Opposition questions the role of Ontario labour minister’s wife in Skills Development Fund grants

New questions arise surrounding the Minister of Labour Skills Development Fund scandal.

Editor’s note: The article and headline have been updated.

Ontario’s NDP is raising questions in the legislature about lobbyist registry filings that show the wife of Ontario’s labour minister registered to lobby for an advocacy group for career colleges, two of which operate programs funded through a government fund overseen by the minister.

The filings say Faith Chipman registered to lobby a variety of other ministers and offices, and not to directly lobby her husband, Labour Minister David Piccini. Her employer says her work is “in full compliance with Ontario rules”.

One of her stated goals in lobbying is increasing personal support worker training, which appears to match the training programs that the two colleges received funding for through Ontario’s $2.5 billion Skills Development Fund —prompting Ontario’s opposition leader to cry foul.

“Once again, it’s the friends and family special with this minister, and in this government, there’s one set of rules for everybody else, but others for their friends, family members, donors or insiders,” said the NDP’s Marit Stiles in an interview.

Piccini told reporters in Queen’s Park late Wednesday afternoon that he had engaged the legislature’s ethics watchdog to place an ethics screen to ensure that he was not dealing directly with his wife’s work.

“We work with the Integrity Commissioner, and I take that very seriously,” Piccini said.

Ontario’s Skills Development Fund has offered money to hundreds of programs aimed at retraining workers, initially to deal with the effects of the pandemic and more recently to offset U.S. tariffs.

But an auditor general’s report found that, more than half the time, political staff overrode the advice of non-partisan staff to give grants to lower-scoring applications, and reporting has connected many of those recipients to people in Ontario’s governing party, the Progressive Conservatives.

That’s prompted weeks of questions in the legislature and calls for Piccini’s resignation, while Ontario’s premier has said he supports the minister. Chipman’s potential role was brought up in Question Period and in a legislature committee by NDP MPPs.

According to the lobbyist registry documents accessed by CTV News, Chipman is registered to lobby on behalf of Career Colleges Ontario, and among her stated goals is “increasing personal support worker training,” the records say.

Two career colleges that operated programs via grants received by their partner agencies are Computek College and Mississauga Career College, according to disclosure by the Labour Ministry.

Both colleges received grant funding to operate a personal support worker training program, the colleges confirmed.

“Computek College has successfully delivered training and education services to our PSW services funded by the SDF. Our team has delivered quality education and wrap around supports to our students such as mental health counselling, placement and employment support,” said Jason Campbell in an e-mail.

But Campbell said he could not describe the specifics of the grant or the partner agency “under the conditions of our agreement.” The college later said the advocacy group, Career Colleges Ontario, was not involved in its application.

Mississauga Career College’s Peter Saad said the college got upwards of $3 million in two separate SDF rounds of funding to train PSW workers.

The first round of approximately $3.2 million was granted in 2023, under the previous labour minister, Monte McNaughton, he said. The second round of approximately $900,000 came in the most recent round. He said they were expecting to train 280 PSWs but ended up training 304.

“Health care was a big priority, and our workforce was under immense pressure, and that’s why we picked PSWs. Seeing the gap coming out of COVID, we saw it as a great opportunity to fill that gap,” he said.

Mississauga Career College partnered with the Church of the Virgin Mary and St. Athanasius to apply for the grant

Saad, who has donated to the PCs and the Ontario Liberals, said he didn’t think any government ministers were aware of the application and said he felt his application was approved on merit.

“I actually have no knowledge, or I don’t know who the minister’s wife is. And I don’t know how that whole process would have worked,” he said.

Potential conflicts of interest involving spouses come up from time to time and are often handled with something called an ethics screen, said York University Professor Ian Stedman.

“The screen would look like someone else’s job to stand in the way of the inbox and make sure that the minister doesn’t receive any files from that company or that person, the spouse in this case,” Stedman said.

In a statement, Career Colleges Ontario said they don’t represent individual colleges with needs like this.

“CCO is not involved in these applications and does not have information regarding whether or how many member colleges may have participated,” the agency said in an e-mail.

The executive director of Career Colleges Ontario is Kate Bartz, who is the wife of the former labour minister, Monte McNaughton, who oversaw the fund until about two years ago.

Chipman herself didn’t return messages from CTV News.

A partner of her firm, Matt Solberg, said in a statement, “New West Public Affairs and our team of consultants take our obligations under Ontario’s Lobbyists Registration Act very seriously, and we always abide by all legislative requirements.

“We maintain a standing ethics screen that bars any lobbying where a personal relationship exists or could create a real or perceived conflict, and we reassign and document any such files to ensure full compliance with Ontario rules,” the statement said.

Piccini didn’t confirm that there was an ethics screen between himself and Peter Zakarow, who offered a seat from his family’s season tickets to Chipman and Piccini, where they were photographed in 2023, CTV News has reported.

Zakarow is the director of a company called Keel Digital Solutions, which went on to get at least $2.7 million in Skills Development Fund grants. Piccini told NewsTalk 1010 that the grant was one where political staff intervened.

Piccini has said he paid for the ticket, though he hasn’t explained how or at what price they would have set. Setting it too low may trigger a requirement to declare a gift, though records show Piccini has not declared one.

When asked about that in the legislature late Wednesday, he said, “I pay for my own tickets.”

When asked how, Piccini said, “I paid for my own tickets, I paid for the value of the tickets, and I’ve answered your question,” he said.