{"id":157318,"date":"2025-09-20T15:53:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T15:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/157318\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T15:53:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T15:53:07","slug":"niagara-spa-and-casino-company-among-those-grants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/157318\/","title":{"rendered":"Niagara spa and casino company among those grants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Striking college workers held demonstrations calling it a provincial day of action. <\/p>\n

Striking college workers<\/a> held rallies in a dozen locations across Ontario on Friday, calling it a provincial day of action to spur a settlement in the week-old job action, as more information emerged about government grants that have gone to career training at a company that operates a casino, spa, and a network of hotels.<\/p>\n

Workers at several of those rallies carried signs referencing the province\u2019s $2.5 billion Skills Development Fund<\/a> (SDF), reiterating their concern that millions in taxpayer money were going to apparently well-connected companies instead of a college network facing thousands of job losses.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a college faculty member, we know we have incredibly high standards that our programs are held to, as well as public oversight and regular review,\u201d said Darcie Hillier of OPSEU Local 242 at Niagara College.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe [Skills Development Fund] programs seem to be operating almost exclusively in the dark as opposed to our public colleges, where program standards are public,\u201d Hillier said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Striking workers rally Striking college staff hold a rally outside a campus in Niagara. <\/p>\n

Ontario\u2019s premier and labour minister have defended the fund<\/a>, telling reporters at an event on Wednesday that the SDF is money well spent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the best investment we\u2019ve ever done in the province. We\u2019ve trained over 700,000 people with multiple skills and given them the tools, literally the tools to have a career and the trade over the rest of our lives,\u201d Ford said.<\/p>\n

Niagara College has cancelled three hospitality courses, among hundreds that are on the chopping block in colleges across the province, as the sudden loss of many international students is eating into the colleges\u2019 bottom lines.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, government records show that Canadian Niagara Hotels Inc., which operates a spa, waterpark, casino and a network of hotels nearby, has received four grants from the Skills Development Fund.<\/p>\n

One in June 2025<\/a> is for $989,375 to train 500 participants in \u201cfoundational hospitality skills.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another announcement points to about $3.5 million in 2022<\/a> to \u201coffer workers in Niagara and across the province with training and educational programs needed to pursue in-demand and well-paying jobs,\u201d but it doesn\u2019t specify how many people are being trained.<\/p>\n

CTV News couldn\u2019t find an announcement detailing the money for the other two grants, and ministry staff didn\u2019t clarify the figures on Friday. The province\u2019s public accounts contain payments from the Ministry of Labour for $2.49 million in 2023 and $2.02 million in 2024.<\/p>\n

If those figures relate to Skills Development Fund money, Canadian Niagara Hotels would have received some $9 million from the fund since the program began.<\/p>\n

Canadian Niagara Hotels didn\u2019t clarify that in questions from CTV News, except to say that they did not use the same lobbyist as another grant recipient, Scale Hospitality.<\/p>\n

Canadian Niagara Hotels\u2019 CEO, Dino DiCienzo, is listed in Elections Ontario records as giving about $7,000 to the governing PC party from 2019 to 2022. <\/p>\n

\"\"CTV News graphic <\/p>\n

The same records show the restaurateurs associated with Scale Hospitality gave about $11,000 to the PCs.<\/p>\n

CTV News previously reported<\/a> that Scale Hospitality got a pair of grants worth $11 million to train some 5,200 at-risk people to work in its restaurant chain. One of the former staffers who worked on the application and then went on to become the company\u2019s lobbyist was Amin Massoudi.<\/p>\n

It also heard one of the former staffers in Premier Doug Ford\u2019s office who worked on that application in 2021 was Amin Massoudi, who allegedly got massages in a Las Vegas spa at the same time as developers eyeing the province\u2019s protected Greenbelt.<\/p>\n

Massoudi told CTV News his actions were \u201cappropriately registered and fully compliant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labour Minister David Piccini said at that same event on Wednesday that Scale Hospitality overshot how many workers it was required to train.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I would say on this particular fund is that they met all their metrics. In fact, they exceeded it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s about empowering workers with better training. We believe that everyone in Ontario, whether you\u2019re in hospitality, whether you\u2019re in construction, or whether you\u2019re working in the Ag sector, you should have access to skills training.\u201d<\/p>\n

Complaints by OPSEU about those grants triggered a fissure in the Ontario Federation of Labour when LiUNA left, with its head Joseph Mancinelli saying the comments amounted to nothing but \u201cbad politics attacking the Ford government.\u201d<\/p>\n

LiUNA was promised $26 million for a new training centre in Vaughan through the SDF.<\/p>\n

Ontario\u2019s Auditor General is auditing the Skills Development Fund.<\/p>\n

In a statement, a spokesperson for Piccini said on Friday that the Skills Development Fund changes lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo date, the SDF has supported 533 unique organizations, aiming to train over 52,000 health care workers, 154,000 construction workers, and 124,000 manufacturing workers, with the goal of training over one million workers,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Striking college workers held demonstrations calling it a provincial day of action. Striking college workers held rallies in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[712,45,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-157318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}