Months before an “adult entertainment club” was swept up in a controversy at the Ontario legislature over millions in government funds, the business, based in Toronto’s exhibition grounds, told the city it had big plans.
A new nightclub in the Horticulture Building was “poised to redefine Toronto’s nightlife with the extraordinary presentation of a sophisticated burlesque experience, blending elegance and indulgence,” the company wrote to city officials in February.
The company, Hypnotic Clubs, and its president Zlatko Starkovski, were applying for a business licence as an adult entertainment club, according to documents obtained by CTV News through a freedom of information request.
“Each evening will consist of burlesque performances throughout evening [sic] with one main act per evening, featuring Pastel Supernova,” the application says.
It was referring to a Toronto burlesque entertainer who formed what one reviewer described as “Toronto’s edgiest and most sexually charged dance theatre company.”
And Starkovski has a colourful history as well. His clubs over decades in Toronto include Muzik, and have drawn big names in show biz, with photos showing him posing with Snoop Dogg, Russell Peters, and Charlie Sheen.
The clubs also drew political names, with a magazine article describing him as the favourite nightclub owner of Rob Ford, the former Toronto Mayor and late brother of Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
Hypnotic Clubs got its adult entertainment club license later in 2025, and what would become FYE Ultraclub opened in September, with a tagline “for those where discretion is a must.”
Videos on social media taken at the club show women in leather and fishnet stockings dancing on stage and dangling from a hoop high above.
In another video, a woman in a silver bikini and white feather headdress reclines in what looks like a large wine glass while another woman in a red corset looks on.
Explosive questions in Ontario’s legislature
By November, news broke that FYE Ultraclub operates on the same venue where almost $10 million over four years had gone through an Ontario government jobs fund to an agency that trained women “who may need to enter a new line of work.”
The reaction in the legislature was explosive among opposition politicians who had already spent weeks lobbing questions about the $2.5 billion Skills Development Fund (SDF), after an Auditor General’s report that found its funding decisions were not fair, transparent or accountable.
“Can’t make this up,” declared Opposition NDP Leader Marit Stiles, as the government was peppered with questions over whether government money had gone to a “strip club”. The minister responsible for the SDF, David Piccini, denied that it had.
So did Starkovski, who told CTV News at the time that “FYE Ultraclub is a new, standalone entertainment company” that is separate from his other ventures, the Grand Bizarre and Toronto Event Centre. He said he does not employ or train “strippers,” a term he said was “inaccurate and derogatory when referring to trained performance artists who specialize in burlesque and theatrical dance.”
The recipient of the SDF grants, the Social Equality and Inclusion Centre, said their partnership with the Toronto Event Centre and Grand Bizarre “has not been and is not involved in the new FYE Ultraclub pilot entertainment project in any training and financial capacity.”
Reached more recently for this story, a spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford reiterated that the funding had gone to the Social Equality and Inclusion Centre, and the new FYE Ultraclub was not a beneficiary.
“Funding received by SEI was used to train workers for the hospitality sector and is unrelated to the operations of FYE. Any claim to the contrary is false,” wrote Hannah Jensen this week.
Business license application shows multiple names
The separation between the companies is not so clear in the business licence application.
In the “Master Business Licence” in the application, the legal name of the company is “Hypnotic Clubs Inc” while the business name is “Grand Bizarre.” In the business plan, the applicant uses “Grand Bizarre” as the company name.
The “Notice of Zoning Bylaw Compliance” from the City of Toronto seems to be addressed to both companies: “Hypnotic Clubs Inc – Grand Bizarre.”
In a screenshot of the city’s licensing system for a term expiring on November 16, 2026, the name of the business is “Hypnotic Clubs” which operates as “Grand Bizarre/FYE Ultra Club.”
Neither Starkovski nor the Social Equality and Inclusion Fund responded to questions from CTV News in time for this story.
Reached over the phone, the burlesque dancer, Pastel Supernova told CTV News she did sign an agreement to perform four nights a week at FYE Ultraclub.
But she said she was never contacted to perform, and while she has been to previous clubs at that venue, she hasn’t been to FYE Ultraclub this year.
She said burlesque is very different than stripping, though municipal authorities often license them the same way.
“Burlesque is a show for an adult sensibilities. A strip club has a lot of different actions within it that are not associated with burlesque,” she said.
“It’s theatre. It can go to extremes, just like art can. But it not with a specific intention. The same intention as that of a strip club. It’s a different form of expression.”
“So it’s tricky because I know that in some places in Ontario, to do burlesque you need that type of licence. It’s a point of view that changes depending on where you are geographically,” she said.
Starkovski and another “strip club”
Court records from 2010 accessed by CTV News show that Starkovski himself was in business with what his lawsuit described as a “strip club.”
The records show a dispute between Starkovski and his brother and John Telios over shares of two numbered companies.
One numbered company operated Club Paradise, a “lounge and gentleman’s club”, and the other company acted as the landlord for the Bloor St. building the club is based in.
“The business…known as ‘Club Paradise’ is mainly a strip club,” the lawsuit on behalf of the Starkovskis says, as it describes agreements made between John Telios and Zlatko Starkovski in 2008 to swap money for shares in one of the numbered companies.
In September 2008, another member of the Telios family sued to recover $700,000 they had loaned Starkovski, the document said. Around that time, John Telios also sued Starkovski to recover a $48,000 loan, though that action was described as abandoned in the court records.
Neither Telios or Starkovski responded to questions from CTV News about the current state of their business dealings or the lawsuits. The lawsuits themselves are now in court archives.
According to records from Ontario’s business registry, the last time Zlatko Starkovski appears the paperwork for any of those numbered companies was in 2009.
John Telios is among the current directors of those two numbered companies in searches done by CTV News in December.
Questions by CTV News to the Ministry of Labour about whether the government considered Starkovski’s history in a decision to grant his company’s partner agency $10 million in funding weren’t answered.
Integrity Commissioner investigating minister overseeing Skills Development Fund
Ontario Liberal MPP Stephanie Smyth, who filed a complaint with the integrity commissioner over the Skills Development Fund, said she would like to get to the bottom of it.
“This is why I am so glad that the integrity commissioner is taking over this investigation, and will compel everybody to put on the table what they knew and when,” she said.
Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles, whose parallel complaint to the integrity commissioner refers to reporting around FYE Ultraclub directly, said if the government didn’t know, it should have known.
“I think it’s ridiculous for them to try and pretend they don’t know the nature of his business. And if they didn’t, they didn’t do their due diligence,” she said.
The critique Stiles often levels at recipients of the Skills Development Fund is that they often have some connection to the governing party that otherwise deserving applicants might not have.
Elections Ontario documents show that in 2022, Starkovski’s Grand Bizarre was paid about $32,000 for fundraising expenses by the PC Party.
The records also show someone by Starkovski’s name gave about $7,000 to the PC Party in the last six years. Ontario’s Lobbyist Registry shows Grand Bizarre was represented in 2023 by Rubicon Strategy, the firm run by Ford’s former campaign manager who represented companies that got at least $80 million in SDF grants.
The integrity commissioner confirmed last week it is launching an investigation under the Members Integrity Act to determine whether Piccini violated legislature ethics rules in administering the Skills Development Fund.
Supernova, the burlesque dancer, said the scandal is eye-catching and topical – but burlesque should not be the lightning rod that it has been.
“Everybody is getting more conservative these days, it seems to me,” she said.
