Auditor general finds Ford government chose many projects backed by lobbyists to receive skills development funds

Ontario’s Auditor General Shelley Spence took aim at Doug Ford government’s Skills Development Fund in her annual report released on Wednesday.

The fund has for years awarded funds to non-profits, unions and private companies to train and upskill workers.

The report found the government “chose to fund poor, low and medium-ranked applications 54 per cent of the time instead of high-ranked applications” and that “more than half of applicants had hired registered lobbyists to lobby the Ministry and/or Minister before they were selected and funded.”

“As well, 39 high-ranked applications that were selected by the Minister’s Office, and received approximately $58 million in funding, had also hired lobbyists,” the report found.

It also said the Minister’s Office did not share a documented reason for why it selected 388 applications, which collectively received $479 million in funding.

Spence said it wasn’t even clear to her at times why the government selected some companies to get the money.

“Starting in round three, they started writing down explanations as to why they chose certain organizations, and what we found is that those explanations didn’t necessarily align with the applications. So, in one case that we outline, they said they picked them because they scored high, when actually they scored medium,” she said.

Premier Ford told 680 NewsRadio he stands behind the fund, saying, “It is one of the greatest programs that we’ve ever created. There’s over 700,000 jobs in training that has happened.”

More than $1.3 billion was provided to applicants over the first five rounds of the Skills Development Fund.

“The Skills Development Fund (SDF) is open to everyone and expands opportunities to give more people the chance to obtain a better job, with a bigger paycheque. The SDF has supported more than 1,000 projects enabling over 100,000 participants to achieve employment within 60 days of completion,” a spokesperson for David Piccini, Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, said in a statement.

“We have already begun implementing the Auditor General’s recommendations through more rigorous tracking of clients, and ongoing evaluation criteria updates as a part of our efforts to improve this life-changing program that is training workers in every corner of the province.

The auditor general found no laws were broken.

According to a report in the publication, The Trillium, it stated that millions from the fund went to a dentists’ brokerage with ties to then-labour minister Monte McNaughton’s wife, and other donors to the PC party. However, the auditor general’s report did not draw any of these specific connections.

The training stream of the province’s $2.5-billion Skills Development Fund gives money to organizations for projects that help hire, train or retrain workers.

With files from The Canadian Press