A company at the heart of Ontario’s Skills Development Fund controversy has been ordered into receivership, stripping its executives of control amid an ongoing legal battle with the provincial government.
Keel Digital Solutions was placed under the control of BDO Canada Limited after Superior Court Justice Jane Dietrich granted a request from National Bank on Monday. Neither Keel Digital nor its executives contested the bank’s claim that the company cannot repay more than $4.5 million it owes.
The move comes after the Ford government filed a lawsuit against Keel Digital and its executives in late 2025, alleging they defrauded the province by inflating the number of mental health counselling sessions conducted on its online platform, which increased the payments the province made to the company. The government is seeking to recoup more than $25 million in taxpayer funds, including $2.7 million from the Skills Development Fund.
Keel Digital and its executives countersued for more than $100 million, alleging damages caused by the province’s lawsuit.
Settlement Talks Fell Through
A lawyer representing the company, Jesse Mighton of Bennett Jones, told the court that Keel Digital and its executives had devoted significant time, personnel and resources to trying to settle the legal dispute with the province so it could repay its creditors. He said the company had proposed several settlement scenarios that would have repaid National Bank in full, but no agreement was reached with the province.
Mighton said his firm, as a creditor, hopes the receiver will pursue the counterclaim against the province and maximize its value for the benefit of creditors. The receiver will now determine how to proceed with that countersuit.
Origins of the Scandal
Keel Digital came under scrutiny a year ago after then-labour minister David Piccini, who had awarded the company two grants totalling millions of dollars, attended the Parisian wedding of the company’s lobbyist. Reporting on the wedding, and on Piccini’s attendance at a hockey game with one of the company’s directors, prompted complaints to the province’s integrity commissioner, which is still investigating Piccini’s handling of the Skills Development Fund. Piccini is now infrastructure minister.
Last November, the Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security received audit findings on its payments to Keel Digital for student mental health counselling and forwarded them to the Ontario Provincial Police. The Ford government has repeatedly declined to publicly release the audit findings, which formed the basis for the lawsuit filed against Keel Digital in January.
Dispute Over Platform Data
To support its claims that Keel Digital inflated counselling session numbers, the province demanded the company turn over data on platform usage, which Keel Digital initially refused to provide. At a March hearing, Keel Digital’s lawyer Jonathan Bell argued the requested data amounted to private medical information of Ontarians and was owned by the post-secondary institutions whose students used the platform. Government lawyers countered that the data sought was usage metadata, not medical records.
A hearing on the data dispute scheduled for Friday was cancelled, according to the Ministry of the Attorney General, after Keel Digital agreed to provide the information the government had requested.
This article references reporting from:
