The halls of Queen’s Park have been quiet for almost 20 weeks as politicians spent an extended summer touring Ontario, but Monday morning will see the bustle of government return to the heart of Toronto.
It was June 5 when Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government rose after rushing through its controversial mining legislation and promising to kick off a summer of consultation with First Nations communities, delaying the return of the house by more than a month.
The premier has enjoyed a busy summer, beginning by hosting the country’s premiers and the Prime Minister at his Huntsville, Ont., cottage and dominating the agenda with a number of headline-grabbing news conferences. He garnered particular attention when he emptied a bottle of Crown Royal whisky in protest over the planned closure of a bottling plant in August.
Ford also announced a series of legislative plans through the warmer months, some seemingly in response to stories which broke. The premier said he wanted to legislate an end to testing on cats and dogs in Ontario, a plan to remove speed cameras from the streets of Ontario’s cities and a renewed push to formalize the requirement for government agencies to buy local.
Other bills tabled last session — including an overhaul of the powers granted to Education Minister Paul Calandra, who is considering abolishing school board trustees — still need to be debated and passed into law.
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The return of the legislature on Monday also brings the first opportunity for opposition parties to quiz the Ford government, the focus expected to land squarely on its controversial skills development fund. That is a program introduced by the government after the pandemic to upskill workers in the face of high unemployment.
A recent report from the auditor general, however, found the government had not been “fair, transparent or accountable” in how it handed out the money, with the majority of recipients receiving low or medium scores, while almost 700 high-scoring applications were rejected.
The report revealed low-scoring applications, which hired lobbyists to assist them, received government funding through decisions from the minister’s office, sometimes without any written reasons.
The way the fund had been handled, and the funding received by low-scoring applications with lobbyists, “can create an appearance of real or potential preferential treatment by the minister’s office,” the auditor cautioned.
Subsequent reporting has steadily added to some of the questions raised by the auditor general.
As Global News previously reported, a company implicated in major issues with the province’s home care program received close to $20 million in re-training money for applications where the government refused to disclose what it scored.
The Toronto Star found that groups that endorsed the Progressive Conservatives received more than $200 million from the fund, while The Trillium reported the labour minister recently attended the wedding of a lobbyist, whose clients received millions from the fund.
Still, Ford’s opponents will not return from the summer unscathed either.
The Ontario Liberals are embarking on their third leadership election since losing power in 2018, after Bonnie Crombie scraped through a leadership review, before announcing her resignation as leader later that day.
Crombie, who failed to win her own seat in February’s snap election, will remain as leader until her successor is chosen, but has been largely absent since, including backing out of the annual ploughing match.
Marit Stiles, Ontario NDP Leader, also faced a leadership review through the summer. She returned a higher endorsement than Crombie from her party’s membership and will fight on as leader, but reshuffled her top team and promised change from her party, which has been the official opposition in the past three elections.
The opposition parties are promising to press the government on the economy and unemployment in particular, as tariffs from the United States begin to bite, with unemployment reaching 7.9 per cent and the recent high-profile decision from automaker Stellantis to move 3,000 jobs from Brampton to Illinois.
The house is currently scheduled to sit for seven weeks before rising in December.
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