Ontario’s Auditor-General Shelley Spence says report found there was little rationale to explain why the high-ranked applicants were not chosen.

Ontario’s Auditor-General says the province’s selection process for $1.3-billion in grants to subsidize the hiring and retraining of workers was “not fair, transparent or accountable,” with the Labour Minister’s office approving hundreds of millions of dollars for unions, employers and other organizations that had earned low scores on their applications.

In a special report released Wednesday, Auditor-General Shelley Spence examined Ontario’s marquee Skills Development Fund, which it launched in 2021 in response to labour shortages that emerged after the pandemic.

The funding is allocated to eligible employers, unions and other organizations to

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