EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen's Park.
Clients of lobbying firms with close connections to Premier Doug Ford and his nephew have been hugely successful in applying to the province's Skills Development Fund, a grant program Ontario's auditor general recently characterized as "not fair, transparent or accountable."
Clients of a single firm -- Rubicon Strategy -- have received more than $100 million from the Skills Development Fund (SDF), according to a Trillium analysis of government spending logs and lobbying records.
Rubicon is owned by Kory Teneycke, the premier's campaign manager.
The sum of taxpayer money given to Rubicon clients from the Ministry of Labour's main fund for training and upskilling workers is nearly three times the amount received by clients of the second-most successful lobbying firm. Rubicon was registered to lobby for 16 organizations that received SDF grants around when the funding decisions were made -- more than twice as many as the firm with the second-most.
Around when they applied for funding, Sussex Strategy represented six clients that ended up receiving about $37.5 million from the fund in total. Two clients of Upstream Strategy received about $31 million, six of Counsel Public Affairs received upwards of $27.5 million, six of ONpoint Strategy's received about $21.6 million, and four that Atlas Strategic Advisors was registered for got about $21.5 million.
Nico Fidani-Diker, the premier's former executive assistant, is one of ONpoint's principals.
Atlas is led by Amin Massoudi, Ford's former longtime right-hand-man. Cody Mallette is another Atlas lobbyist who used to work in Premier Ford's office as well, and was briefly an assistant to Labour Minister David Piccini.
Upstream Strategy Group's founding principal is Progressive Conservative Party president Michael Diamond, who directed Ford's successful 2018 PC leadership bid and held senior roles in the PCs' 2018, 2022 and 2025 election campaigns.
Massoudi said his firm "does not 'secure' government funding" and does not guarantee results.
"Attempting to connect client registrations to funding outcomes is an inaccurate way to measure what firms like ours do, and risks misleading readers about the reality of how public policy and funding decisions are made," he said in a statement, adding that "recipients must meet stringent audit and reporting requirements" for their work.
"For context, Cody Mallette worked with MPP Piccini for three weeks in 2020. To suggest that years later this brief experience explains multi-million-dollar funding decisions is not credible," he added.
Counsel Public Affairs managing partner Sheamus Murphy said his firm "does not comment on client specific matters."
"Our registrations in the Ontario Lobbyists Registry provide a transparent and accurate record of anticipated advocacy activities," he said in a statement.
Sussex and Upstream did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Launched in 2021, the Skills Development Fund has become one of the Ford government's favourite initiatives. Ford recently called the $2.5-billion funding program "the best investment we've ever done."
Last week, Ontario's auditor general raised concerns about the program, saying it was "not fair, transparent or accountable." Less than half of recipients were given "high" scores on their proposals by the non-partisan civil servants tasked with evaluating them, according to a report her office released on Wednesday.
Auditor general Shelley Spence's office identified 64 low- and medium-ranked applications that enlisted lobbyists' help beforehand and received $126 million in SDF grants. It also found that 39 high-ranked applications that had lobbyists registered for them received $58 million from the fund.
On the role lobbyists have played, Spence wrote, "Given that the minister's office selects the applicants for funding and does not select only the applicants that have the highest score, this can create an appearance of real or potential preferential treatment by the minister's office in its selection of applicants to fund."
"It is also not fair, transparent or accountable to those applying for funding or to the public," she added.
After her office published its report, Spence told reporters at the legislature that her office "did not take a look at whether there was premier's office involvement" in selecting SDF recipients.
"I have no evidence, one way or the other," Spence added.
Later on Wednesday, in response to a question about whether the premier or his staff have weighed in on which groups should receive SDF grants, Piccini said, "No, the premier cares about every worker in the corner of this province."
After the AG report, The Trillium was also able to match names of SDF recipients to the names of lobbying clients -- but that total does not capture all cases where the organization's name was recorded differently by the lobbyist and the government. The Trillium tallied up the Skills Development Fund grants awarded to these clients around the time they were registered with each firm on the labour file. However, since the lobbyist registrations do not necessarily mention the Skills Development Fund by name, it's not possible to state that the lobbying goal in each case was winning those funds.
The province has not disclosed all funding awarded to each recipient in each round of the program. Where that information was not publicly available, The Trillium relied on payments to the recipients from the Ministry of Labour recorded in the province's public accounts, or dollar amounts in a dataset obtained from the ministry using the freedom-of-information system.
Massoudi said his firm welcomes the auditor's oversight.
"Legitimate scrutiny helps strengthen public confidence in these important and highly impactful government programs," he said.
Michael Ford's former staff
Two former chiefs of staff to Michael Ford, the premier's nephew who was a PC MPP and provincial cabinet minister from 2022 to 2025, had clients that got millions of dollars from the Skills Development Fund, records show.
Both are relatively new to the lobbying scene.
David DiPaul -- listed with growth.ca, which isn't a publicly accessible website -- registered to lobby for his first client in June 2024, around when he left his job as executive director of stakeholder relations in the premier's office. Before then, DiPaul had also been chief of staff to Michael Ford, when the premier's nephew was multiculturalism minister.
Two of DiPaul's clients received Skills Development Fund training grants after he registered for them. He's since registered for three more that recently received SDF funding as well.
DiPaul's connections with the premier and his nephew didn't factor into his lobbying, he said.
He said criticism of lobbying around the Skills Development Fund brought on by the auditor general's report is "too bad."
"I think the program is designed to get people into important jobs in a difficult time during the economy," DiPaul said. "Helping and providing assistance to companies that don't have capacity to in-house that governmental relations work, it actually gives really important exposure to small- and medium-sized companies that really make an impact and are critical to the economy."
Another new-to-the-scene lobbyist is Jonathan Kent, who also worked in Michael Ford's office, and succeeded DiPaul as the younger Ford's chief of staff. Someone by that name also worked as a special assistant to the premier's brother Rob Ford when he was mayor of Toronto.
Kent is the only registered lobbyist for JECKA Consulting Group.
Four of his clients received a total of a little over $10 million from the Skills Development Fund while he was registered to lobby for them, according to government records. Each was for a private company that pitched job training and placements.
Reached by phone, Kent said he was unable to comment at that time, and he did not return a follow-up call.
The Trillium has previously reported on Ford government-connected groups that received generous Skills Development Fund grants, including a restaurant business with connections to Massoudi, dating back to his time in the premier's office; a centre that trains people to work in clubs run by a longtime associate of the premier; and a dental practice brokerage whose CEO worked closely with the wife of the former labour minister.
In recent weeks, MPPs from opposition parties have labelled the SDF a "slush fund" and said the pattern of cash going toward politically friendly recipients "looks like corruption."
After the auditor's report, Piccini defended the program and its funding decisions.
"I believe in the power of our Skills Development Fund to change lives, and we know with a rapidly changing environment where we need to train workers to meet the disruptive needs of the workforce, that rapid training initiatives work, and at any age you can have access to training," he said last week.