The Ontario NDP has asked the province’s integrity commissioner to launch an investigation into whether fundraising targets, given to ministers in Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, violate ethics rules governing elected officials.
The request comes in the wake new revelations that an industry association encouraged members to spend thousands of dollars on a fundraiser featuring the premier, in an effort to push for policy changes – an act that the NDP claims is a clear sign of cash-for-access practices.
The Ford government has maintained that it had no knowledge of an effort to coordinate donations and consistently rebuffed allegations that the minister’s targets amounted to anything more than normal party fundraising.
On Monday, Global News revealed that cabinet ministers were given a directive from the chair of the Ontario PC fund which outlined specific fundraising targets to be accomplished by the end of the year.
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