A politician and a lobbyist partied at the Paris Four Seasons last weekend
The labour minister had recently been absent from Queen’s Park
Ontario labour minister David Piccini was a guest at the lavish Parisian wedding of lobbyist Michael Rudderham this past weekend, held at the Four Seasons Hotel George V.
According to the Trillium, Rudderham’s clients have received millions of dollars through the province’s $2.5-billion Skills Development Fund, which Piccini ultimately decides the distribution of.
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Piccini was noticeably absent from Queen’s Park when the province’s auditor general shared a report earlier this month concluding that the fund was “not fair, transparent or accountable” in how it gave out public money to Skills Development Fund recipients. Piccini joined a Zoom call that day from an undisclosed location, admitting that he’d awarded funds to some lobby-assisted applications with low scores.
“You know what it feels like and smells like?" said Liberal MPP John Fraser, according to Global News. “A racket.”
The Trillium described Piccini and Rudderham as close friends who have known each other for several years.
Maybe Piccini simply loves Paris in the fall.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
