Ontario's Premier Accountability Dashboard · Queen's Park Watch
Kory Teneycke
Rubicon Strategy
Doug Ford's 2018 election campaign manager. After the Tories won, Teneycke set up Rubicon Strategy, a government relations firm whose associates registered to lobby for online gambling companies before the iGaming Ontario market launched.
Connected Scandals
Doug Ford's government launched Canada's first private online gambling market in 2022 — having first eliminated Ontario's only independent gambling research body in 2019, and immediately after handing lucrative lobbying contracts to his own campaign manager and vice-chair. A 2026 peer-reviewed study found a 317% surge in young men aged 15–24 seeking help for gambling addiction, while the province collects a quarter-billion dollars a year in gaming revenue.
Ford's campaign manager set up Rubicon Strategy after the election. His associate Patrick Harris — the 4th Vice-President of the PC Party — registered through Rubicon to lobby for the Canadian Online Gaming Alliance, which represented offshore gambling operators Bet365, GVS, and Microgaming, according to Globe and Mail reporting.
The Ford government has spent $452 million in taxpayer-funded advertising since 2018 — repeatedly refusing to disclose campaign costs until forced by FOI — while the Auditor General found 38% of spending was designed to promote the governing party, and the firm behind the most controversial ad is run by Doug Ford's campaign manager's brother-in-law.
Ford's three-time election campaign manager whose brother-in-law Dennis Matthews runs Creative Currency — the advertising firm that received $2.2 million in government contracts and $4.8 million from the Ontario PC party while producing government advertising including the Reagan anti-tariff commercial. The overlap between Teneycke's role as the Premier's chief political operative and his family's firm receiving government ad contracts was confirmed by Global News.
CityNews Queen's Park reporter Tina Yazdani was fired without explanation in April 2026 — days after a confrontational on-camera exchange with Education Minister Paul Calandra, and after at least two of her Ford government stories were quietly deleted from the Rogers-owned network's website in apparent violation of Rogers' own editorial standards.
Ford's campaign manager and principal of Rubicon Strategy. Teneycke's brother-in-law Dennis Matthews (Creative Currency) produces both Ontario government and PC party advertising, creating a documented overlap between the government's $111.9 million annual advertising machine and the Ford political network. No direct Rogers/Teneycke link has been confirmed in connection with the Yazdani firing.