The Ford government has referred a “comprehensive forensic audit” of a company tied to the escalating Skills Development Fund (SDF) controversy to the Ontario Provincial Police, deepening scrutiny of how tens of millions in public funds were awarded for virtual mental-health services.
In a statement to The Trillium, the province confirmed that a routine 2023 audit of Get A-Head — a digital mental-health platform now rebranded as Keel Mind under Keel Digital Solutions — uncovered “irregularities,” prompting a full forensic review. The government says that upon receiving the audit last week, it forwarded the findings to the OPP within 24 hours, adding that all payments to the company are now under review.
Get A-Head’s links to Queen’s Park have become politically explosive. Labour Minister David Piccini has faced weeks of questions after it emerged he attended the Paris wedding of the company’s lobbyist and sat in premium rinkside seats at a Maple Leafs game with one of its directors months before becoming labour minister. Piccini later oversaw grant approvals that ultimately delivered more than $7.5 million from the SDF to the firm.
Since 2021, three provincial ministries have awarded Get A-Head/Keel Digital Solutions at least $36.9 million — primarily to provide online counselling to college and university students and, most recently, to develop a mental-health platform for police. The SDF alone was set to give the company millions more.
Founder Ahad Bandealy said the platform has delivered significant benefits to students and training programs, touting tens of thousands of virtual counselling sessions and rapid expansion across Ontario post-secondary institutions. He did not address the audit or OPP referral, asserting only that any “irregularities in data” stem from how users deployed the platform.
The political stakes rose sharply after Ontario’s auditor general released a blistering report last month accusing Piccini’s and former labour minister Monte McNaughton’s offices of selecting SDF recipients in a manner that was not “fair, transparent or accountable.” The audit found that many funded projects, including Get A-Head, scored “medium,” “low,” or “poor” with ministry evaluators, while higher-scoring applicants were passed over. The report also raised concerns about applicants who hired lobbyists and then received grants, noting the appearance of preferential access.
Piccini has said he paid personally for his travel and Leafs game attendance, but the events — plus grants awarded to a company whose representatives he socialized with — have triggered an ethics complaint from the Ontario Liberals. They argue he may have provided “preferential treatment” to certain SDF applicants.
Tracing the company’s rise reveals its close relationship with government funding. Get A-Head received its first grant — $250,000 — from the Ministry of Colleges and Universities in 2020 and an additional $300,000 in 2021. After Keel Digital Solutions acquired the company in 2022, government contracts and grants accelerated dramatically. By 2023, the Colleges and Universities Ministry alone paid it more than $8.5 million in a single fiscal year.
Keel officials have described the acquisition as strategically timed to capitalize on mental-health demand and government-backed opportunities, citing explosive revenue growth, multimillion-dollar margins, and an expanding portfolio of provincial contracts. Company executives have openly discussed lobbying “really hard” for additional government partnerships and positioning themselves to benefit from long-term funding.
Under the SDF program, Get A-Head was contracted to train 160 police peer-support workers; the Labour Ministry says it trained 367, surpassing its target. The broader SDF has awarded more than 1,000 grants totaling more than $1.3 billion since 2021.
As the controversy widens, the Ford government insists the OPP referral demonstrates that it is acting swiftly and appropriately. Whether the investigation ultimately leads to criminal, civil, or administrative consequences remains to be seen — but the political fallout is already reshaping debate at Queen’s Park over transparency, lobbying, and the integrity of Ontario’s largest workforce-training fund.