Labour Minister David Piccini at Queen's Park on Nov. 17, 2025.Steve Cornwell/The Trillium
Add this case, uncovered by The Peak and The Trillium, to the growing pile of examples of grants awarded by Ontario’s Skills Development Fund that are likely to raise eyebrows.
What happened: The Ford government gave about $2.5 million from its Skills Development Fund (SDF) to businesses backed by Sayan Navaratnam, an entrepreneur who the Ontario Securities Commission penalized a few years ago for allegedly misleading investors with inaccurate press releases, The Peak has learned in collaboration with The Trillium.
In addition to grants of just over $1 million to Connex Telecommunications, one of Navaratnam’s businesses (reported earlier this week by The Globe & Mail), the province also awarded Knowledgehook — another company backed by Navaratnam — nearly $1.5 million through the program.
Catch up: Before this story was published, Navaratnam’s investment firm Malar Group listed Connex, Knowledgehook and Argo on its “portfolio” webpage, but the page has since been password-protected. Argo was formerly known as Facedrive, the company that landed Navaratnam in hot water with Ontario’s capital markets regulator. Argo, however, is publicly traded, and CEO Praveen Arichandran said it’s not a subsidiary of Malar Group nor controlled by Malar Group or Navaratnam.
Facedrive saw its market cap explode during the pandemic, once topping $5 billion, largely on the back of its promise to deliver COVID-19 contact-tracing technology.
But its share prices eventually collapsed when the Ontario Securities Commission alleged that Facedrive made misleading public statements about how soon it would bring its products to market.
Navaratnam was personally fined, and banned from holding a director or officer position at a publicly traded company other than Steer Technologies (which Facedrive rebranded as, prior to becoming Argo).
Why it matters: It’s another example of cash from Ontario’s Skills Development Fund finding its way to recipients that could raise red flags.
Zoom out: Navaratnam’s companies share other ties with the Ontario PCs. A lobbyist that Knowledgehook hired to help obtain funding from the SDF, David DiPaul, was previously a Ford government staffer, and another longtime Ford staffer recently joined Argo as its head of business operations.
What they’re saying: Ontario Labour Minister David Piccini’s office defended the grants in a statement, saying Connex and Knowledgehook projects “are on track to meet expectations outlined in their transfer payment agreements with the ministry.”
In an email to The Trillium, Argo said its “business, management, and board are unrelated to any previous business ventures of the corporate entity it took over.”
In an email to The Peak, Knowledgehook said that “Knowledgehook is not owned by Mr. Navaratnam” and that “Knowledgehook remains fully compliant with all SDF requirements.”
CORRECTION: This story was updated at 11:15 a.m on December 11, to clarify Sayan Navaratnam’s connection to Knowledgehook and Argo.