Speaker Bio

Natalie has been the executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition for over 21 years. She has built the Health Coalition into the largest and broadest public interest group on health care in the province, representing more than half-a-million Ontarians in its network of more than 400 member organizations and more than 50 local chapters. She is a past Board Member of the Canadian Health Coalition where she spearheaded numerous national campaigns to safeguard and improve single-tier public medicare.

During her tenure, the Ontario Health Coalition has won public interest amendments to every piece of health care legislation introduced in Ontario in the last 21-years. The coalition is an activist network and a policy advocacy organization. In her role as executive director, Natalie has conducted countless province-wide tours, organized rallies and lobby days, written and published thousands of reports about health care policy changes, conducted social media campaigns, developed public education programs. The coalition is recognized as an opinion leader and is quoted in hundreds of media stories on health care reform each month. The Ontario Health Coalition has been featured in research on building social movements in Canada and globally, and Natalie has been invited to consult with the Australian labour movement on building a health coalition network down under. She was also invited by the public physicians in the U.K. to help to create their version of the Health Coalition based on the OHC model.

Natalie’s research reports that are cited in both popular policy and academic books, journal articles and policy papers from a diverse array of organizations and individuals ranging from policy advocates to journalists and media to academics. Her work is frequently cited in both the Ontario Legislature and in Parliament during debates on health care policy and issues related to growing inequality, inequity and social justice issues. She has testified before many Standing Committee hearings of parliament at both the national and provincial levels. She authored the seminal report on private clinics in Canada: Eroding Public Medicare: Lessons and Consequences of For-Profit Clinics Across Canada (2008) and her follow up report Private Clinics and the Threat to Public Medicare in Canada (2017) was featured and formed the basis of a major investigative report on the front page of the Globe and Mail in 2017. Natalie is a contributing author in several books: Jamie Brownlee et al., Corporatizing Canada (2018), and; Pradeep Kumar and Chris Shenk, Paths to Union Renewal: Canadian Experiences (2005).

Natalie has dedicated her life to working for social justice issues. In addition to her work at the Health Coalition, she has been involved on Boards of Directors of numerous anti-poverty, disability, social justice, womens’ and arts organizations. She was formerly the executive director of the Epilepsy Association in Kingston & Southeastern Ontario. She has served as the president of the Kingston Sexual Assault Crisis Centre and the Kingston Artists’ Association, coordinated the Kingston Action Network for social justice, served on the board of Kingston Non-profit Housing Association, and sat on the Steering Committee for the Ontario Common Front for social justice. She has written numerous reports that have been widely reported in national and provincial media. These include: Falling Behind: Ontario’s Backslide into Widening Inequality, Growing Poverty and Cuts to Social Programs (2012); Backslide: Labour Force Restructuring, Austerity and Widening Inequality in Ontario (2015).