Ontario’s controversial Skills Development Fund is again facing scrutiny after awarding $1 million to Connex Telecommunications — a company headed by Sayan Navaratnam, an entrepreneur who was fined and temporarily barred by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) in 2023 for issuing misleading press releases while leading Facedrive, now known as Argo Corp.
Connex received two grants totalling $1 million to train workers in AI-enabled customer service tools, including testing chatbots. Critics say that funding a call-centre automation program contradicts the fund’s mission to create employment, arguing that taxpayer dollars are subsidizing technology that could replace workers. Connex maintains its training focuses on “higher-value AI roles” that will help retain jobs in Canada rather than outsourcing them abroad.
The Skills Development Fund has already come under fire after Auditor-General Shelley Spence reported that $1.3 billion in grants were awarded in a process that lacked fairness, transparency and accountability — with political offices overruling bureaucratic rankings.
Opposition leaders suggest the Connex decision reinforces the findings. Navaratnam and executives within his business group have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives and also contributed to the Liberals. NDP Leader Marit Stiles says the grant fits a pattern of money flowing to politically connected applicants: “Every day there’s a new headline that’s more outrageous than the one before.”
Liberal leader John Fraser was blunter, saying subsidizing call-centre automation runs counter to the program’s stated purpose of supporting workers rather than supplanting them.
Public Safety Minister David Piccini’s office dismissed concerns about political donations, saying contributions “have no bearing on eligibility,” while asserting Connex has decades of experience and a history of completing government contracts. The province says stronger oversight mechanisms are being layered onto the program, including post-training tracking of outcomes.
Connex told sources the OSC sanction was a “voluntary” settlement over press-release wording that was neither fraudulent nor intentional. The company rebuffed allegations of favouritism and emphasized its goal of building a domestic workforce skilled in AI supervision, prompt engineering and data-driven customer-service technology.
Facedrive, the firm Navaratnam previously led, became a cautionary tale in 2021 when its valuation soared to $5 billion despite scant revenue, only to collapse to pennies a share. It was also criticized for outsourcing production of government-funded COVID tracing devices despite promising Ontario-made hardware.
With Auditor-General warnings still reverberating, critics say the Connex grant raises fresh concerns about whether the Ford government’s flagship training fund is serving workers — or corporate interests with proximity to power.
