A lawyer recently dinged for not complying with Ontario’s lobbying law was found to have broken the rules while working in parallel with the firm run by a former top aide to Premier Doug Ford, The Trillium can reveal.
Michael Foderick, a lawyer with McCarthy Tétrault, “failed to comply with the Lobbyists Registration Act … by failing to file three registrations” with Ontario's integrity commissioner’s office, it wrote on its website.
In two of Foderick's three cases of "non-compliance" that the commissioner determined, he shared the clients with Atlas Strategic Advisors, the small lobbying firm run by Amin Massoudi, a former longtime and senior staffer to Ford, information from publicly available and well-placed sources confirmed. According to one of their clients, Foderick had also "arranged for a contract" between Atlas and it while he served as its legal adviser.
The integrity commissioner's office also recently found that Massoudi had separately broken provincial lobbying law. He hadn't registered to lobby for a client whose request he called a public office holder about, and “knowingly” placed the official “in a position of potential conflict of interest” because he had offered them a ticket to a Toronto Raptors game the day before, the commissioner wrote on its website.
Massoudi, who was Ford's principal secretary until leaving his job in the premier's office in August 2022, has been a part of a couple of controversies for the Progressive Conservative government in the years since then. He was involved in a Las Vegas trip, also involving a would-be Greenbelt developer, that contributed to Ford's reversal of his government's land removals. His firm was also the one Brighton councillors publicly touted as hiring to "work the backroom" with the Ford government to secure water systems funding.
He and Foderick are two of the six individuals the integrity commissioner's office has revealed publicly that it has found to have broken Ontario's lobbying law in the last year. The commissioner's office had only imposed its naming-and-shaming penalty six previous times.
Before this story’s publication, neither Foderick nor Massoudi responded to questions that The Trillium asked them in emails about how their government relations work has overlapped.
The integrity commissioner’s office is responsible for oversight of lobbying toward the Ontario government, including by maintaining the provincial lobbyists registry.
The Lobbyists Registration Act sets most of the rules lobbyists are supposed to follow when advocating for clients to provincial officials, including conflict-of-interest boundaries and registry filings requirements. Changes to the law in 2016 gave the commissioner’s office the ability to investigate lobbyists and impose penalties, including publishing summaries of their non-compliance or suspending them from lobbying — the latter of which it has only done once, also recently.
The commissioner's office published separate summaries of Foderick's and Massoudi's non-compliance with the lobbying law within the last few weeks.
The Lobbyists Registration Act also limits what the commissioner can disclose about their investigations, and they’ve not named specific public office holders or lobbyists’ clients in the non-compliance summaries published by their office.
The two clients The Trillium confirmed that Foderick shared with Atlas, Massoudi's firm, and "failed to comply with the Lobbyists Registration Act" by not registering for included Unity Health Toronto, a hospital network, and a commercial development company.
Hospital network Unity Health Toronto was looking in 2023 to secure a minister's zoning order (MZO) — a provincial tool the government can use to trump local planning rules — to keep developments from obstructing flight paths of medical helicopters that fly to one of its hospitals and nearby SickKids.
In an email sent by a spokesperson for Unity Health Toronto on Thursday, it said Foderick had been its legal adviser on issues relating to the MZO.
“Mr. Foderick arranged for a contract with Atlas Strategic Advisors on behalf of the hospital, and no public funds were used to retain their services,” Unity Health Toronto said. “It was a limited retainer that began in July 2023 and came to an end in September 2023 to assist in navigating the approvals process. The hospital ensured that it complied with all relevant regulatory obligations.”
The integrity commissioner’s summary of Foderick’s non-compliance with the province’s lobbying law said work the commissioner determined he should have registered for “involved lobbying public office holders to request a minister’s zoning order related to a matter of public health and safety.”
The Ford government issued the MZO in January 2024, following efforts by Foderick and Massoudi's firm. The MZO is set to expire next week, but could become permanent if the provincial government finalizes a proposal it made last month.
Last month, Foderick said in an email on April 17 that his work seeking an MZO "resulted from bringing an urgent public health and safety matter to ministry staff’s attention … (and) lives were likely saved as a direct result.”
“Acting urgently to save lives despite possible personal consequences was the only moral decision to take,” Foderick added. “I have zero regrets about acting urgently to save lives and made the correct decision to bring this urgent matter of health and safety to ministry staff’s attention.”
The hospital network added in its email on Thursday that it hadn’t been aware of the integrity commissioner’s findings before The Trillium reached out to it before publishing this story, and that “the relationship between Mr. Foderick and Unity Health Toronto has been terminated.”
The integrity commissioner wrote in its summary of Foderick’s “non-compliance” with the lobbying law that he should have registered for two other clients in 2023 for "resending submissions initially made through a public consultation process to a senior public office holder after the relevant public consultation periods had ended.”
Foderick wrote in an email last month that in those cases, "We made submissions through the public ERO (Environmental Registry of Ontario) process … but reforwarded those identical submissions 2 days after the public comment period formally closed to ministry staff again."
“In the IC’s view, reforwarding the identical email was an issue," Foderick continued. "We disagree that this was in fact an issue at all, but choose not to challenge the commissioner’s finding in that regard."
One of these clients is a commercial development company, which The Trillium is not naming because its leadership hadn't, before this story was published, acknowledged that they had seen an email asking questions about government relations work done for it.
In early 2023, Foderick made a submission to an ERO posting on behalf of the commercial development company. The company also hired Massoudi’s firm that year, as shown by another Atlas lobbyist’s registration. The Atlas lobbyist's registration describes their goal for the company as being the same as what Foderick sought through his ERO submission.
The integrity commissioner’s office wouldn’t provide more information beyond what it published in its non-compliance summaries, with a spokesperson citing the “confidentiality requirements” of the Lobbyists Registration Act for why. For the same reason, the commissioner’s office also declined to respond to questions about whether its investigations into Foderick and Massoudi were related.
Massoudi attracted the attention of the integrity commissioner’s office in the months after he left Ford’s office. In June 2023, the office said it had by then “received information about Amin Massoudi and potential non-compliance with the (lobbying law);" Massoudi also confirmed at the time that the commissioner was “looking into a matter involving” his firm.
After the integrity commissioner’s office published its summary of Massoudi’s “non-compliance” with the Lobbyists Registration Act last week, he wrote in an email that its investigation “has been an invaluable learning opportunity.”
“Over the last two years, I have taken concrete steps to strengthen internal compliance protocols and ensure nothing like this happens again,” Massoudi said. “These steps include holding regular compliance meetings, maintaining ongoing dialogue with the Office of the Integrity Commissioner, and retaining external legal counsel to advise on and support a rigorous compliance framework.”
