Despite PR invoices, city hall denies comms consultant spend

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The City of Toronto appears to have outsourced last year’s high-profile winter weather strategy to a PR consultant and marketing firm, despite employing about 100 people in its internal strategic communications division, the Toronto Sun has learned.

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That revelation follows an official denial by city hall that its communications division spends money on external consultants, which a top bureaucrat insisted is still “accurate.”

City hall spent $185,000 for Apex Public Relations to manage communications on the city’s housing strategy and winter weather, for a period from late 2025 until the early months of this year, a series of invoices show. Those invoices were provided to the Sun after a freedom-of-information request.

That means Apex was around during last year’s high-profile push by Mayor Olivia Chow to develop an “all-hands-on-deck” response to severe blizzards, although the city gave no details about the work the PR firm did. That messaging came after city hall struggled for days to clear snow after a storm in February 2025, which Chow declared “unacceptable.”

Part of Apex’s winter weather work involved reviewing ads by a marketing company called King Ursa. Invoices from King Ursa were also provided to the Sun as part of its freedom-of-information request, and four of them cover “winter ops” work.

Neither Apex nor King Ursa responded to a request for comment.

The invoices show King Ursa has handled nearly a dozen of the city’s communications files since February 2025. Three invoices, for example, covered its work on a “storytelling campaign” for the city’s 2026 budget.

In a brief statement, Russell Baker, the city’s communications director, defended the use of “added expertise” to supplement the division’s work, allowing regular staff to focus on informing the public about municipal matters.

More than 90% of work – the “vast majority” – is done in-house, Baker added.

‘Division spent zero dollars’

The city denied its communications division spends money on consultants after a related freedom-of-information request this spring. In a letter issued in May, which included a brief statement by chief communications officer Julia Oosterman, it told the Sun that said a search for such spending came up empty.

“The strategic communications division has spent zero dollars on external communications agencies, marketing and other consultants. Our budget is 91% salaries and benefits,” Oosterman said.

However, all the invoices from King Ursa are addressed to the seventh floor of the west tower of Toronto City Hall, where Oosterman’s communications division is based. Most of Apex’s invoices are simply addressed to city hall, but one from last October explicitly lists one of Oosterman’s staff at SPEC – an acronym for her division – on the shipping address.

King Ursa’s work has not been a secret, as city hall approved a $7.8-million two-year contract for the firm in November 2024. Fourteen other companies had been part of a bidding process won by King Ursa.

That deal is for “advertising agency services for strategic public and employee communications.” Oosterman has the option to extend the contract by up to three years.

However, in his statement, Baker said it was “accurate that zero dollars were spent from the communications budget.”

“At the time of the previous (freedom-of-information) request in May, budgets for marketing and advertising were held within the individual divisions and not centrally within communications,” Baker’s statement said.

Apex billed $115,419.33 for work on the city’s housing communications strategy, with invoices ranging from October 2025 to this May. That included scripting and storyboarding for videos, the development of a logo and slogan, and related work.

While city hall was asked to specify which logo and slogan were developed, most of the Sun’s questions about Apex and King Ursa went unanswered.

To market, to market

Apex billed another $69,661.11 for its work on “extreme winter weather” communications, with invoices dating from November 2025 to this March. That included the “development of an overall winter brand narrative” to guide “all communications and marketing efforts for the project.”

This spending overlapped with Chow’s rollout of an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to the city’s winter woes, as well as her call for a paid snow shovelling program modelled on a concept out of New York City.

It’s unclear who came up with the “all-hands-on-deck” line although it appears in a presentation from yet another external firm, Municipal VU Consulting. That presentation on winter maintenance was done in time for a committee meeting in early November 2025.

King Ursa’s marketing work didn’t come cheap, as it often bills as high as $150 an hour. Its three invoices for the 2026 budget’s “storytelling campaign” came to $22,125, $50,607.06 and $92,886, although the city wouldn’t confirm if it paid all three amounts or if the largest figure represents a final total.

City hall also ignored a question about whether King Ursa’s invoiced work is covered by its $7.8-million contract, and did not provide grand totals for paid work done by either that firm or Apex.

Since last February, King Ursa’s work for city hall has included an update to the SafeTO campaign, plus marketing for city hall’s anti-discrimination Toronto For All campaign, rental renovation licences, basement flooding prevention, museums, recycling, micro-mobility vehicles and safety, and a housing-related workshop series.

jholmes@postmedia.com

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