DNSSAB Reform

3. Unbundle DNSSAB: One Service, One Budget, One Accountable Government

North Bay will contribute $15,011,777 to DNSSAB in 2026. DNSSAB administers four fundamentally different service systems — Ontario Works, housing and homelessness, children’s services and paramedic services — using a mixture of municipal levy dollars and provincial and federal funding. North Bay ultimately approves its contribution as a requisition to another board rather than as separate municipal appropriations tied directly to each service and its results.

I want that structure unbundled.

The Algoma/Sault Ste. Marie model proves that Ontario can divide a northern DSSAB into separate service areas. I would ask the Province to use that authority more precisely in Nipissing: establish North Bay as its own social-service area for services that should be locally governed, return services that are fundamentally provincial to the Province, and preserve district-wide services only where the geography actually requires them. Ontario law already allows the Province to establish DSSAB districts and determine their responsibilities.

Ontario Works should move furthest back to the Province. Since May 2025, the Ministry is already the statutory Ontario Works delivery agent for Nipissing, with DNSSAB acting as delivery partner; employment services were separately moved to Employment Ontario in March 2025. The Province should therefore assume the remaining core cost of eligibility, financial assistance, payment administration and provincially mandated Ontario Works administration. Any local stabilization or discretionary support North Bay chooses to provide should appear openly in the City budget as its own program rather than being buried inside a district requisition.

Housing and homelessness should become directly accountable to North Bay for North Bay residents. The Province and federal government would continue sending every existing program contribution — HPP, COCHI, OPHI, COHB, Reaching Home and other applicable transfers — but to the newly designated North Bay service manager rather than through the present district structure. North Bay Council would then approve the municipal portion publicly, program by program. DNSSAB’s own budget already demonstrates that these programs have very different funding sources: some are entirely provincial or federal, while social housing, rent supplements, Northern Pines and the Low Barrier Shelter require varying municipal contributions.

Children’s services should work the same way. Federal and provincial funding for CWELCC, EarlyON, fee subsidies, special-needs resourcing and other programs should remain attached to those individual programs. North Bay’s local service manager would receive those transfers directly and Council would separately approve any municipal contribution. The City would therefore see the gross cost, provincial/federal contribution, municipal contribution, number of spaces or families served and result for each major program instead of seeing childcare folded into the same requisition as ambulances and homelessness. DNSSAB’s 2025 budget illustrates why this matters: Children’s Services had a budget of roughly $44.9 million but only about $1.33 million was municipal, because most funding came from senior governments.

Paramedic services should remain district-wide but stand alone financially. Ambulances cross municipal boundaries, deployment must remain coordinated across Nipissing, and provincial land-ambulance funding should continue. But paramedics do not need to be financially bundled with Ontario Works, childcare and housing. They should have a separate district-wide budget and separate requisition, showing the provincial contribution, municipal contribution, staffing, response volumes, deployment hours and service standards.

Corporate administration should no longer exist as a generalized layer detached from the programs it supports. Every administrative dollar, employee and contract should be allocated back to Ontario Works, housing, childcare, paramedics or another named program, so the public can see the true administrative cost of delivering each service.

The result would replace one $15-million DNSSAB line in North Bay’s budget with an accountable service ledger: