{"id":377598,"date":"2025-11-14T05:19:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T05:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/377598\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T05:19:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T05:19:12","slug":"ford-chief-of-staff-warns-employees-not-to-have-contact-with-company-after-police-referral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/377598\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford chief of staff warns employees not to have contact with company after police referral"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Office of Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the government is reviewing all payments made to Get A-Head, a company that offers ‘AI-driven’ mental-health services for students and police officers, and could take further action.Nathan Denette\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Ontario Premier Doug Ford\u2019s<\/a> chief of staff is warning employees not to have any contact with a company that received about $40-million from the province, after the government referred findings from a forensic audit scrutinizing the business<\/a> to the Ontario Provincial Police, according to an e-mail obtained by The Globe and Mail. <\/p>\n

The company, an online counselling platform, received more than $32-million from the Ministry of Colleges and Universities since 2020. It was also awarded $7.5-million in grants approved by Labour Minister David Piccini\u2019s office from the Skills Development Fund. <\/p>\n

The fund has been under a microscope after Ontario Auditor-General Shelley Spence concluded in a report last month that the distribution of $1.3-billion in grants from the fund was \u201cnot fair, transparent or accountable.\u201d Opposition MPPs have called for Mr. Piccini to be fired.<\/p>\n

Earlier: Groups that got cash from Ontario training fund increasingly hired lobbyists, numbers show<\/a><\/p>\n

Patrick Sackville, who serves as Mr. Ford\u2019s chief of staff, sent an e-mail to all Ontario government chiefs of staff and those working in the Premier\u2019s Office on Wednesday, the day it was confirmed to media that the province had referred the forensic audit\u2019s findings to the OPP. The Office of the Premier also said the government is reviewing all payments made to the company \u2013 which has ties to Mr. Piccini \u2013 and could take further action. <\/p>\n

The business, called Get A-Head, offers \u201cAI-driven\u201d mental-health services for students and police officers. It was acquired by a company called Keel Digital Solutions in 2022, and is now branded as Keel Mind. According to government records, the company was also awarded $1.85-million from the Ministry of Health.<\/p>\n

In the e-mail, Mr. Sackville said the government received results of the comprehensive forensic audit of Get A-Head, which was conducted after concerns were raised through a routine audit of the organization. The results of the audit, which the government previously said occurred in 2023, recommended that the matter be referred to the OPP, and it was done immediately, he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the meantime, I want to convey my clear expectation that you and your staff members are not to have any contact whatsoever with Get A-Head, Keel Mind, Keel Digital Solutions or any of their associated agents,\u201d Mr. Sackville said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anyone attempts to discuss any of these organizations with you, please end the conversation immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that since the matter is now with the OPP, the government will not be commenting further.<\/p>\n

Spokespeople for Get A-Head and Keel did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. Keel Digital Solutions on Wednesday told The Globe that said it had not been informed of the referral to the OPP nor told of any \u201cred flags\u201d that emerged during the audit process.<\/p>\n

Mr. Piccini\u2019s office did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Hannah Jensen, a spokesperson with Mr. Ford\u2019s office, declined to comment further. She previously said the results of the audit were received last week, and within 24 hours, the matter was referred to the OPP. The provincial police force did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Ford faces deluge of questions about skills fund as Ontario Legislature returns<\/a><\/p>\n

The company\u2019s links to Mr. Piccini have been part of the political storm over his management of the $2.5-billion Skills Development Fund, which hands out cash to unions, companies and non-profits for training programs.<\/p>\n

A lobbyist for Get A-Head and Keel, Michael Rudderham, invited Mr. Piccini to attend his wedding in Paris this fall, and has donated thousands to the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. Mr. Rudderham said in a message to The Globe on Thursday that he did work for the company but was \u201cnot involved with the MCU stuff. Not even a little bit. Yesterday shocked me.\u201d In 2022, he was registered to lobby the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, among other ministries, for Get A-Head, but said he wasn\u2019t involved in the contract or what was audited.<\/p>\n

Mr. Piccini also sat in a rink-side seat at a Toronto Maple Leafs game with Peter Zakarow, a director of Keel, in 2023, before Mr. Piccini became Labour Minister. Mr. Zakarow said in an e-mail to The Globe this week that he was an independent board member and has never spoken to the minister or anyone else in the government about the company. Mr. Piccini has said he paid his own way for both events.<\/p>\n

Mr. Piccini had also told a radio interviewer that his office chose to give Skills Development Fund money to the program despite the \u201clower-scoring\u201d ranking it received from the civil servants that evaluated applications. <\/p>\n

Ahad Bandealy, Keel Digital Solutions\u2019 chief digital officer, said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday that the company \u201cco-operated fully and transparently\u201d with the forensic audit but had \u201cserious concerns about the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said auditors \u201cshowed persistent misunderstandings of corporate vs. not-for-profit structures and misinterpretation of tax rules,\u201d and that Keel was \u201crepeatedly told no irregularities … had been identified\u201d that would affect its partnership with the government.<\/p>\n

An initial audit conducted in 2023 would have been related to previous funding from the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, not the Skills Development Fund. Get A-Head had only successfully applied for skills funding between August and December of 2023. <\/p>\n

But even while a forensic audit was under way, Get A-Head was still cleared to receive government money. On Wednesday, Ms. Jensen, the Premier\u2019s spokeswoman, declined to answer questions about why more government funding would have been approved after an audit had already turned up irregularities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The Office of Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the government is reviewing all…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":377599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2148,2138,671,104,2132,692,2147,2131,2143,2144,2140,2133,2130,79,407,746,2142,2137,2159,2134,2135,454,2139,1165,728,2149,108,2154,2155,50,2157,2152,2156,2150,2153,2136,85,2146,80,2145,2151,1458,158,1164,2141,1154,107,2158],"class_list":{"0":"post-377598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-news","38":"tag-northwest-territories","39":"tag-nova-scotia","40":"tag-nunavut","41":"tag-ontario","42":"tag-pei","43":"tag-photos","44":"tag-political-news","45":"tag-political-opinion","46":"tag-politics","47":"tag-politics-news","48":"tag-quebec","49":"tag-sports-news","50":"tag-technology","51":"tag-travel","52":"tag-trudeau","53":"tag-us-news","54":"tag-world-news","55":"tag-yukon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}