EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
A second dentistry business with ties to former Ontario labour minister Monte McNaughton’s wife got millions of taxpayer funds from the ministry while he was in charge of it.
Government spending records show the two companies had similar professional connections with McNaughton’s wife and were among the few in their industry to receive funding from the ministry while McNaughton was in charge of it.
Before McNaughton stepped down as labour minister shortly before leaving elected politics altogether in the fall of 2023, the ministry paid about $5.1 million to Carlo Biasucci’s Elite Practice business, the government’s spending disclosures show.
Biasucci used to be a practising dentist. Through his consulting company, Elite Practice, he helps dentists grow their practices, according to its website. When Elite Practice received funding from the province’s Ministry of Labour, Biasucci was also involved with a recently established group called the Canadian Federation of Dentistry (CFD), which was led by McNaughton’s wife, Kate Bartz.
While the CFD styled itself as the “national voice of the dental profession,” it wasn’t linked in any way to the century-old Canadian Dental Association, the largest dentists’ association in the country.
Biasucci was listed as the CFD’s “online dentistry curriculum and design advisor” in a proposal about educating dental assistants and hygienists that the group produced in early 2023. He was also part of a small group of CFD representatives who arranged a call on Feb. 15, 2023, to introduce the organization to the then-minister of colleges and universities — as was the group’s “program facilitator,” fellow dentist-turned-businessman John Maggirias.
Maggirias’s dental practice sales brokerage, Dentacloud, also received funding from the Ministry of Labour while McNaughton was minister, as The Trillium previously reported.
Dentacloud received a Skills Development Fund grant of just over $2 million from the last round of grants that McNaughton oversaw. Dentacloud later reported to the government that the Labour Ministry funding it received helped it provide “more than 50 hours of specialized training” to 349 people.
Elite Practice, Biasucci’s company, got funding from the ministry’s Skills Advance Ontario program, according to the office of Labour Minister David Piccini, McNaughton’s successor.
“This project trained jobseekers for entry-level roles and upskilled existing workers … including dentists, to strengthen and reduce operational pressures,” the labour minister’s office’s spokesperson wrote in an email.
“The program placed nearly 200 job seekers in roles and trained over 550 incumbent workers, with strong placement and retention results across both groups. These outcomes demonstrate the project’s success in building a skilled workforce and supporting Ontario’s growing health-care system,” the minister’s office added.
In a report released on Oct. 1, Ontario’s auditor general described the Skills Development Fund, from which Maggirias’ company Dentacloud received its funding, as “not fair, transparent or accountable” — including because the labour minister’s office has picked the funding recipients. In the same report, the auditor general said the minister’s office “is not involved in the selection of applications (to the) … Skills Advance Ontario” program, which Biasucci’s company Elite Practice received funding from.
The labour minister’s spokesperson wrote of the Skills Advance Ontario program in his email that “program proposals are submitted directly to the ministry, which reviews their merits and assesses overall feasibility.”
Filings to the federal registry by Rubicon Strategy lobbyists enlisted on behalf of Elite Practice said that it and Dentacloud were directly tied to each other when their leaders worked together with Bartz via the CFD, and each of them got millions from Ontario’s labour ministry. Registrations that Rubicon’s lobbyists filed in 2022 and 2023 described Dentacloud, Maggirias’ business, as a “subsidiary” of Elite Practice, Biasucci’s company.
Rubicon Strategy is the firm run by Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives’ political campaign manager, and has worked for clients that have received more than $100 million from the Skills Development Fund.
Combined, Elite Practice and Dentacloud received $7.16 million from the Ministry of Labour, while McNaughton was minister.
Partway through last year, Bartz left the CFD, which appears now to be inactive. She’s now the executive director of Career Colleges Ontario, which advocates for private colleges in the province.
Neither Biasucci nor Bartz responded by press time to questions The Trillium asked them in emails last week.
In an email several weeks ago, Bartz said the province's integrity commissioner gave her "clearance" to work for the CFD and that she "never discussed the Skills Development Funding program and ... never advocated on behalf of any recipient at any time."
McNaughton remains the longest-serving labour minister of the Ford government. Ford replaced him with Piccini, who took over responsibility for the Skills Development Fund, which McNaughton launched in early 2021.
The Skills Development Fund has become one of Ford’s Progressive Conservatives’ favourite initiatives.
To date, the Ford government has given out over $1.3 billion of taxpayer-funded SDF grants to support workers and training programs run by labour groups, not-for-profits, municipalities and companies. Grants have gone to hundreds of different recipients, chosen by the labour minister’s office — first under McNaughton and now Piccini.
Controversy has exploded in the last couple of months over their selection of grant recipients. The province’s auditor general wrote in a report last month that it’s been “not fair, transparent or accountable.” Opposition parties have been calling the SDF a “slush fund,” given the numerous ties that The Trillium and other media have uncovered between the Ford government and grant recipients or their lobbyists, and the extent PC party donors and endorsers have benefited from the program.
Maggirias and Biasucci have both given generously to the PCs. Both have given thousands of dollars to PC causes, including directly to McNaughton’s riding association, while he was labour minister.
Biasucci’s father’s development company, Sal-Dan General Contractors, is among the most recent Skills Development Fund recipients. Piccini’s office awarded it about $3 million to train its employees. Members of their family have altogether given tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions to the PCs over the last decade.
When The Trillium spoke with Salvatore Biasucci, Carlo’s father, a few weeks ago about the Skills Development Fund grant his development company received, he said he didn’t believe donations he had made to the PCs, or other connections, helped secure it.
“You're in business. You’ve got to do your thing,” the elder Biasucci said of his donations.
—With files from Jack Hauen