In this two-part conversation, former Assistant Deputy Minister Barb Simmons reflects on her remarkable 30+ year journey through the Ontario Public Service. From her early internships just out of university to leading complex, multi-ministry policy initiatives, Barb traces how she built a career defined by curiosity, integrity, and a drive to expand opportunity. She discusses championing women’s economic empowerment, improving responses to gender-based violence, and supporting Indigenous women’s leadership, while navigating the ethical challenges and political shifts that shape public service work. Barb also opens up about burnout and recovery, parenting through family transitions, rediscovering creativity, and her passion for mentoring the next generation. This episode offers an intimate, inspiring look at a public servant committed to leaving lasting change.
In Part Two of our conversation with longtime Ontario public servant Barb Simmons, she takes us back to her early days of computing in the Ontario Public Service (OPS) that included reel-to-reel backups, sneakernets, and the thrill of a first PalmPilot. Barb reflects further on her early career in apprenticeship and training policy, the high-pressure moments that shaped her ethics, and the hard-won lessons she worked to pass forward in mentorship. We explore her 23-role career path, the unmatched mobility within the OPS, and the realities of navigating crises. Barb also shares proud milestones, from leading major federal–provincial integrations, to supporting Indigenous women’s leadership, and her late-career mentoring work to make the OPS more inclusive for neurodivergent staff.
Disclaimer:
Any statistics, facts or data references mentioned in this episode have not been independently verified and may not reflect the most accurate, complete, or current data. Please consult reliable sources for up-to-date and authoritative information.
00:00:01 Katie Jensen: I am Katie Jensen, and this is the Path of Public Service from applaud, celebrating people who have spent their lives working in Ontario's public sector. This is part two of my conversation with Barb Simmons. In part one, we talked about her family and the creative pursuits she picked up after retirement.
In part two, we talk about adventures in early computing at the OPS.
00:00:24 Barb Simmons: I was the computer support person for my office for a brief amount of time with a little reel to reel tape that I stuck in the machine and like backed up everything for the day. 'cause we had this little sneakernet of like eight computers.
00:00:37 Katie Jensen: How hard-won battles can be a teaching moment for those who come after you.
00:00:41 Barb Simmons: I was the strike coordinator for our little 200 person local, and Man Alive made a documentary about us for the next two strikes. OPSEU would play this video as a training video for people who'd never been on strikes, so they knew what to expect.
00:00:54 Katie Jensen: And why career mobility within the OPS can't be beat.
00:00:58 Barb Simmons: The OPS is fantastic for that. Like no other workplace anywhere. You can do so many different things.
00:01:04 Katie Jensen: We also get into some tougher stuff like navigating work in times of crisis.
00:01:09 Barb Simmons: There were moments when big ethical issues in my work where just staring me in the face,
00:01:16 Katie Jensen: But first we started by going back to the late eighties when Barb was still in school and her public service career was just getting started.
00:01:24 Barb Simmons: In university, I got a summer job as, and I think it was summer of 1987 as a library technician working for the Ministry of Skills Development, and I made $17 an hour, which in 1987 bucks was like $40 bucks an hour.
00:01:42 Katie Jensen: You were rich.
00:01:43 Barb Simmons: I was so rich. I had the best summer job ever.
00:01:45 Katie Jensen: I don't think people remember that minimum wage was like $7 then.
00:01:49 Barb Simmons: Yeah, I think it was actually, I worked at PJ's Pets store the summer before and it was $5.25.
00:01:54 Katie Jensen: Yeah.
00:01:55 Barb Simmons: And it was setting up a small policy library. This is really pre-tech. I literally had a typewriter and index cards for this little library. But it was like an office size library of policy texts and documents and reports and papers and books to support skills development and training, which was a new ministry under the Bob Rae government.
They gave me a part-time job for the last two years of university, 10 hours a week with complete flex time, which was the gift because I could drive down there at one in the morning and do three hours' worth of work and then go to school. Which of course, because I was that sort of person, I did sometimes, right?
00:02:37 Katie Jensen: No traffic.
00:02:37 Barb Simmons: No traffic. Park on the side street, you know, everything was great. And then that got me through university. My dad was a university professor, so my tuition was free. So the part-time job and that from my dad gifts, absolute privilege gifts. So again, graduated university debt-free. And then they offered me a contract, a [00:03:00] full-time junior economist for contract.
And then I competed and won a job at Skills Development and I worked there. And then very quickly I went and got a job as executive assistant to the Director of Apprenticeship within that ministry, which was hardcore field operations. So it's about 1990, 1991, around the time that I was also getting together with my wife, Alison, for the first time, although I'd known her as a friend of my brothers for years and jumped into this operations world like, this is where I wanna swim.
Right. So there were 26 field offices that administered exams for apprentices, wanting to get their certificate of qualification. There was a whole standards department that set the standards for Ontario for all the trades, reflected those in regulation, developed those together with trade practitioners, met interprovincial standards for the trades.
For all of those trades, there was an ancient computer system, [00:04:00] which I got to help overhaul. That administered all of this and kept track of everyone's certificate renewals and examination results, and like apprenticeship training hours and apprenticeship training contracts, which we administered. And then there was all the policy stuff.
Then there was all the trade schooling stuff. Then there was the access to apprenticeship initiatives. So getting women into the trades, getting youth into the trades, getting immigrants and newcomers and people with disabilities into the trades because it was still incredibly male, white dominated, all the trades.
Right? And then there was federal provincial relations. 'cause we had three funding agreements with the federal government who had a vested interest in making sure trades training was great everywhere. I loved it 'cause I got to go into all of those areas and there was always a change strategy. There was always a change agenda.
We got to implement all kinds of stuff and fix stuff and make stuff work. I worked like 14, 16 hours days because, neurodivergent, the job became the special interest.
00:05:00 Katie Jensen: Also, computers. Right? Like you were transitioning from, you know, a typewriter-based system to Windows 98.
00:05:07 Barb Simmons: Exactly. I was the computer support person for my office for a brief amount of time with a little reel-to-reel tape that I stuck in the machine and like backed up everything for the day. 'cause we had this little sneakernet of like eight computers. It was just like, it was so ancient. I got a Palm pilot. It was so cool. They were very cool. And Blackberries with the manual keyboard, man, I still miss my manual keyboard. Anyway, so that job [with Skills Development] sort of caught me on fire to being a public servant, not just as a way to earn money, but I could see it.
So I went and became the youth access coordinator. Youth into apprenticeship. And then from there sort of went into a number of other jobs. I became the manager of planning, so we were trying to plan schooling apprentices to 10% in school, 90% on the job. We subsidized the [00:06:00] 10% in school and we managed getting them that technical training in a classroom with community colleges. So we did that stuff together and then I went on strike because I was still technically an OPSEU member in 1996 when we went on strike for the first time. I was the strike coordinator for our little 200 person local, we were the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board at the time.
And Man Alive made a documentary about us called "On the Line.” They did a really sweet job for us, so that was cool. For the next two strikes, OPSEU would play this video as a training video for people who'd never been on strikes. So they knew what to expect, right? And so we made it through that, and then I just started moving around.
So I was in that stage where you can move laterally because you've got a bunch of skills. The OPS is fantastic for that. Like no other workplace anywhere. You can do so many different things, right? With the skillset that you sort of bring to the table when you have a couple years under your belt and you kind of know how government works.
00:06:59 Katie Jensen: You had mentioned that you had done like 23 jobs.
00:07:02 Barb Simmons: Yeah, it was 23, not counting the summer student job that I had at the beginning.
00:07:07 Katie Jensen: And in high school they say like, “Oh, you might have a career change. You might have a career change.”
00:07:12 Barb Simmons: I'm a huge incrementalist. That's the way things work. Right? You make your way through. I think I've been through. It's either, I think 11 changes of government, although possibly only seven different changes a party. There was a long McGinty era in there, but there's like some of the best work I did was actually under the farthest right government because they were willing to be disruptive and change.
So under the Harris Tories, we managed to overhaul the apprenticeship training system, which had basically been the same since the legislation was first passed in 1928, the act was first passed. And in 1990, the last revision of that act was 1968.
00:07:59 Katie Jensen: They really were like, if it ain't broke.
00:08:01 Barb Simmons: I know. So in 2002, we passed a different apprenticeship act, which I got to be part of, which was like great 'cause I was such an apprenticeship nerd at this point, right? I was like the subject matter expert, but it really did get screwed up in the implementation man. There were moments when like big ethical issues. In my work, were just staring me in the face. So for example, I was in cabinet office working under the Harris Tories when the Walkerton inquiry broke.
Which was basically the downloading of water safety management to municipalities. The transition was not well managed, and small municipalities like Walkerton were not well-trained or well-resourced to actually maintain water safety and pollutants. Got into the water, animal feces got into the water.
Tons of people were very, very ill. Six people died. And then there was an inquiry, as there should have been. And I was working [00:09:00] in cabinet office as a cabinet office advisor during the inquiry. And the inquiry, of course, gathered up all the documents of the decisions around that downloading of water safety management to see what did the government know?
Was it an informed decision, you know, were appropriate safeguards in place, et cetera. And of course, among the findings was that the government was advised that there were municipalities that were not ready to take it on, and that it was not advisable for those municipalities to just be handed this stuff, but the government said, do it anyway.
So working in cabinet office, we had a mantra under our then Secretary of Cabinet, Tony Dean, which was informed decision-making. So the politicians make the decisions. They're elected to make the decisions, but they must be informed decisions. So your cabinet folks, [00:10:00] your advisors, may disagree with the decision, but as long as it is an informed decision, we have done our jobs. Right?
So that's the fine ethical line you're kind of walking. So a whole bunch of us felt that we had really been betrayed by a failure of informed decision-making, right? That that information was provided, the decision was taken in defiance of that information, and then the bad consequences happened.
Right? So how could we trust that informed decision making was enough now because it didn't work? You know, I grappled with that. Like I finished that assignment. I left there, I came back to my. Job. I got a different job working with the post-secondary system on accountability agreements for colleges and universities.
That was fun. That was kind of cool. I didn't feel like anything was gonna die as a result of that, you know? That was good. But it really hit me informed decision making that the decision maker does not take under advisement. Is a problem. Right.
00:11:08 Katie Jensen: And that happened kind of early on in your career, like 10-ish years working?
00:11:12 Barb Simmons: Yeah, that was 2002. So it was about 10 years in. You're right. Yeah. And the inquiry took some time 'cause they made some really good recommendations, which were adopted. And it became a bit of a thing in sort of municipal affairs policy that we have all these municipalities and municipal service management organizations.
And district service boards, and they are not all created equal, right? You cannot treat Mississauga or Peel as if they are a Rainy River or Grey, [or] Bruce. The capacity is not there. The sophistication of the employees is not there. The sophistication of the systems is not there. So recognizing, like one of the good things that came out of Walkerton was that really became kind of codified in engaging with municipalities on issues.
Like there are top tier municipalities, you know, City [00:12:00] of Toronto, Peel, Mississauga, the big ones, big 11. I think at the moment there's medium tier, which is maybe like thinking about Sarnia, Windsor, maybe, I can't remember what exactly they are. And then there's the six or seven who are teeny, like Rainy River is the size of Prince Edward Island and has a population of 6,000 people.
So again, sort of finding something that came out of that, that was good. Right. So, you know, after a number of years, I worked on a big federal provincial implementation project to bring the labor market development agreement between Ontario and Canada to life. So Canada downloaded $600 million, 600 staff, you know, 47 offices, 25 programs to Ontario. Ontario took over training and employment responsibilities, and the federal government just administers employment insurance. And Ontario now does all the rest of helping people get jobs. So we had a project where we had to [00:13:00] design and implement an integrated system between Ontario's $200 million worth of mostly youth focused training initiatives and $600 million from the feds, which was everything else.
So we had to design the staff, the infrastructure, the programs, the services, the administration, the contracts, the legal agreements, like everything. And we had about nine months to do it in. So it was awesome and amazing and epic, and I loved that work. And then at the end of it, I became one of the first four regional directors to administer the integrated system. So I was the central region director, so that was Toronto and the GTA, it was about half the system, and that was my first permanent executive job. So I had done some acting stuff here and there, been to cabinet office, done the stuff you do when you're wandering around the OPS, having a good time. And I loved that job, loved it so much. I had 17 offices and fantastic team. The ex-federal government employees called themselves the FedExes.
00:14:00 Katie Jensen: That's cute.
00:14:01 Barb Simmons: Which was very cute. We built some great stuff there. So I did that for a while and then I moved over to Community and Social Services in 2013. So that was like 2006. I got the director job.
Then 2013 I moved over to Community and Social Services as Director for Developmental Services and Violence Against Women Policy. Then I started to be sort of bouncing around at Children, Community and Social Services.
So I did a few different sort of director-level jobs there before I landed at Women's and went after the ADM job thinking it's like the final boss job, right?
00:14:42 Katie Jensen: It is.
00:14:43 Barb Simmons: I think my last huge highlight for me was working on the missing and murdered, the Indigenous Women's Advisory Council and the Missing and Murdered in for Ontario response to the National Inquiry on murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. And I did that as part of the A DM job and the policy job that I had at Women's.
So proud of that council and it was led by, the council led it, the Indigenous women, Cora McGuire and Sandy Montour were the, the co-chairs of that extraordinary, extraordinary Indigenous women leaders. And from the beginning, we took a walking together approach. It was led by them. It was not co-chaired by the Ontario government the way many councils and committees were.
It was led by them. The minister was advised by that council, not a member of the council. And the government staff, like myself and my team were supports to the council, and we managed to pull together a response document that engaged with like 14 other ministries and pulled. All the initiatives together under five categories of walking together that aligned with the National Inquiry report.
So again, it sounds really bureaucratic, but what was meaningful about it was that the Indigenous Women's Advisory Council, every single one of them had family members who had been or were still murdered and missing. So each meeting began with ceremony, ceremony of remembrance and ceremony of significance, and asking for clarity and discernment in our deliberations.
And that was like very mind clearing to do when you're grappling with really hard work in a world in which you know that this violence against indigenous women is not a priority policy focus or a priority investment area. So it felt like a big extension, a big throughline for me from one of my very early career experiences, which was flying into Attawapiskat out of Ottawa as a very tiny, I think I was the executive assistant to the director of apprenticeship, and I was on the plane with the, at the time, mailbag that carried the welfare checks.
And I stayed in the Band Council’s house because when the welfare checks came in, there tended to be a fair bit of carousing going on in the community 'cause people had money and eight hours on a Twin Otter plane waiting for the snow to clear so you could land on the lake, 'cause we didn't have enough fuel to go back home.
Experience of the far north and the remoteness of that community where Indigenous leadership was holding people together and doing amazing things. I'm there to talk about trades training for Indigenous young people to access, which they would have to go to Ottawa or Thunder Bay. So right from the beginning I'm like, “this is a problem.This is a problem.” We're gonna need remote learning anyway from, to go from that to like The Indigenous Women's [00:18:00] Advisory Committee and to be able to work with that group of women, and to see how far the communities have gone, but also where it's like the broader Ontario world has failed them was really, really, really significant to me.
Like that, that IAC work remains like the work I am still most proud of. You can see my feathers in my, uh, lanyard that they gifted me at the end, and they gave me, they gave me these moccasins at my retirement.
00:18:32 Katie Jensen: Oh, they're beautiful.
00:18:34 Barb Simmons: Sandy Montour had them made for me, and she came and she sang the "Strong Women's Song" for me at my retirement.
And I cannot tell you, it meant more than anybody else's speeches. It was important.
00:18:45 Katie Jensen: Yeah.
00:18:45 Barb Simmons: So this is the, the Walking Together moccasins,
00:18:49 Katie Jensen: They're gorgeous. It's tempting to wear them, but they're so beautiful.
00:18:53 Barb Simmons: I know. I don't wanna wear them. I just kind of like take them out and look at them every now and then anyway.
So that was a really awesome initiative to kind of go out on the sense that that was in place. It's still in place, it's still working. You know, process is incremental, but it's at least there and it's a way to hold the government accountable for commitments they've made. So it's good.
In the last three years, I took on a lot of mentoring and mentorship roles and responsibilities, both formal and informal. And I was very proud of the fact that a year before I left, I had 11 mentees that I was actively engaging in supporting. And seven of those were neurodivergent folks who had not found OPS land to be a welcoming place. Right. And. What to do about it. 'cause we're all about self-advocacy, but that actually really just lets peers and managers off the hook.
So raised the discourse to my senior executive table. Raised it at the mental health tables. Easier to talk about mental health than to talk about people being neurodivergent. But on the spectrum of, you know, trying to make the OPS a welcoming place. Really, really, really important. Right. And it was good conversations we had about recruiting policy professionals and how what we do is recruit great policy professionals, put them in an area of expertise, get great work outta them, and then we promote them, and they fail.
Because they don't wanna be managers, because perhaps they are a neurodivergent and they are engaged fully in their own policy portfolio, and that is their strength. Perhaps they're a neurodivergent and they struggle with managerial duties like confrontation and feedback and, you know, arguing perhaps they're not neurodivergent and they want the ability to say no without then being demoted and sidelined.
So it was a very interesting series of, I sat on a table of ADMs who did, uh, set of recommendations on recruiting for the OPS. And how to pitch the OPS because we can't just say, "Come and work here. We will pay you less than you will learn in the private sector, but you will get to be doing a good thing in public service.”
Like that's a weak pitch, suckered all us in. So I am kind of proud of that work and I think incremental change. Incremental change step by step.
00:21:24 Katie Jensen: It's also hard when you care about all sorts of different problems. You can only affect change. In so many ways, it must be refreshing to kind of pivot from one to another to say like, okay, I think I've kind of reached the maximum of where I can affect change here.
I'm gonna turn my interest to this other passion of mine.
00:21:42 Barb Simmons: Exactly. And the freedom to like put stuff down for a while. Like you're always carrying something. When you work as a public servant, you are always carrying something, right? You're worried about a staff member, you're worried about your boss.
You're worried about a changing political environment. You're worried, 'cause suddenly you have a new deputy minister, oh shit, you know, you're worried about the content of your work. You're worried about whether your work will be seen or supported, or whether it's going anywhere, and how do you keep your staff engaged, right?
I worried so much about my staff. In the last sort of three or four years because I could see the disenfranchisement coming, like people who had majored in women's issues, you know, people with massive experience in other provinces or countries, even under their belts, would come and work for us. And six months in, I would have a meeting with them and say, okay, you're gonna be here 18 to 24 months, you're gonna do amazing and stellar work, and then we're gonna help you find another job where that work will be recognized and supported.
Because otherwise you're going to stay here, and a year from now you're gonna be doing the same work. And two years from now you'll be doing the same work, and it will still not have a material impact on the status of women in Ontario, you'll get burned out and you'll wanna leave.
00:23:02 Katie Jensen: Good to be real though.
00:23:05 Barb Simmons: And most people appreciated it, you know, and I was like, so we have a revolving door. let's make it a virtue, right? “Come in and work here and get awesome experience and then go on. “
00:23:16 Katie Jensen: Because then those folks can like recommend it to say, I had a really powerful year or two here. You should try it. Instead of being like, never work for this office. It sucks.
00:23:26 Barb Simmons: Yeah, exactly. And better to be realistic, right?
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