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Paul Godfrey says he felt pressured to ask his former newspaper chain, Postmedia, to print an op-ed by the Premier before last year’s snap provincial election.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Paul Godfrey, the 87-year-old former Postmedia chairman and a long-time prominent Progressive Conservative, is accusing Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s office of trying to use the potential extension of a government contract with a company run by Mr. Godfrey’s son as “political leverage.”
In an allegation that has been denied by both the Premier’s Office and Postmedia, Mr. Godfrey – chairman of Metro Toronto from 1973 to 1984 and later chief executive of the Toronto Blue Jays – says he felt pressured to ask his former newspaper chain to print an op-ed by the Premier before last year’s snap provincial election.
The allegation is the latest chapter in a tangled, multimillion-dollar legal battle involving the provincial government and Keel Digital Solutions Corp., a technology company that is subject to an OPP probe and has been put into receivership. Its chairman is Mr. Godfrey’s son, Rob Godfrey.
Keel Digital Solutions Corp. and its subsidiary Get A-Head Inc., which operated an online mental-health counselling portal, received $40-million in government payments over the past five years from the province’s Ministry of Colleges and Universities, the Ministry of Health, and the Skills Development Fund, which distributes cash for worker-training programs and was the subject of a political firestorm last year.
In a sworn statement that was released this week, the elder Mr. Godfrey alleges that in January, 2025, his son told him that he had just spoken to Patrick Sackville, then Mr. Ford’s chief of staff. The statement says Mr. Sackville had agreed to help hurry up an approval for a proposal to switch Keel’s contract with the Ministry of Colleges and Universities to a three-year term, instead of having to renew it each year.
But the statement alleges that Mr. Sackville then added that he needed a “favour” – the publication of a letter from the Premier in all of Postmedia’s Ontario newspapers justifying the province’s impending early election call. Mr. Godfrey’s time at the helm of Postmedia had ended in 2022, and while he said he was “uncomfortable” with the request, he still brought it to the media company’s brass.
“I have spent an entire career either in or around politics,” his statement reads. “I understood what this demand from the Premier’s office meant. This was using political leverage and power over a small company to extract a benefit that Keel had no ability to provide.”
In a statement provided by Mr. Ford’s spokesperson Hannah Jensen, the Premier’s Office said Mr. Godfrey’s “claims are categorically untrue and completely disconnected from reality.”
In a statement sent to media on Thursday, Mr. Godfrey repeated the allegations and called the response from the Premier’s Office “laughable.” In an e-mail, his assistant declined to make him available for an interview.
Mr. Sackville told The Globe and Mail on Thursday that “the allegation is entirely false.”
In a statement, Postmedia said it was the Premier’s Office that approached the company’s current CEO about an op-ed, and that the request was passed to the editorial team for consideration, who chose to run it.
“No commercial consideration would ever be required for the Premier, or any political figure, to share their opinion in our editorial pages,” the Postmedia statement reads. “We have no knowledge of the background events described by Mr. Godfrey.”
The newspaper chain also noted it has run op-eds by multiple other politicians, including one from Bonnie Crombie, then the Ontario Liberal leader and Mr. Ford’s rival in the 2025 campaign, three days after Mr. Ford’s piece was published.
The company at the centre of the dispute, Keel Digital, has now run aground financially amid a pitched battle with the province over how the taxpayer cash Get A-Head received was accounted for. This week, a court agreed with a request by a lender, National Bank, to put the companies into receivership over $4.5-million in unpaid debts.
Last year, Ontario forwarded a forensic audit of Get A-Head to the Ontario Provincial Police, prompting the force to open an investigation. Early this year, the province took the companies and their executives to court, accusing them of “fraudulent misrepresentation” and demanding $25.7-million in repayments. The defendants have denied any wrongdoing and countersued, alleging $100-million in damages. Talks to settle the legal fight have not resulted in a deal. The allegations have not been tested in court.
Tech company demands $100-million from Ontario in battle over audit, contracts
Keel Digital has previously accused the government of using the company as a “scapegoat” to distract from the political controversy surrounding the flow of Skills Development Fund cash to organizations with ties to the Progressive Conservatives.
In an interview with The Globe on Thursday, Rob Godfrey said his request to Mr. Sackville was to prod the Treasury Board to hurry its approval of a three-year deal for his company’s services, not to win the contract itself. He said it wasn’t a “big ask.”
He said Mr. Sackville then “switched topics” and asked for a “favour.” While he did not explicitly link the op-ed to the contract, Mr. Godfrey said this was what he understood: “It was a friendly conversation. At the time it was said friendly. But that’s how things work.”