The region’s medical officer of health is calling on the Ontario government to revisit its funding formula for public health agencies ahead of the 2027-28 fiscal year.
Dr. Thomas Piggott told Lakelands Public Health’s (LPH) board of directors recently that, since 2016, public health has only received an accumulative six per cent increase in funding, which is about 22 per cent less than inflation over that time.
“That means we have almost a quarter less capacity today than we did 10 years ago, when funding increases would just about sustain programming. We’ve been living in a context of austerity funding measures for over a decade,” Piggott said.
Its 2026-27 budget came in at just over $11.2 million, up 3.7 per cent from the previous year. The province kicked in around $7.6 million, while also supplying $9 million in one-time funding as part of the agreement to merge the previous Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge district health unit and Peterborough Public Health.
Responsible for disease prevention, managing health crises and enforcing public health and safety standards in businesses such as restaurants.
Piggott said entities like LPH play a key role in keeping communities safe.
He pointed to increases handed out to other related sectors, with hospitals routinely seeing annual budget hikes between four and six per cent, as an example of what he wants to see filtering through to public health.
“Public health is an investment and will continue to prevent some chronic disease challenges we’ll be faced with in the province over the next couple of decades… we can help with the government’s priority of reducing strain on the health care system,” Piggott said.
Board chair Ron Black said, usually, the funding formula for public health agencies is 75 per cent provincial and 25 per cent municipal. Right now, LPH is getting 68 per cent of its money from the Ontario government and 32 per cent from lowertiers.
Piggott said data suggests things are likely to become more strained before they get better. Statistics from Public Health Ontario identifies the Lakelands region, which includes Haliburton, Peterborough and Northumberland counties and Kawartha Lakes, as having the highest proportion of seniors’ population-wise in the province.
“We’re projected to see a doubling in the rate of chronic disease needs over the next 15 years… we need to have conversations about long-term sustainable increases to public health,” Piggott said.
