Doug Ford sells U.S. branch of label business

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has sold the Chicago-area branch of his family’s label and packaging business, marking the end of an expansion into the U.S. spearheaded by Mr. Ford himself more than 20 years ago.

Franklin, Tenn.-based Resource Label Group LLC issued a press release last week announcing it had acquired Chicago-area-based Deco Flexible Packaging Ltd. A price was not disclosed. Ivana Yelich, a spokeswoman for the Premier, declined to comment, saying the sale was “a private matter.”

As required under Ontario’s Members’ Integrity Act, the Premier’s assets were placed in a trust in August, 2018, managed by Royal Trust. The law forbids the Premier and his cabinet from owning shares, unless the assets are managed by an arm’s-length trustee who is subject to rules set by the act and who must be approved by Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner.

Under the law, the trustee is allowed to provide annual reports “stating the value, but not the nature, of the assets in the trust.” Mr. Ford is also allowed at any time to instruct his trustee “to liquidate all or part of the trust” and receive the proceeds, “subject to the [Integrity] Commissioner’s approval.”

Michelle Renaud, a spokeswoman for Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake, confirmed in an e-mail that the commissioner “approved Premier Ford’s instructions to the trustee in this matter.”

In his financial disclosure to the province’s Integrity Commissioner in March, 2018, before winning office and placing his assets in a trust, Mr. Ford declared a 100-per-cent stake in the Chicago-area arm of the business, then called Deco Labels & Tags Ltd.

He did not disclose any ownership in the Ford family’s Canadian flagship company, Deco Adhesive Products (1985) Ltd., co-founded by his late father in 1962 and headquartered in Etobicoke on Toronto’s west side, but said he received commissions from the company that year.

In addition to requiring a trust, the law also forbids Mr. Ford and other members of cabinet from being an officer or a director of a company. In November, 2019, The Globe reported that the Premier was still listed as the Chicago firm’s president in corporate filings with the state of Illinois.

The Premier’s Office blamed an accountant’s error and the filing was amended, replacing Mr. Ford with his wife, Karla Ford, and listing the couple’s four daughters as directors.

Mr. Ford told the legislature at the time that he had nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of the company.

He had launched the firm’s U.S. expansion himself in 1999, spending much of his time there before winning a council seat in Toronto, serving while brother Rob was the city’s mayor from 2010 to 2014.

The family firm, which according to its website has made labels for everything from energy drinks to shampoo, was co-founded by Mr. Ford’s father, former Progressive Conservative backbench MPP Doug Ford Sr., who died in 2006.

A 2017 profile in industry publication Canadian Packaging said the Toronto and Chicago locations together employed about 200 people. As privately held, the companies did not reveal financial results. The Globe and Mail has previously reported that the Chicago operation was generating $11-million in annual revenue by 2010.

The health of both the U.S. and Canadian businesses was at issue in a lawsuit filed on the eve of the 2018 election by Renata Ford, Rob Ford’s widow. She alleged that Mr. Ford and his brother Randy had been negligent managers of Deco, overseeing more than $6-million in losses from 2010-2017. The Premier denied the allegations, which have not been tested in court. Ms. Ford’s lawyers sued her in 2021 for $290,000 in unpaid legal bills.

Her statement of claim had alleged that after Rob Ford’s death, the company’s ownership was restructured so that the now-Premier was 100-per-cent-owner of the Chicago branch and his brother Randy was 100-per-cent owner of the Toronto operation.

The Fords’ links to the company were controversial during their time at city hall. In 2016, Toronto’s integrity commissioner ruled that Doug Ford broke city council’s rules against “the improper use of influence” when he arranged meetings for two of the family firm’s clients with senior city hall officials – meetings first reported in The Globe and Mail. Mr. Ford dismissed the findings at the time, saying the commissioner had a “political agenda” and that he did nothing wrong.

The deal announced last week puts Mr. Ford’s Chicago-area plant in the hands of Resource Label Group LLC, which has more than 30 locations across North America – including two other affiliates in Toronto – and 1,700 employees. The company said the Deco plant is its 24th acquisition and that it would expand “its presence in the Midwest and leadership in the label and packaging industry.” Resource Label is owned by Ares Management Corp., which manages $334-billion (U.S.) in assets.