Let's Talk Politics

Ep 27: Underfunded and Overwhelmed - The Crisis in Ontario's Public Services

• Julia Pennella • Season 1 • Episode 27

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The chronic underfunding of Ontario's public services has reached a critical tipping point, and the latest provincial budget has only deepened concerns among experts and citizens alike. This eye-opening conversation with Kelly Baker, founder of Informed Advocacy, pulls back the curtain on what's really happening with healthcare and education funding in Ontario.

Baker doesn't mince words when analyzing the provincial budget's impact on healthcare: "They're showing a 2% growth in healthcare year over year. I think that's just not realistic." With an aging population, millions without access to family doctors, and emergency rooms at capacity, this minimal increase fails to address even basic inflationary costs. The consequences? A system where preventable issues escalate into expensive emergency care scenarios. As Baker points out, keeping people in emergency rooms or hospitals becomes "the most expensive way to deliver care" – creating a vicious cycle of higher costs and poorer outcomes.

The education sector faces similar challenges. The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) projects a staggering $58 million deficit for 2025-2026, with infrastructure literally crumbling in some schools. Drawing from her experience as a former TDSB media relations coordinator, Baker observes that many problems are cyclical – the same issues she saw years ago continue today, suggesting a pattern of short-term fixes rather than sustainable solutions. When schools flood during rainstorms and essential programs face cuts, the consequences extend far beyond budget spreadsheets to impact student learning and community well-being.

For organizations hoping to influence government priorities, Baker recommends focusing on the long-term economic impact of current underfunding. By demonstrating how proper investment now prevents ballooning costs later, advocates can frame their message in terms that resonate with budget-conscious officials. As summer approaches, this is the perfect time to reassess engagement strategies and align advocacy efforts with the government's stated economic priorities. 

Quick heads up this episode was recorded on May 27, 2025 so while the news may have changed since this conversation was recorded, the thoughts and ideas still remain relevant.

What's your experience with Ontario's public services? Have you noticed the effects of these funding decisions in your community?


Julia Pennella:

Welcome back to let's Talk Politics. Before we dive into today's episode, here's a quick roundup of the latest headlines making waves in Ontario. Premier Doug Ford's government is fast-tracking Bill 5, a controversial mining bill that would let the province override environmental laws and municipal rules. The bill has been sparking backlash since it was announced. First Nation leaders, environmental advocates and opposition parties are pushing back hard. Ndp MPP Sol Mamaqua was even removed from the Ontario Legislature after refusing to withdraw comments accusing the Premier of misleading the public and First Nations. Hundreds rallied at Queen's Park chanting our rights are not for sale. The Liberals are now trying to stall the bill with 4,000 amendments. The question is will it be enough? Joining us again is Kelly Baker, founder of Informed Advocacy.

Julia Pennella:

In this episode, we're diving headfirst into the Ontario budget what it got right, what it missed and the long-term challenges that come with chronically underfunding critical public services like healthcare and education. Plus, we explore the ever-evolving roles and responsibilities of municipalities and how they're navigating increasing demands with limited resources. Quick heads up this episode was recorded on May 27, 2025. So, while the news may have changed since this conversation was recorded, the thoughts and ideas still remain relevant. So let's talk politics with Kelly Baker. I want to lean into the Ontario budget. What were your thoughts on it? It definitely raised some eyebrows that maybe some people also weren't surprised about that. There was little to no mention of increased funding or investment in education and health care, two very critical public services. What do you make of that? Was it a missed opportunity, given the pressures in those sectors are facing?

Kelly Baker:

Yeah, and I thought it was interesting because I listened to the Minister of Finance gave a speech a few days prior to the budget being released, and I will say that the speech didn't really say anything about health care and education. And then what he did say was well, you know, we need a strong economy to keep investing in the services that people need, which is absolutely true, because if, if we have a major recession and the economy is not running correctly and people aren't working, then that's obviously going to have an overall impact on how much taxes the province is bringing in, even from employers and such, and so it does hamper the government's ability to fund those essential services again, like healthcare and education. Now, that being said, when we look at the healthcare budget, for instance, they're showing a 2% growth in healthcare year over year. I think that's just not realistic, quite frankly, because Ontario does have an aging population.

Kelly Baker:

Millions of people in Ontario don't have access to family doctors. Hospitals, from what I understand, like the ERs, are totally jammed and people are having a hard time accessing health care. And so saying we'll give you a 2% increase, which isn't even addressing inflationary costs year over year, again, it's not realistic. They're going to have to keep making those investments anyways. And so I think it's not even that it's not realistic, but that, no matter what, health care costs are going to keep going up year over year.

Kelly Baker:

And it just seems silly to me to pretend kind of that they're not or to not put adequate money into the system, because if people can't have a fine access to family doctors, even though that was part of a budget, then more people are going to end up in the hospital and that's going to increase the cost of delivering care for those people, because the most expensive care you can deliver is care in a hospital or keeping people in the emergency room.

Kelly Baker:

And like the homeless population is another good example of that, because if people don't have shelter, especially in the winter, they're probably going to end up in the emergency room and that's the most expensive way to shelter someone. So again, I think it's just they're not making decisions that reflect the needs of the sector and I just think that's silly. And in a way, education is the same, that it got no increase, sort of like flat line, in terms of what the spending is supposed to be year over year and like is that realistic? I don't think it is so. I get that they had to make difficult decisions given the current economic situation that we're in, but I just don't see the value of being unrealistic about what your spending is actually going to be, because I'm sure that the numbers that they would have gotten from those ministries would not have shown that there was no growth in spending and that, even if things stayed the same, that costs are just going to continue to grow year over year.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, well said, and you know the healthcare sector is so multifaceted. We could talk probably hours on this, but I think what's most alarming and I think, frustrating is we know that there's hallway medicine. People are dying sometimes in hallways just from understaffing, and there's also no incentive for these workers because they're getting paid very minimal compared to what they could maybe make in the States. That's one aspect of it. There's also the lack of bridging of credentials. We have a huge immigrant population who are likely they're already working as caregivers in PSW sectors, who maybe have nursing credentials back at home, but their foreign accreditations aren't brought over.

Julia Pennella:

And then we also have Ontario government. There was a report recently that the hospitals paid for-profit staffing agencies over $9 billion over a decade, so almost a billion dollars a year. I'm curious as well. You have experience in the healthcare sector with advocacy pieces and strategy, like what kind of long-term impact of chronically underfunding public services like education and healthcare have on our society and economic development, especially now, as we touched on it, we brace for these tariffs and trade tensions and this ongoing trade war with the US. Like how vulnerable does that make us when our public services are weak?

Kelly Baker:

Yeah, it's a great question and I'll say, when you go back and you look at even the provincial election that we just had in February, health care was not really an issue that Premier Ford wanted to talk about. He very much focused the entire discussion around the trade tariffs and I get again, that was a moment in time. But I will say that they saw that as an opportunity, especially when the federal government was a bit weak, to capitalize on that and Premier Ford sort of putting himself in this leadership position in terms of like I'm going to be the one to tackle the tariffs and have the tough conversations with the United States. And they never really proactively talked about health care during the election, because it's an issue that they kind of know that they're not going to win on. It's an issue that they know that they're perhaps not performing particularly well on. But if you actually looked at public polling during the provincial election as well, health care was a top issue and it wasn't really something that people were talking about.

Kelly Baker:

And, to your point, when the health care system is being underfunded, then it doesn't function in the way that it should and potentially people end up spending more time in hospital than they need to, and that, again, is the most expensive way to deliver health care, like hands down.

Kelly Baker:

And so hospitals should be dealing with really urgent issues.

Kelly Baker:

They shouldn't be dealing with things that could be dealt with in a doctor's office or community care type of way. And I know the governments are trying to make a transition there as well and they're investing a lot in the long-term care sector also, because that's a huge problem in terms of people needing to be discharged from the hospital but not having a place to go where they can get adequate care. So I know that the government's also trying to put money into that. But again, these are constantly band-aid solutions and I think it's great that they have former federal health minister Jane Philcott, who is a liberal, leading the sort of primary care file within the Ontario government. I mean, obviously she's a great person to have in there working on that and I think it's great that they're looking to address that, because I think, like, fundamentally, we need more doctors and more nurses to make the health care system function. But again, if we're going to not put the appropriate funding in place, then I don't know how we can expect all these health care reforms to actually happen.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, well said, and it is such a multifaceted issue.

Julia Pennella:

And another thing that comes to mind and we touched on it too but like the municipal aspect of delivering health care and like street care drugs in their system, whatever, who the cops don't know what to do with them and just dump them at the ER and that adds a safety layer for the nurses who a friend of mine was choked out because she's a tiny person, and there's this guy jacked up on drugs and adrenaline and all these factors, whereas if we maybe funded some more social workers and street care and all these things maybe we maybe funded some more social workers and street care and all these things maybe we can help mitigate those issues and, to your point, not have a revolving door of health care and coming in and not solving the issue.

Julia Pennella:

And I want to ask to you've worked in advocacy and government relations for over a decade. You've recently launched your own company, informed Advocacy. What advice would you give to healthcare organizations trying to engage with government, especially when it feels like their sector isn't a priority for the province right now? How can they break through and make their voices heard in?

Kelly Baker:

a meaningful way. Yeah, and I would say again, like you know, it's the province of Ontario who is directly responsible for health care, but even as we talked about, like, the federal government hasn't exactly said that health care is at the top of their agenda either. So that is going to be a challenge, like absolutely, and when both levels of government have said you know, we need to work on the economy, we need to support the private sector right now. But I think there's a we were sort of talking about this the argument to be made of like, what is the long-term impact of not putting appropriate funding into the healthcare sector? How is that actually going to drive up costs within the healthcare sector, as opposed to reducing costs, actually addressing the capacity issues that we have right now? So I think it's going to have to go back to showing the government why these investments are needed now to avoid costs ballooning in the future. Because I do think that if things are not adequately funded at the moment and, like I said, I don't think the 2% funding is going to be enough what is the long-term impact of that?

Kelly Baker:

The province is trying to do a number of things right now in primary care, in long-term care, trying to invest some more money in community care. So also leaning into that and looking at those opportunities is how can we engage the government where they're at on health care right now? Because they have said these are a few things. They have a number of health care bills actually in the legislature right now. So anyone who's working in health care should be looking at those bills and saying how do we engage with the province at this time where they are on health care and help them make the decisions to use the funding that is available to be making the right decisions in the sector to support patients, getting more doctors and nurses, especially in more rural communities where they're desperately needed, and ensuring that the healthcare system functions for those who need it, because when it doesn't function, then, to your point, people end up in the ER who probably shouldn't be there and that creates a whole host of problems.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, absolutely. And in addition to your services in government relations and policy development, you also do a lot of strategic comms at your company. I want to rewind a bit. So you were a media relations coordinator at the Toronto District School Board from 2007-2010. And then I want to fast forward to today and the TDSB is projecting a $58 million deficit for their 2025-2026 school year. The board says it's a result of chronic underfunding and inflationary pressures and they're asking the provincial government for some more support.

Julia Pennella:

So I want to ask you again, from a strategic comms point of view and your experience working there firsthand, how do you think the TDSB has been handling their communications around this issue? Because from the outside, looking in as someone who's just a public person receiving this, it hasn't exactly felt like a smooth rollout, especially with headlines about the board having to cut maybe some critical programs like closing the school pools and other facilities to balance their books. So that's one part of my question. The second part is if you were still in that media relations role today, how would you approach the crisis communication strategy around such a sensitive and high stakes issue?

Kelly Baker:

Yeah, and what I'll say is like we were kind of talking about before, about the budget, the budget not increasing the education budget at all, and so this is sort of the long-term impact of that right is that the TDSB will continue to grow deficits. They don't really have any way to raise revenue realistically, so if their costs continue to go up, then they're going to continue to grow a deficit, and then the province sort of points a finger at them and says well, you must be doing something wrong and this is why you need to be supervised, or something along those lines. So what I will say from my time and again it was a long time ago working at the TDSB, but it's kind of like what's old is new again it seems like the problems that they had when I worked there are still the problems that they have now in terms of growing deficits, school infrastructure being a mess, and actually when I was there we also went through threatening closures of the school pools, and now we see again that the government at the time, which was a liberal government, threw them some money and now they have probably run out of that money and it continues to be a problem. And so I will say as well during my time at the TDSB that perhaps there could have been a little bit more strategy in terms of how they were responding to issues.

Kelly Baker:

When I was, there also was kind of like rushing always from like one crisis to the next, and there didn't really seem to be a consistent communications plan in terms of how they were addressing issues. It was just kind of like the day-to-day, like sort of whack-a-mole approach of like okay, here's a problem, here's another problem, here's another problem. And I didn't really see a coordinated effort in terms of a strategy of how to deal with these issues more coherently. And it's not to say that they're not doing a better job of it now, but like publicly it doesn't necessarily seem like they are. And the other interesting thing is that now I have two children, one of which is in kindergarten at the TDSB, and I do get some communication from the board. We don't necessarily get a lot. So certainly I feel a lot of disconnect between being a parent and seeing what the TDSB is or isn't doing, and I certainly don't feel very engaged by the board in particular. So maybe that's something they should be looking at a little bit.

Kelly Baker:

More is, like you know, parents can be your strongest advocates and resources, and I know all parents want to see the school system to be adequately funded. And when you see these stories of schools that are literally falling apart and they have leaking roofs and there's a high school that's not far from here, humberview Collegiate that apparently floods every time it rains, which is just like complete insanity to me. But again, this is the impact of chronic underfunding of schools, and I know that there are other things that the TDSB has considered in terms of more private sector partnerships. When I was there, they actually like partnered with a condo developer to build a new school and they built like towers over the school, which some people might be uncomfortable with, but I think it's seen as sort of like a shining example of taking an old school that was on in Yonge and Eglinton. The land was probably worth millions of dollars, so they sort of came up with this creative solution to build a new school, so like maybe that's something and it's something I think that they're looking more at, because the tdsb is also a huge landowner and they own lots and lots of space. You know downtown toronto that again is worth a ton of money. So they should probably be looking at more opportunities to maximize that.

Kelly Baker:

But, that being said, the school pools issue is a really interesting one because, as I mentioned, the province had given them funding to address that previously. I don't think with the ford government that's going to happen. So I think they need to decide, like, what is the future of the pools? Can they continue to sustain them? I mean, it's really not in the core mandate of the school board to be operating pools. Like, can they be partnering with the city of toronto for the city of toronto to take over the management of the pool? Again, it's interesting because my child goes to a school that is actually connected to a community center operated by the city of toronto, which includes a pool. The tdsb has absolutely nothing to do with that. So, you know, maybe that's something that they can look at in terms of if the city wants to take over that infrastructure and then it just isn't the responsibility of the TDSB anymore.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, really good points. And I personally grew up in community centers and all the pools. I'm not in the TDSB board, I was in the York Region board and it felt like a personal attack because of the joy that pools bring the city, as kind of the theme that we're coming back to here, of recently rallied outside of Queen's Park pushing the provincial government to increase education funding. So your advocates or voices are there. They just need that. I guess, maybe handholding or getting services like yourself to try and bring that strategy to bear with them to help navigate these issues, that strategy to bear with them to help navigate these issues. And as we're just wrapping up here, I do want to ask you, like, what inspired you to start your own consulting firm? I know you've been in the GR advocacy communication space, but I'm curious why you wanted to go on your own and why the name Informed Advocacy. Is there a story behind it?

Kelly Baker:

Yeah. So I will say I had thought about for a long time, especially when I made the decision to leave government and I'd been working in the premier's office and I made the initial jump to consulting because I wanted to learn something new. At the time I hadn't worked in the private sector myself and I sort of saw that my government experience could lend itself to doing that type of consulting. And I ended up working at my former firm for 10 years, so certainly, I think, maybe even a longer period of time than I expected. But I also had children and now I think I've wanted to make the decision to focus a little bit more on my family but also take on those clients who I feel really strongly about advocating for, including the healthcare sector, including the education sector. I've also done some work in the homelessness space, which really just resonates with me and it's the type of work that I want to be doing more of. So I think for me it was a decision that giving myself more ability to have more control over the type of files that I wanted to work on, the type of clients that I wanted to work with.

Kelly Baker:

In terms of the name informed advocacy I think I batted around a few different names and then I actually came up the name initially like informed consulting, and then I was like oh, that's a little bit generic and like maybe that doesn't speak enough to the type of work that I'm actually want to be doing and I wanted to have a name that that did send a very strong message In terms of the type of work that I was doing. Now I do like the term like advocacy, because I think that's very much what the work is, you know, advocating on behalf of clients To decision makers and advocating to other stakeholder groups and that sort of thing. So eventually I kind of put the two together and I came up with informed advocacy and I the two together and I came up with informed advocacy and I'm like I like it.

Julia Pennella:

I think it sounds good, other people seem to like the name and we'll see where things go yeah, I mean words matter right and I think your intention behind them of being informed, knowing the space, but also being an advocate I think advocacy is a powerful word, so I agree, I like the title. So I want to congratulate you on launching that and, kelly, this was a really great conversation. I really appreciate you bringing your federal and provincial analysis to what's going on in the political landscape, because it seems to be ever evolving and changing as we're all keeping up with what's going on as organizations, as professionals in the space. But, yeah, kelly, any other closing thoughts you want to share with the listeners?

Kelly Baker:

Oh, I would just say again a ton going on in government and politics right now. Like, certainly now is a good time to be thinking about, if you want to engage, how to engage, who to engage with Like the summer months, I think, will be a good time for planning that. And I think if people have existing strategies, they really need to be taking another look at them. You know, given what the priorities are of the current government very focused on economy and protecting jobs so there will need to be a lot of thought in terms of how strategies should be revised, or taking another good look, especially at the federal cabinet and looking at who those decision makers are, and then potentially changing the strategy a little bit to reflect this current moment in time.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, well said, and that was Kelly Baker. She's the founder of Informed Advocacy and, as you're coming up with your summer planning, be sure to reach out for any of your GR, pr, communications and policy needs. Kelly will be there to help you. So, kelly, I want to thank you so much for coming on. Let's Talk Politics. Be sure to tune in next week for my next special guest and we'll catch you there. Thanks so much.

Kelly Baker:

Thanks, Julia.