Gleaner

Serving Toronto's most liveable community with the Annex Gleaner

← →

FORUM: A troubling track record (Oct./Nov. 2025)

December 15th, 2025 · No Comments

Has the auditor general just exposed Ford’s next Greenbelt scandal?

By Jessica Bell

Ontario’s auditor general, Shelley Spence, has a vital job in holding the public service to account. Her office investigates government departments, agencies, and organizations to see if they’re efficiently delivering high quality programs and services.   

This week, the auditor general released some damning special reports. I attended the media briefing. Ms. Spence was asked by a reporter if she had a favourite report, and she said “that’s like asking me who is my favourite child” because every report has a story to tell about an issue that affects thousands and sometimes millions of us. Here’s what you need to know about the auditor general’s reports.

The auditor general found the province’s management of its $2.5-billion skills training fund was troubling and not fair or transparent.

The Skills Development Fund gives employers, unions, municipalities, non-profits, and colleges funding to train people looking for work. 

The auditor general found that David Piccini, the minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development and his political staff were giving contracts worth millions of dollars to companies with close ties to the Conservatives, while rejecting applications from far more qualified applicants. They were playing favourites. 

Here’s some troubling examples.

King Animal Hospital received $1.3 million to address workforce shortages. The founders of the hospital and their family have donated over $80,000 to the Conservative party. 

The wife of the former Labour minister, Monte McNaughton got $2 million to help dentists sell their businesses to investment firms.

A night club owner with ties to the Ford family got $6 million to hire workers.

If it looks like corruption, it probably is corruption. You can bet that reporters, the NDP, and the auditor general are going to be digging deep into this program to find any corruption. 

This is about trust. Ontarians expect the government to deliver efficient programs that help people, not their well-connected friends.

Highly qualified applicants should receive funding from the Skills Development Fund over less qualified applicants. Our public colleges should be properly funded by the province so they can provide affordable education to students who want a practical career. The government’s latest cuts to public colleges, along with a drastic decline in international student enrollment, has led to layoffs and the closure of entire departments and campuses.  

The auditor general’s  damning report on Ontario’s progress to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions is  downright embarrassing and devastating.

The Conservatives will admit that climate change is caused by human activity, but they’ve basically abandoned their duty to do anything about it. 

The province will not be meeting its 2030 greenhouse gas emissions targets, and they refuse to even set targets after 2030. They’re not even publishing their plan or their progress on reducing emissions; in fact, that’s why the auditor general wrote this report.

Scientists have been issuing stark apocalyptic warnings for years. Unless governments everywhere do the necessary work of curbing pollution and making societies sustainable, our economy and our standard of living will decline. 

The auditor general’s report on Ontario’s affordable childcare program shows the program is in jeopardy and is failing to create enough childcare spaces or hire enough qualified workers to meet its targets.

Affordable childcare is essential to families because an affordable childcare spot means you can go back to work. 

It’s one of those government programs that pays off for the government in the long-term because parents who return to the workforce earn income and pay taxes.

The program needs $1.95 billion dollars just to keep operating. Where is that money going to come from? And if the money doesn’t come, what’s going to happen to the program?  So far, almost all the funding for Ontario’s childcare program has come from the federal government—we’re talking about 98 per cent. 

I was also very concerned to learn that low-income families are now less likely to find an affordable childcare spot because they cannot compete with the increased demand for the limited number of affordable childcare spots available. 

Ontario needs to bring in policy fixes so families most in need of affordable childcare can get that childcare spot.

After the reports are released and the reporters file their stories, my job begins. 

As a member of the public accounts committee, I work with the auditor general to improve the performance of the departments the auditor general’s investigates.  

On average, 43 per cent of the auditor general’s recommendations are implemented. I want to get that number to 80 per cent. I think we can do it. 

Jessica Bell is the MPP for University-Rosedale and the Shadow Minister for Finance and the Treasury Board. You can reach her office at jbell-co@ndp.on.ca or 416-535-7206.

READ MORE BY JESSICA BELL:

Tags: Annex · Columns · Opinion

0 responses so far ↓

  • There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.

Leave a Comment