PC Leader Doug Ford with Etobicoke Centre PC candidate Kinga Surma at the opening of her campaign office on April 7, 2018. Andrew Francis Wallace/The Toronto Star

TORONTO—Ontario MPP Kinga Surma’s father scored a job in Premier Doug Ford’s government after the spring 2018 election, according to sources in the Progressive Conservative Party.

Surma, who has been in the premier’s inner circle since the two worked at Toronto City Hall, was appointed associate transportation minister in a cabinet shuffle last week.

According to the government’s directory, Miroslaw Surma is a policy advisor in the minister of economic development’s office. Several conservative sources told iPolitics he is Surma’s dad.

READ MORE: Ford reviewing some appointments as new cronyism allegation emerges

Miroslaw has a limited online presence and his LinkedIn profile only lists his current job.

Neither Surma nor her dad replied to requests for comment on Wednesday.

The premier’s office did not answer questions about the process involved in his hiring, what his previous qualifications were and whether Ford was involved.

Instead the office sent the same statement it sent in response to another question about government hiring practices.

“Every staff member in the government is hired based on merit and if they do not perform to the standards expected they are removed from their positions. We will not comment further on internal staffing matters,” Ford Spokesperson Kayla Iafelice said.

In her maiden speech to the legislature, Surma detailed her family’s escape from communism in Eastern Europe and her parents arrival in Canada with “three little ones and only $1,500 in their pockets.” She said her parents didn’t speak the language but took “any available work to provide for their family.”

That experience made their family’s bond “unbreakable,” she told the legislature. “Like the Premier always praises his family for being a tight-knit group, so are we,” she said.

Her dad’s position in the government raises more questions about how the government decides who is qualified to work in political positions, as it grapples with an appointment scandal involving Ford’s now former chief of staff Dean French.

READ MORE: Premier Doug Ford’s embattled chief of staff, Dean French, resigns

French resigned Friday after media reports tied him to two new government appointees. A statement from the premier’s office insisted he had always intended to return to the private sector after a year of service in government.

Both of those appointments were revoked. French knew one of the appointees through his work in lacrosse; the other appointee is a relative of his wife, Jane Pal French.

On Tuesday, two more appointments with direct connections to French were also reported. Katherine Pal resigned from the province’s Public Accounts Council after it was revealed that French is her uncle and the Globe and Mail reported that Andrew Suboch, chair of the Justices of the Peace Appointment Advisory Committee, is also connected to French through lacrosse.

On Wednesday iPolitics reported that French also pressed the Progressive Conservatives to hire a lacrosse player, who French used to coach, to a political role in government.

Surma is closely connected to the premier and his deputy chief of staff, Amin Massoudi, who she used to date, according to the National Post.

The Liberals highlighted the connection between Surma and Ford during the 2018 election campaign. The Grits accused Ford of helping Surma gather “bogus” memberships to bolster her chances of winning the nomination race in the Etobicoke Centre riding.

The Liberals released an audio recording of Ford trying to get people to sign up for party memberships in order to vote in the nomination contest. In the audio recording Ford is heard saying: “it doesn’t cost ya’ anything, we’re just signing people up today. That’s it.”

Memberships were supposed to cost $10.

At the time, Ford denied paying for anyone else’s memberships but he didn’t explain why he told people it was free. He called the attack from the Liberals a “desperate” attempt to try to “change the channel.”

Ford’s Etobicoke North riding neighbours Surma’s.

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