Dentacloud received more than $2 million through the Ford government’s Skills Development Fund
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
A brokerage of dental practices was given millions of taxpayer dollars by the Ford government to train workers at a time when its CEO worked closely with the wife of the then-cabinet minister responsible for the funding program.
Dentist John Maggirias is the CEO of Dentacloud, a company that says on its LinkedIn page that it “specializes in helping dentists sell their practice, with a focus on selling to private equity and dental service organizations.” A year after Maggirias officially incorporating Dentacloud in November 2021, he had become involved with another new group called the Canadian Federation of Dentistry.
Kate Bartz was the president of the Canadian Federation of Dentistry at the time. Bartz is married to Monte McNaughton, who was labour minister in Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet from June 2019 to September 2023 when he announced he was leaving politics.
As labour minister, McNaughton oversaw the creation of the Skills Development Fund (SDF) and was in charge of the Ministry of Labour when it gave out the grant program’s first three rounds of funding.
Dentacloud received just over $2 million from the third round of the SDF.
In an email to The Trillium, Bartz said she “never discussed the Skills Development Funding program and I never advocated on behalf of any recipient at any time.”
Dentacloud is registered at the same address as Maggirias’ dental clinic in a strip mall in Etobicoke, not far from where the premier lives.
Dentacloud’s and Maggirias’ LinkedIn profiles say they’ve brokered sales for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of dental practices.
Bartz was the president of the Canadian Federation of Dentistry from December 2022, around when it launched, until May 2024.
“Before accepting the role, advice was sought from the Integrity Commissioner and clearance was received,” Bartz wrote in her email.
The Canadian Federation of Dentistry styled itself as the “national voice of the dental profession.”
It wasn’t associated in any way with the more than century-old Canadian Dental Association, which advocates on behalf of 10 provincial and territorial organizations that collectively represent more than 20,000 dentists in the country.
As Bartz explained in her email, the Canadian Federation of Dentistry sought to represent “not only dentists, but also hygienists, dental assistants, and denturists — while working with government and the public to improve access to dental care.”
“I joined the organization during the federal government’s consultations with the dental industry as it developed the Canada Dental Care Plan,” Bartz said.
In early 2022, the federal government announced that it planned to create the Canada Dental Care Plan, which would dedicate billions of tax dollars to covering dental care for more middle- and lower-income Canadians without access to private insurance.
Also in 2022, Maggirias began giving sizable amounts of money to Progressive Conservative party causes, according to records of political contributions kept by Elections Ontario. Maggirias donated just over $6,000 — close to the combined maximum allowed in 2022 — to McNaughton’s candidacy and riding association that year. In total, he’s given over $22,500 in political donations to PC party causes since.
In her email, Bartz said Maggirias was one of the Canadian Federation of Dentistry’s “approximately 1,000 members across Canada.” The chief operating officer of Dentacloud, Edward Kwan, described the company as one of the “founding members of (the) CFD.”
In documents it produced in early 2023, the Canadian Federation of Dentistry labelled Maggirias as its “program facilitator.”
Bartz, Maggirias and other Canadian Federation of Dentistry representatives had at least one meeting together with a member of Ford’s cabinet, while they both worked with the organization.
They both helped arrange a virtual meeting between Canadian Federation of Dentistry representatives and Minister Jill Dunlop, who led the Ministry of Colleges and Universities at the time, on Feb. 15, 2023, according to Bartz and what’s shown in government records The Trillium obtained using the freedom-of-information system.
Maggirias, Bartz, a couple of others from the Canadian Federation of Dentistry, and a vice-president of Rubicon Strategy, the lobbying firm run by Ford’s PCs’ campaign manager, were listed in a note prepared for Dunlop as the expected participants in the meeting with her.
The minister’s meeting note said that the main topic of their “introductory meeting” was “postsecondary dentistry programming in Ontario.”
In another document, an early 2023-published proposal by the Canadian Federation of Dentistry “to address the growing need for the training of dental assistants and hygienists,” the group stated its goals included “(removing) barriers that prevent access to dental care,” and “(creating) inclusive education to fill employment vacancies in the dental industry.”
“There was no funding request of the provincial government during this meeting,” Bartz wrote in her email to The Trillium.
“As a member organization of CFD we participated in the meeting with Minister Dunlop to discuss the dental industry,” said Kwan of the Dentacloud CEO’s involvement. “At no time, in this meeting or at any other time, did CFD advocate or discuss SDF funding.”
Maggirias and Bartz both visited the legislature in Queen’s Park a few weeks later on March 20, 2023. Although Dunlop, while speaking in the legislature that day, introduced Maggirias and his partner as “guests” of hers, Dentacloud’s chief operating officer said they visited that day after months earlier winning “a prize for a day at Queen’s Park.”
“Dr. Maggirias and his partner Sarah were there to see the democratic process in action,” Kwan wrote. “No business was discussed.”
Bartz said she “was there solely for leisure, to watch question period, as I have done many times over the years” and that she “had no CFD-related meetings” on that date.
Kwan said that Dentacloud signed the agreement to receive its Skills Development Fund grant a few days later, on March 25, 2023.
“In SDF Round 3, Dentacloud was approved for over $2 million worth of funding to deliver training and upskilling opportunities to new workers in the dental industry, including dental hygienists and dental assistants,” said Michel Figueredo, a spokesperson for David Piccini, Ontario’s current labour minister, in a statement.
“We wanted to help address the labour shortages faced by dental clinics in Ontario, largely driven by the pandemic,” wrote Kwan.
According to the labour minister’s spokesperson and Kwan, 349 people were trained by Dentacloud’s “Dentist for Dentists” program. “The (training) recipients were provided with more than 50 hours of specialized training per person,” added Kwan.
He wrote that Dentacloud was “proud to have trained hundreds of recipients … including both incumbent workers and new prospects that in turn led to over 70 hires, helping to address labour shortages in the dental industry and to upskill dental personnel.”
McNaughton resigned as labour minister on Sep. 22, 2023. He said in a statement that day that “after much soul searching,” he was leaving politics to work in the private sector.
“I’m making this decision because it’s the right one for me and my family,” McNaughton said.
He also resigned as an MPP a few weeks later.
Dentacloud was selected as a recipient for the next round of SDF funding as well, but ultimately “decided to focus on other strategic priorities and did not take the funding,” according to Kwan. Ministry of Labour records show it had been selected to receive another $3.8 million “to train clinical and administrative dental support staff to address labour shortages and build a resilient skilled workforce for dental practices across Ontario.”
The Canadian Federation of Dentistry appears to have fizzled out. Its website is offline. Its social media accounts’ most recent posts are from early 2023. And according to the federal government’s website, Corporations Canada has told the not-for-profit that it’ll be dissolved after not submitting filings that it was supposed to for two consecutive years.
The last time the Canadian Federation of Dentistry was mentioned on Twitter was in March 2024 by Health Minister Sylvia Jones, who tweeted a photo of her, Bartz, Maggirias and others at an event in Mississauga that the Denturist Group of Ontario hosted.
Bartz left the group in May 2024. She’s now the executive director of Career Colleges Ontario, an organization that represents and advocates for small for-profit colleges in the province.
“(Dentacloud) did not continue our membership with CFD after the full roll-out of the federal dental care program,” Kwan said.
The Skills Development Fund is one of the Ford government’s favourite programs. It’s currently accepting applications for a sixth round of grants, which’ll bring the total distributed through the fund to about $2.5 billion. “That’s the best investment we’ve ever done in the province,” Ford said of the program in a scrum with reporters last week.
The hundreds of Skills Development Fund recipients have included many skilled trades unions and not-for-profits, as well as some for-profit companies, including Dentacloud.
A few weeks ago, a union representing support workers at Ontario’s public colleges, who are currently on strike, released a report criticizing the Ford government for giving millions of tax dollars in Skills Development Fund grants to certain recipients instead of using it to fund postsecondary education. Days later, the Labourers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) announced it was leaving the Ontario Federation of Labour as a result. The Progressive Conservatives-aligned LiUNA has been a top beneficiary of the Skills Development Fund.
Ontario’s auditor general’s office has also been looking into the Skills Development Fund. It plans to release a report next Wednesday on the training stream of the program, which includes the vast majority of the hundreds of grants given through the fund.
Opposition parties have tended to support the government using tax dollars to fund training initiatives for workers. Recently, in light of reporting by The Trillium and other news outlets on connections several Skills Development Fund recipients share with Ford’s PCs, some opposition MPPs have been critical of the government’s selection of grant recipients.
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