Expert Analysis — April 20, 2026
OSINT analyst Steffan Watkins turns his attention from identifying the plane to dissecting the journalism — and the government narrative — behind the Gravy Plane story.
On April 20, 2026 — the day after Doug Ford announced he would sell the plane — Steffan Watkins published a 25-tweet thread doing something he rarely bothers with: a systematic critique of the journalism that broke the story. The target was Robert Benzie's Toronto Star scoop, "Ontario Buys Used $28.9M Private Jet for Doug Ford: Sources," published April 17.
Watkins's credentials for this critique are hard to dispute. He had already identified the aircraft — tail number C-FBBW, MSN 6063 — before his morning coffee on the day the story broke, using only publicly available government data and aviation databases. His concern was that Benzie, one of Ontario's most senior political journalists, apparently hadn't bothered to do the same, or to push back on a series of government claims that Watkins found somewhere between misleading and absurd.
The thread covers six distinct problems with the coverage and the government's narrative. We've summarised each below.
"I see no sign Robert Benzie, The Star's Queen's Park Bureau Chief, consulted anyone but his secret source(s) who used him to soft launch this out of left field Challenger 650 'purchase' for Doug Ford. He didn't fact-check it with public sources either."
Read the full thread on ThreadReader →Benzie's story was sourced entirely to anonymous "senior Ontario government officials." Watkins's opening point is blunt: why would anyone accept, at face value, what an unnamed government source told a journalist about a government purchase? The question is especially sharp given that the "purchase" turned out to be more complicated than it appeared — with the aircraft registered to a third party (ACASS Canada Ltd.), not the Ontario Government, both before and after the announced deal.
Watkins flags the specific language used: the plane was described as having been "purchased through Bombardier" — past tense, a fait accompli. He invites readers to "put a pin in that," noting that this framing was never independently verified and raises questions about the true nature of the transaction. Did the Ontario Government actually take title to the aircraft? Or was some other arrangement made?
The Ontario Government is not listed as the registered owner of C-FBBW in the Transport Canada registry — ACASS Canada Ltd. is. This was true before the announcement, and it remained true after it. Whether the government ever held title to the aircraft, or whether "purchased through Bombardier" meant something other than outright ownership, has never been explained.
The Star's reporting included an assertion — again from anonymous government sources — that both the OPP and Bombardier had conducted security and mechanical inspections of the aircraft before purchase. Watkins's response to this claim is pointed: he does not believe for a moment that the OPP have that level of expertise, and he describes the statement as "hilarious" to print at face value.
The basis for his scepticism is straightforward. This aircraft has been operated internationally for ten years — registered in Canada, then Mexico, then the United States, then Brazil, then the United States again, then Canada. During that decade, it flew across the Americas and into Europe. The OPP is a provincial police force. Their ability to investigate what an aircraft was doing while registered to a Brazilian logistics conglomerate and operating across South America and Europe is, at best, extremely limited.
Watkins is careful not to state explicitly what the plane might have been used for during that period. He doesn't need to. His point is structural: a ten-year international charter history is not something any provincial police force can meaningfully vet, and a journalist with aviation sources should have said so rather than simply reprinting a government reassurance.
If the OPP's security review was as superficial as Watkins suggests, then the province's assurance that the aircraft is suitable for use by the Premier — including for secure and confidential travel — is based on incomplete due diligence. The aircraft's international history, spanning at least four countries and a decade, remains largely unverified by any Canadian authority.
One of the government's key justifications, as reported, was that the existing King Air turboprop fleet had "limited range" and couldn't meet the Premier's travel needs. Watkins dismantles this in two steps.
First, the range argument is misleading unless the government is specifically referring to international travel. A King Air 350 has a range of roughly 3,200 kilometres — more than enough to reach any destination within Ontario or Canada, including northern communities near the Ring of Fire that Ford has cited as important. A Challenger 650 has a range of about 7,400 kilometres, and needs a longer paved runway to operate. For travel within Ontario, the King Air is arguably more flexible, not less, because it can land at the province's many shorter regional airstrips while a Challenger cannot.
Second — and Watkins raises this with evident relish — Ontario doesn't own any King Airs. The Province of Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General (which includes the OPP) has six registered aircraft; the Ministry of Natural Resources has 28. None are King Airs. So whose King Air were they worried about the Premier not using?
More pointedly: the OPP itself operates a Pilatus PC-24 (registration C-GOGS) — a purpose-built light business jet that costs less than half the price of a Challenger 650 and, crucially, can operate from shorter gravel runways. That is precisely why the OPP chose it. For a Premier with a professed fear of small prop aircraft who also needs to reach remote northern communities, a PC-24 would appear to meet the stated need at a fraction of the cost — or, failing that, charter arrangements are available for occasional long-distance travel.
Watkins notes that charter flights exist for exactly this use case — and that buying a $28.9M jet for occasional travel to the United States is comparable to buying a motorhome for a once-a-year vacation. You can rent one when you need it.
The government's statement compared the $28.9M cost of its Challenger 650 favourably with the $753M the federal government paid for six Bombardier Global 6500 jets. Watkins describes this comparison as "completely asinine."
The federal Global 6500 fleet is operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force and carries the Governor General, the Prime Minister, the Minister of National Defence, the Chief of Defence Staff, senior military officers, and handles medical evacuations, repatriations, and diplomatic flights — globally, on behalf of a G7 nation. Comparing that fleet to a provincial Premier's travel aircraft is not an apples-to-apples comparison by any stretch. It is the kind of figure that gets included in government communications to make a large number seem small — and a journalist with context should have said so.
Watkins flags a passage in Benzie's article describing Ford's push to expand Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport — currently restricted to propeller aircraft — to accommodate jets. His comment is three words: "Oh there it is."
Ford's government has been pursuing a takeover of Billy Bishop from the City of Toronto with the stated aim of allowing jets to land at the island airport, putting it minutes from downtown rather than the 30–45 minute drive to Pearson. The timing had already attracted attention from NoJetsTO, a citizen group opposing the expansion, who alleged that the jet purchase and the airport push were "not a coincidence."
Watkins's point is that the article itself contained the answer to the question of why Ford suddenly wanted to be able to fly a Challenger 650 into downtown Toronto — and the journalist either didn't notice or chose not to make the connection explicit.
Watkins closes the thread with a theory — and is transparent that it is one. He sets out three facts that he considers established: the Ontario Government is not and has never been the registered owner of C-FBBW; ACASS Canada Ltd. owns the only 2016 Challenger 650 that matches the government's description; and not verifying these facts, or questioning the chain of ownership, is not journalism.
From those facts, he advances a hypothesis: that the "soft launch" of Ford's bizjet was a deliberate political manoeuvre. The plan, in his reading, was to announce the purchase, absorb the public backlash, and then "save" Ontario approximately $30 million by appearing to reverse course — while actually pivoting to a sole-source charter arrangement with ACASS Canada, who already own the aircraft. Under this scenario, the Premier gets the plane. The province avoids ownership. The optics of the U-turn play better than the optics of simply announcing a government charter deal from the start.
"While this story is still evolving, my current take is that this soft launch of Doug Ford's bizjet was to shock people and distract from scandals, then allow him to 'save' Ontario ~$30M when they sole source a charter agreement of some sort with ACASS, who already own the plane."
This is a theory, not a confirmed fact. But it is grounded in three undisputed points: the government is not the registered owner, ACASS owns the matching aircraft, and the sale announcement came suspiciously fast. Watch for any subsequent charter contracts between the Ontario government and ACASS Canada Ltd.
Whether or not Watkins's theory is correct, the questions it raises are legitimate public accountability questions: Has the Ontario government entered into, or is it negotiating, any charter or management arrangement with ACASS Canada? Did the province ever hold title to C-FBBW, or was the "purchase" structured differently? And if it sells the plane, will it replace the arrangement with a charter — potentially from the same operator, for the same aircraft?
This site will continue tracking the Transport Canada registry, any Ontario government procurement disclosures, and C-FBBW flight activity for any evidence bearing on these questions.
A key theme of the April 20 thread is that the information Watkins used to identify C-FBBW — and to challenge the government's narrative — is not secret. It is public, freely available to any Canadian, and requires no specialist access or insider knowledge. Watkins's frustration is not that journalists couldn't have done this research; it's that they apparently didn't try.
The starting point is the Canadian Civil Aircraft Register, maintained by Transport Canada and searchable by anyone at no cost. Running an advanced search for Bombardier aircraft manufactured in 2016, then sorting by registration date, surfaces C-FBBW — newly registered to ACASS Canada on April 10 — at the top of the list. That single search, cross-referenced with the government's public description of the aircraft, is enough to identify a strong candidate.
To confirm it, Watkins used JetPhotos.net, which allows photo searches by aircraft serial number. Searching for MSN 6063 returns photographs of the aircraft across its entire history — including a recent shot at Montréal Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, taken shortly after the plane was registered to an American intermediary between its Brazilian and Canadian owners. The photo record confirms the aircraft's Mexican and Brazilian past, matching the "South American" detail in the government's statement.
From there, ADS-B Exchange and FlightAware provide the flight history. Watkins had already documented C-FBBW's flight from Bradley International Airport in Connecticut to Toronto Pearson on April 15 — two days before the purchase was publicly confirmed.
"This was not hard. It took me minutes to identify the plane on my phone before I had my coffee on Friday morning, still in my gitch. Not verifying or even questioning who owns the plane, or the chain of ownership of the plane, is not journalism."