2006 Greater Sudbury municipal election
Template:Future election The Greater Sudbury municipal election, 2006 will be held in the city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada on November 13, 2006. All municipal elections in the province of Ontario are held on the same date; see Ontario municipal elections, 2006 for elections in other cities.
The election will choose the mayor and city councillors who will sit on Greater Sudbury City Council. As with other Ontario municipal elections, the 2006 election will mark the first time that Ontario's city councils will sit for a four-year term; until 2006, municipal elections were held every three years.
Issues
The primary issue in the 2006 elections is expected to be the municipal amalgamation of 2001. Prior to January 1, 2001, the current city of Greater Sudbury consisted of seven separate municipalities, together comprising the Regional Municipality of Sudbury. On that date, the provincial government of Ontario dissolved all seven former municipalities and the regional government, merging them all into the current city government. However, many residents of the outlying communities in the city have alleged that their municipal services have deteriorated significantly since the amalgamation.
In early 2006, residents of the former town of Rayside-Balfour began to campaign for the deamalgamation of the city and the return of the former municipal government structure. The city government has refused to endorse the petition — even if the petition were endorsed by the city, however, any deamalgamation referendum would still require the consent of the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, which has set a number of very strict conditions for permitting a referendum.
Mayor David Courtemanche has announced an advisory committee, chaired by former Member of Provincial Parliament Floyd Laughren, to consult with communities in the city and seek solutions to their concerns about municipal government services. This committee will not submit its final report to the city until some time after the 2006 municipal election, although a summary of the issues raised during the initial consultations, as well as an outline of the final report process, will be presented in advance of the election.
In June of 2006, the city was also criticized for its handling of a leave of absence taken by fire chief Don Donaldson, as well as a study which found that Sudbury had the highest-paid mayor and councillors of any Ontario city in its population range. Council has been also criticized for several development-related decisions, including a $13 million expansion of the Kingsway between Minnow Lake and Coniston, a controversial decision to permit construction of a new school and a medical office building on the Lily Creek marshlands near Science North, and a project to increase sewer capacity in the South End (Ward 9) area by construction of a rock tunnel. Following a $4 million budget shortfall in the latter project, the city imposed special development fees on new residential and commercial construction in the community.
With the recent takeover of Falconbridge Ltd., one of the city's major employers, by Swiss mining giant Xstrata, the pending takeover offer of Inco Limited, another major employer, by the Brazilian company CVRD and the recent financial crisis faced by the city's Northern Breweries, the issues of jobs and economic development in the city are also expected to play a role in the election campaign.
Although there is some evidence of an anti-incumbent movement among some city voters, it is difficult to gauge the strength of this movement as no public opinion polling has been released to date by the city's media. Some candidates have also cited the desire to see more women serve on council; to date, only six of the 45 declared candidates in the 2006 election are women, and three of those six are incumbent councillors.
Mayoral race
| Candidate | Vote | % |
|---|---|---|
| David Chevrier | ||
| David Courtemanche (x) | ||
| Marc Crockford | ||
| Ed Pokonzie | ||
| J. David Popescu | ||
| Lynne Reynolds | ||
| John Rodriguez |
Lynne Reynolds is currently a councillor for Ward 6. John Rodriguez is a former federal Member of Parliament for the city's Nickel Belt electoral district. Popescu and Pokonzie are perennial candidates in the area, who have rarely garnered more than 100 votes in any election; during the 2003 election, Popescu was found guilty of assaulting his mother and sentenced to three years of probation. [1]
Crockford is a local landlord and businessman who has declined to participate in mayoral debates or even to release a photo of himself to the media, preferring to conduct his campaign entirely over the Internet. [2] Chevrier runs a local business, selling air and water filtration systems. [3]
Earlier in 2006, local media speculated that former mayor Jim Gordon might run for mayor again as well, but in September he ended that speculation by endorsing Rodriguez. Rodriguez has also been endorsed by 2003 mayoral candidate Paul Marleau, former city councillor Gerry McIntaggart and the Sudbury and District Labour Council.
City council
When the current city of Greater Sudbury was created in 2001, the city was divided into six wards, each of which was represented by two councillors. In 2005, the city council adopted a new ward structure, in which the city would now be divided into twelve wards with a single councillor per ward.
This redistribution of wards was itself controversial, because it divided some communities within the city that were formerly closely associated with each other — for example, the former town of Rayside-Balfour was split, with Azilda falling in Ward 4 and Chelmsford falling in Ward 3. The original ward structure had also been designed to balance political power, crossing the pre-2001 municipal boundaries to help prevent the urban core of the city from ignoring the needs of the more rural communities. Under the new ward structure, however, five of the twelve wards are purely urban, and it has been alleged that this may weaken the city's ability to respond to the needs of residents outside of the central city.
| Candidate | Vote | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ward 1 | |||
| Robert Allard (withdrawn) | |||
| Joe Cimino | |||
| John Mathew | |||
| Carlos Reyes | |||
| Ward 2 | |||
| Jacques Barbeau | |||
| Sandy Bass | |||
| Stephen Butcher | |||
| Terry Kett (X) | |||
| Travis Morgan | |||
| Ward 3 | |||
| Claude Berthiaume (X) | |||
| Mike Dupont | |||
| Bill Hedderson | |||
| Ward 4 | |||
| Robert Boileau | |||
| Ronald Bradley (X) | |||
| Evelyn Dutrisac | |||
| Marcel Rainville | |||
| Ward 5 | |||
| Ron Dupuis (X) | |||
| Louise Portelance | |||
| Yvan Robert (withdrawn) | |||
| Ward 6 | |||
| Robert Kirwan | |||
| Henri Lagrandeur | |||
| André Rivest (X) | |||
| Ward 7 | |||
| Dave Kilgour | |||
| Russ Thompson (X) | |||
| Ward 8 | |||
| Ted Callaghan (X) | |||
| Harry Will | |||
| Ward 9 | |||
| John Cochrane | |||
| Doug Craig (X) | |||
| Marvin Julian | |||
| Fran Nault (withdrawn) | |||
| Jim Sartor | |||
| Ward 10 | |||
| Frances Caldarelli (X) | |||
| Fern Cormier | |||
| Austin Davey | |||
| Ward 11 | |||
| Janet Gasparini (X) | |||
| Mike Petryna | |||
| Rick Villeneuve | |||
| Ward 12 | |||
| Will Brunette | |||
| John Caruso | |||
| Joscelyne Landry-Altmann | |||
| Derek Young | |||