By Allison Jones

Ontario Labour Minister David Piccini's office has been heavily involved in selecting projects that get funded under a $2.5-billion skills training program and has doled out money to applicants ranked low by bureaucrats without documenting why, the auditor general has found.

Opposition parties are likening it to the Greenbelt scandal, in which two investigations found the government's now-reversed decision to remove land from the protected Greenbelt for housing favoured certain developers.

The Skills Development Fund gives money to organizations for projects that help hire, train or retrain workers. 

More than half of the projects Piccini's office gave funding to were ranked by bureaucrats as poor, low or medium against the program's goals and criteria, with those projects receiving about $742 million over the first five rounds of funding, auditor general Shelley Spence found.

"It is troubling," she said at a press conference on Wednesday. 

"That's why we recommended that the staffers take a look at the explanations and if they don't make sense, go back to the minister's office and say, 'Hey ... I'm not understanding why this was selected.'"

The auditor also found that 64 low- and medium-ranked projects that Piccini's office chose for funding had hired registered lobbyists, which "can create an appearance of real or potential preferential treatment." 

Liberal parliamentary leader John Fraser said the auditor's findings sound familiar.

"It smells like the Greenbelt, and it's a racket," he said. "If you know somebody, you're OK. (If) you're connected, you get it."

NDP Leader Marit Stiles said it looks like certain applicants received unfair advantages.

"I think the people of Ontario will be pretty disgusted by the fact that, once again, their government is using their taxpayer dollars to fund their friends and lobbyists," she said.

At a press conference, Piccini listed a few examples of "low" scoring projects his office approved that have been successful. He said he welcomes the auditor general's recommendations for improving the program but suggested he would not take the political side out of the process.

"I think when we see the changes in labour market needs and we see changing realities in every corner of Ontario, it's important that I and government, who are elected by the people, ultimately have the say in where these are going," he said.

Similar programs in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador do not have ministers' offices making specific funding decisions, Spence said.

A spokesperson for Piccini said the fund is open to everyone and has supported more than 1,000 projects that have helped more than 100,000 people "achieve employment."

Spence found that in the first two rounds of funding, Piccini's office did not give a documented reason as to why it chose 388 projects that received a total of $479 million.

One application was chosen by the minister's office despite ranking "low" and duplicating many aspects of existing programs, the auditor said. Another was chosen even though it would only provide training for one person, and the applicant was that one person.

(C) The Canadian Press