EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Revelations of how $10 million of Skills Development Fund grants have supported companies whose owner recently opened a licensed “adult entertainment club” shook Queen’s Park on Tuesday.
In consecutive question periods, talk of “strip clubs,” “thongs,” and “lap dances” — phrases seldom mentioned in the chamber in the history of the Ontario legislature — dominated debate, taking the already hot Ford government controversy to a new, bizarre level.
On Wednesday, Speaker Donna Skelly made both Premier Doug Ford and Labour Minister David Piccini withdraw comments about opposition MPPs lying — considered a breach of decorum. To provide a clear picture of how a club where strippers give lap dances and private room access is offered for $400 fits into the Skills Development Fund saga, The Trillium has compiled the timeline below, including some of the records that underlay its earlier reporting.
2003: The board of Exhibition Place approves a lease for the Horticulture Building with Zlatko Starkovski’s Muzik Clubs Inc. to begin Feb. 16, 2004 and expire on Feb. 15, 2024. “Z,” as many friends and staff call him, becomes the exclusive tenant of the Horticulture Building. Thanks to a lease extension, he’s been the exclusive tenant ever since. The Horticulture Building has been where several of the social clubs and events businesses that he’s owned are registered and operate.
2004: Starkovski’s Muzik nightclub opens at the Horticulture Building. His best-known club would go on to host the likes of Charlie Sheen, Jude Law, Brody Jenner and Shaquille O’Neal, among others.
2014: During what was, perhaps, the most infamous year in Muzik’s history, Justin Bieber was amongst the reported club-goers.
Then-mayor Rob Ford’s appearances at the nightclub also grabbed headlines. After one of his visits in January 2014, his brother, then-councillor Doug Ford, told reporters, “The owner said — over at Muzik — they’ve had rockstars, they’ve had sports stars, they had Bieber and nothing — nothing — compared to when the mayor came out there.”
The Toronto Star reports Starkovski had supplied alcohol for the brothers’ Ford Fest events, which they’ve invited the public to over their political careers to rally supporters.
Jenny Andonov, described at the time as “spokesperson/secretary for Muzik’s Zlatko Starkovski,” also donates $2,500 to Doug Ford’s campaign to be mayor of Toronto, the Toronto Star later reports as well.
2015: Two people are killed as a result of a shooting at Muzik at an after-party of Drake’s OVO Fest.
2020: When Muzik closed, and Starkovski re-styled the venue, Andonov is referred to in a Toronto Life article as someone “who runs corporate sales at the Toronto Event Centre,” which is another of the event businesses he runs at the Horticulture Building.
Nov. 12, 2020: Starkovski and Andonov incorporate numbered not-for-profits.
April 15, 2021: Starkovski’s Toronto Sport Club, another of his Horticulture Building-based ventures, pitches its new “Social Economic Equality Initiative” to the city-run board that manages Exhibition Place. Many details about the program that the company presented were similar or identical to how Andonov later presented “The Social Equality and Inclusion Centre,” which the 12490625 Canada Institute not-for-profit that she incorporated five months earlier has operated as.
May 28, 2021: A lobbyist for Rubicon Strategy registers to lobby Ontario government officials on behalf of The Social Equality and Inclusion Centre (SEI). The Rubicon lobbyist’s registration lists the labour minister’s and premier’s offices amongst its “lobbying targets.” Their lobbying goal states that they’re trying to “achieve approval for SEI’s application to the Ontario Government’s Skills Development Fund to support the training program of SEI in the hospitality industry to asst marginalized women, (BIPOC) Black, Indigenous, people of colour, LGBTQ+ and youth to receive training and employment opportunities.”
Rubicon Strategy is the lobbying firm owned and run by Kory Teneycke, who by now has managed Ford’s PCs’ three successful election campaigns, and has been a trusted adviser to the premier.
Sept. 29, 2021: The application period for the second round of Skills Development Fund opens.
February 2022: Doug Ford had been premier of Ontario for over three-and-a-half years, and an election was just a few months away.
Since June 2019, Monte McNaughton had been minister of labour in Ford’s cabinet. The Ministry of Labour’s deadline for applicants to submit proposals for the second round of grants from the Skills Development Fund, which McNaughton launched a year earlier, was Feb. 7, 2022.
Emails between senior Ministry of Labour officials about another grant recipient from the round show that McNaughton’s office had planned to do its “final review and selection of applications” by the end of the month.
March 2022: In preparing to run for re-election, Ford’s PCs were making a major fundraising push. Running an election — especially a successful one — is expensive. Campaigns cost money, which pays for staff, political advertising, hotels, events and more.
In Ontario, political parties are largely funded by political donations from individuals. Ford’s PCs have been very, very good at generating political donations. They’ve held dozens of high-price — often $1,000-a-ticket — fundraisers each year.
In the financial statement for 2022 that it later filed to Elections Ontario, the PC Party reported holding 46 fundraisers, including 31 before the month-long election campaign that began on May 4.
The PC Party’s 2022 financial statement shows it paid $31,947.36 in “fund-raising expenses” to Grand Bizarre Inc. that year. Grand Bizarre Inc. is one of the hospitality and events businesses that Starkovski owns and operates at the Horticulture Building.
Multiple PC-connected sources told The Trillium that the party paid Starkovski’s company to host fundraisers at the Horticulture Building. Information in the party’s financial statement indicates one of these was held on March 3, 2022, which photos taken at the Horticulture Building also substantiate.
PC-connected sources said, as well, that multiple other fundraisers the party paid Starkovski’s Grand Bizarre business for were in the months just before the election.
On March 9, 2022, the Rubicon Strategy lobbyist that was registered on behalf of SEI, Andonov’s not-for-profit, is updated to be inactive.
The same week, two other Rubicon lobbyists register to lobby provincial government officials on behalf of Grand Bizarre. Their registrations state that their goal was to “educate MPPs and staff on Grand Bizarre’s event organization capabilities and work with the (Tourism Ministry) to identify opportunities for collaboration on festivals and events at the Canadian National Exhibition and Ontario Place grounds.”
March 31, 2022, marked the end of the 2021-22 fiscal year, and the date the ministry intended to sign its agreements with second-round Skills Development Fund recipients by.
McNaughton’s office chose SEI to be among the recipients of the second round of the Skills Development Fund. The Ministry of Labour’s spending report for the 2021-22 fiscal year shows that its first payment to 12490625 Canada Institute, Andonov’s numbered not-for-profit that operates as SEI, was made before the end of March 2022.
Since then, while Skills Development Fund grants have continued to flow to SEI, Starkovski’s businesses have benefited as Andonov’s not-for-profit’s official partners. Labour Ministry-kept information, obtained by The Trillium, describes the Toronto Event Centre as SEI’s “training partner” and Grand Bizarre Inc. as its “employer partner.”
Together, they’ve delivered what they call the “Hospitality and Event Advanced and Continuing Education (HEACE) initiative.” Over the last few years, it’s been run at the Horticulture Building to train current and future employees of Starkovski’s businesses, and subsidize some of their training shifts, as well as paying for marketing for Grand Bizarre, ministry documents show.
2023: McNaughton oversaw the selection of one more round of Skills Development Fund recipients, before leaving electoral politics in the fall of 2023. Under him, the labour minister’s office awarded SEI its second grant from the program.
April 18, 2023: The province announces it’s “actively discussing partnership opportunities with Ontario Live to provide family-friendly, world-class social, hospitality, and entertainment services” and that Ontario Live includes construction union LiUNA as we as “the City of Toronto’s food, beverage and entertainment vendor for Exhibition Place since 2004,” which is Starkovski, though he wasn’t named.
Soon afterwards, the Globe and Mail reports on Starkovski’s involvement with Ontario Live. In July, the minister in charge said the plans had been cancelled, and the province would go with a “more open and competitive approach.”
June 2023: Teneycke, the owner of Rubicon Strategy and manager of the PCs’ election campaigns, celebrates his wedding at the Horticulture Building, through Starkovski’s Toronto Event Centre business. Ottawa-based parliamentary news publication The Hill Times reported on Teneycke’s wedding at the time.
Fall 2023: McNaughton resigns as labour minister and as an MPP altogether to take a job in the private sector. Ford replaces him with Piccini, who was previously environment minister, on Sep. 22, 2023. Piccini takes over responsibility for selecting, with his office’s staff, which groups receive Skills Development Fund grants. SEI receives its third funding allocation in this round.
2024: Under Piccini, the Ministry of Labour accepted applications for the latest round of Skills Development Fund grants to be distributed. SEI is chosen as a recipient, again, making it a four-time Skills Development Fund recipient.
Feb. 24, 2025: City of Toronto records show that businesses operating as “Grand Bizarre/FYE Ultra Club,” under the corporation named Hypnotic Clubs Inc., at the Horticulture Building, are licensed as an “adult entertainment club.” The same licence is also only held by strip clubs in the city.
Later in 2025: The Ministry of Labour’s annual spending reports show that from early 2022 until the end of March 2025, it gave $9.8 million to SEI, including millions to continue its "HEACE" initiative this year.
Starkovski officially incorporated a company called FYE Ultra Club Inc. on May 22, 2025. Like his various other corporations, he owns its controlling share and has it registered at the Horticulture Building.
Social media accounts for Starkovski’s latest nightlife venture began teasing its launch in June, ahead of its grand opening just a few weeks ago, near the end of September. It promotes itself as a burlesque-themed nightclub.
As a Trillium reporter experienced last month, it shares a lot in common with a strip club. Bartenders and bottle girls wore red corsets, high-cut black thong-like bottoms and fishnets, while performers wearing far less — including no tops, at times — danced on stages, or performed acrobatic or aerial acts between bars, hoops, or while suspended from above by their teeth or hair. As well, strippers circulated and performed lap dances, and access to private rooms was offered too, at a fee of $400.
Although the inside of the Horticulture Building has now been restyled as FYE, other Starkovski event businesses — including SEI’s official Skills Development Fund partners Grand Bizarre and the Toronto Event Centre — continue to operate.
Starkovski and Andonov both said in statements that FYE is not a part of the publicly funded training program and taxpayers didn’t pay to train the club’s performers.
A spokesperson for Piccini has also said, “Any suggestion that SDF funding has been used for anything other than delivering training for workers to obtain employment in in-demand sectors is unequivocally false.”
The premier’s office also said on Tuesday that it was “absolutely false … that funding went towards anything other than training over 700 workers in the hospitality sector.”