The Liberals have filed a request for Ontario’s integrity commissioner to determine whether the labour minister broke ethics rules in how money was handed out from the skills development fund.
For weeks, David Piccini has been under growing pressure for the controversial retraining scheme, which the auditor general determined was “not fair, transparent or accountable.”
The same investigation from the auditor general also found that the majority of applications selected were ranked low or medium by the Ministry of Labour and that more than 60 of the lower-scoring applicants were approved after hiring a lobbyist.
The Trillium reported that Piccini had attended the wedding of a lobbyist whose clients received skills development funding, as well as attending a Toronto Maple Leafs game with the director of a company that went on to receive funding.
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Elsewhere, companies where directors donated to the Progressive Conservative party received funding from the skills development fund, as did a company implicated in a major palliative care supplies shortage.
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Now, the Ontario Liberals have asked the integrity commissioner to determine whether Piccini “advanced private or political interests, showed preferential treatment to certain applicants, or breached sections of the Members’ Integrity Act relating to conflicts of interest, improper influence, or the use of insider information.”
The integrity commissioner has wide-ranging powers to investigate and interview a variety of people as part of her investigations and, if the office takes on an investigation, traditionally publishes detailed reports.
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“We hope the Integrity Commissioner takes on this request and makes it clear that Doug Ford can no longer endorse or condone this kind of unethical behaviour in his government,” MPP Stephanie Smyth said.
“This is part of a long pattern of donation-driven decision-making that rewards friends and insiders over the people of Ontario.”
The Liberals’ complaint comes as a poll commissioned by the Canadian Union of Public Employees suggests the skills development controversy may be failing to punch through for the public.
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An Abacus Data poll of 2,000 Canadians living in Ontario found 57 per cent had not heard about the skills development controversy, while another 24 per cent “may have heard something about it.”
Just 19 per cent of those polled were sure they’d heard of the controversy. Of those who had heard about the controversy, 51 per cent said Piccini should resign and 28 per cent said he should not.
Twenty-two per cent were undecided.
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