announcement.

There does not appear to be a parallel announcement for the Gurdwara Guru Nanak Mission Centre, and its representatives didn’t respond to questions from CTV News.

A week before this year’s election, Ontario Premier Doug Ford visited, posting photos, and the centre said in a social media post that it endorsed Ford.

Also on Thursday, Municipal Affairs Minister Rob Flack deflected a reporter’s question to an executive from the Ontario Road Builders Association, which a government announcement says is slated to receive $1.8 million from the Skills Development Fund.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate for this,” Flack said, though the executive, Walid Abou-Hamde, did step to the podium.

“The Skills Development Fund has played an essential role to allow operations like ours to deliver on ambitious infrastructure priorities,” Abou-Hamde said.

Abou-Hamde is listed as having once been the director of stakeholder relations for the Ministry of Labour in 2021, and Elections Ontario records show he gave about $3,500 to the PC Party in the last four years.

When he was asked if that was a factor in ORBA grant, the press conference was called to a close—though a minister’s staffer said it was because he needed to keep to a schedule.

Meanwhile, in an email to CTV News Toronto, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Labour further backed the SDF by suggesting several churches were able train “over 300 personal support workers (PSWs), with more than 240 gaining employment within 60 days of completing their program.”

The ministry says these projects “directly support” the government’s plan to add 30,000 new long-term care beds by 2028 and strengthen the province’s health care workforce.