Greater Sudbury municipal election, 2006

The Greater Sudbury municipal election, 2006 was 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 chose the mayor and city councillors who will sit on Greater Sudbury City Council. As with other Ontario municipal elections, the 2006 election marked the first time that Ontario's city councils will sit for a four-year term; until 2006, municipal elections were held every three years.

Contents 1 Issues 2 Mayoral race 3 Ward boundary adjustments 4 Results 4.1 Councillors 4.2 School trustees 5 Followup 6 References 7 External links

Issues

The primary issue in the 2006 elections was 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 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 did not submit its final report to the city until January 10, 2007, several weeks 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, was presented in advance of the election.

In June 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 neighbourhood.

With the recent takeovers of two of the city's major employers, Falconbridge Ltd. by Swiss mining giant Xstrata and Inco Limited 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 were also expected to play a role in the election campaign. One of John Rodriguez's campaign planks was to lobby for the city to be given a share of the corporate taxes paid by the mining companies to the federal and provincial governments; the inability to directly tax two of the city's largest employers has been cited in the past as a barrier to the city's economic and social development.

Some candidates also cited the desire to see more women serve on council; only six of the 45 declared candidates in the 2006 election were women, and three of those six were incumbent councillors. In the final election results, four of the five women running for council seats were elected; one female ward candidate was not elected, nor was mayoral candidate Lynne Reynolds.

Mayoral race

2006 Greater Sudbury municipal election, Mayor of Greater Sudburyedit

Candidate	Total votes	% of total votes
John Rodriguez	28,419	51.89
(x)David Courtemanche	16,600	30.31
Lynne Reynolds	8,996	16.42
David Chevrier	429	0.78
Marc Crockford	159	0.29
Ed Pokonzie	92	0.17
David Popescu	76	0.14
Total valid votes	54,771	100.00

• John Rodriguez is a former federal Member of Parliament (MP) for the city's Nickel Belt electoral district.
• Lynne Reynolds was born to a working class family in the Sudbury area, where her father worked at the Copper Cliff smelter for 37 years.^[1] She became politically active in the early 1970s, when she worked to elect Liberal MP Maurice Foster in Algoma. She later served two years as a special assistant to Sudbury Liberal MP Diane Marleau.^[2] She was a coordinator of the Sudbury Region Children's Forum 2000,^[3] and later became a coordinator for Senior Friendly Sudbury.^[4] In 2004, she said that Sudbury had the potential to become the "retirement capital of Northern Ontario" in light of recent demographic shifts.^[5] She was elected as a councillor for Greater Sudbury in the 2003 municipal election, winning the second position in the sixth ward. She was appointed to the board of the Nickel District Conservation Authority in January 2004, and to the board of Downtown Sudbury the following month.^[6] In 2004, she supported an unsuccessful motion to have $650,000 held in reserve for closed recreational centres that could be reopened in the future.^[7] She also opposed retention of a bylaw restricting store hours,^[8] and called on the city to prioritize widening a section of Highway 17 to four lanes in 2005.^[9] She later endorsed Terry Kett's proposal to redesignate councillors' jobs as full-time rather than part-time.^[10] In late January 2005, she made a significant council speech criticizing Mayor David Courtemanche and top-level bureaucrats for what she described as mishandling a costly management restructuring and an election recount.^[11] Later in the year, she opposed a $27,000 salary increase for the city's top administrator. Some other councillors accused her of pandering.^[12] In November 2005, Courtemanche and Reynolds engaged in a vocal dispute over a letter she had written to the Sudbury Star, alleging that council was ill-informed and controlled by bureaucrats.^[13] She sought to lead the council's planning committee in December 2005, but lost to Ron Dupuis.^[14] Reynolds was the first candidate to officially register for the 2006 Greater Sudbury mayoral election.^[15] She later criticized Mayor Courtemanche's decision to establish a public consultation process on the effects of amalgamation of outlying areas of Greater Sudbury, chaired by Floyd Laughren. Reynolds argued that this should be the work of council, rather than an outside team.^[16] Her 2006 mayoral platform (which she delivered via a bullhorn while standing on top of a skylift) promised a complete efficiency audit of the city's books, a $10 Community Building Fund over four years, and the abolition of tipping fees.^[17] She later said that promised that would abolish the publicly-funded position of political advisor to the mayor,^[18] introduce a fair wage policy for city workers,^[1] and provide funding for outlying areas through casino revenues.^[19] Considered a serious candidate, Reynolds nonetheless finished a distant third place. She sought the Liberal Party of Canada's nomination in Nickel Belt for the 2008 federal election, but withdrew before the nomination to support rival candidate Sylvain Beaudry.^[20] Beaudry subsequently lost the nomination to Louise Portelance.^[21]
• David Chevrier operated Sudbury's first professional recording studio in the 1980s.^[22] He first ran for mayor of Greater Sudbury in the 2003 municipal election, and received 271 votes (0.50%) for a tenth-place finish out of fourteen candidates. He sought a position on the city's police services board in 2004, but was turned down.^[23] He runs a local business, selling air and water filtration systems. In his 2006 campaign, he supported a pesticide ban, favoured the creation of two or three community television channels, and sought to remove fluoride from Greater Sudbury's water system.^[24]
• Marc Crockford is a local landlord and businessman who declined to participate in mayoral debates or even release a photo of himself to the media, preferring to conduct his campaign entirely over the Internet. He said that he was reaching out to young and first-time voters, and complained when the Greater Sudbury election site removed its link to his website on the grounds that it contained "libellous" material.^[25] The Sudbury Star newspaper also declined to print a guest column that Crockford wrote about his candidacy, citing legal concerns.^[26]
• 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.^[27]

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; Gordon had endorsed Courtemanche in 2003. Rodriguez was also endorsed by 2003 mayoral candidate Paul Marleau, former city councillor Gerry McIntaggart and the Sudbury and District Labour Council.

During the campaign, Rodriguez was sometimes criticized for making potentially unrealistic promises, such as eliminating homelessness in the city, which depended on lobbying the provincial or federal governments for funding and program cooperation that those governments had not guaranteed would be made available. However, both of his main opponents were also criticized as well. Courtemanche, who did not officially declare his candidacy until just a few days before the nomination deadline, was viewed by many voters as having been a weak and ineffective leader during the previous council term, and faced allegations that he had held off his campaign launch until the last minute precisely to insulate himself from having to answer that criticism on the campaign trail. Reynolds, meanwhile, was criticized by the city's media for a vague and confrontational campaign which was critical of the existing council, but offered very few specific new ideas of her own.

A Sudbury Star opinion poll published on November 1 placed Rodriguez in the lead with 49 per cent support among decided voters, with Courtemanche trailing at 30 per cent and Reynolds at 20 per cent. The other four candidates had approximately one per cent support combined.^[28]

On the final weekend before the election, Reynolds garnered the endorsement of the Sudbury Star, while the community newspaper Northern Life endorsed Courtemanche. Both newspapers acknowledged that Rodriguez had been the most successful of the three at defining the issues and direction of the campaign, but cited misgivings about his agenda as their principal reason for choosing not to endorse him.

Ward boundary adjustments

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. Floyd Laughren's final report on municipal government services, tabled in early 2007, included a recommendation for further adjustments to make ward boundaries more closely correspond to the former municipal divisions. Laughren specifically noted the former towns of Capreol and Onaping Falls as communities that should be reconstituted as their own distinct city wards.

Results

In addition to David Courtemanche, two incumbent councillors were also defeated — notably, both represented wards outside of the pre-2001 city boundaries, and hence may have been vulnerable in part because of the amalgamation referendum controversy. The councillors whose wards were most directly affected by the Kingsway, Lily Creek and South End sewer tunnel controversies were all re-elected. Two wards, both in the old city, had no incumbent councillor running for reelection.

In Ward 12, the city's website initially named John Caruso as the winner with 1,798 votes, to challenger Joscelyne Landry-Altmann's 1,756. However, the city later reported an apparent technical error in the upload of vote totals to the website, with 460 votes mistakenly uploaded twice. (This error did not affect the actual vote tabulations, merely the reported totals on the election results webpage.) In the adjusted count, Landry-Altmann won over Caruso by a similarly narrow margin. Caruso called for a recount,^[29] which was conducted on December 1 and confirmed Landry-Altmann's victory.^[30]

Councillors

Candidate	Vote	%
Ward 1
Joe Cimino	3,016	68.6
Carlos Reyes	1001	22.8
John Mathew	382	8.7
Robert Allard (withdrawn)
Ward 2
Jacques Barbeau	1,838	35.81
Terry Kett (X)	1,730	33.70
Sandy Bass	1,153	22.46
Stephen L. Butcher	223	4.34
Travis Morgan	189	3.68
Ward 3
Claude Berthiaume (X)	3,094	65.3
Mike Dupont	1,167	24.6
Bill Hedderson	479	10.1
Ward 4
Evelyn Dutrisac	2,663	63.1
Ronald Bradley (X)	967	22.9
Marcel Rainville	318	7.5
Robert Boileau	275	6.5
Ward 5
Ron Dupuis (X)	2,051	51.5
Louise Portelance	1,931	48.5
Yvan Robert (withdrawn)
Ward 6
André Rivest (X)	2,115	44.5
Robert Kirwan	1,523	32.0
Henri Lagrandeur	1,116	23.5
Ward 7
Russ Thompson (X)	2,264	55.6
Dave Kilgour	1,811	44.4
Ward 8
Ted Callaghan (X)	2,765	70.9
Harry Will	1,135	29.1
Ward 9
Doug Craig (X)	1,958	42.3
Jim Sartor	1,497	32.3
John Cochrane	787	17.0
Marvin Julian	387	8.4
Fran Nault (withdrawn)
Ward 10
Frances Caldarelli (X)	2,301	43.5
Austin Davey	1,737	32.9
Fern Cormier	1,246	23.6
Ward 11
Janet Gasparini (X)	2,310	48.4
Mike Petryna	1,381	29.0
Rick Villeneuve	1,079	22.6
Ward 12
Joscelyne Landry-Altmann	1,586	40.1
John Caruso	1,529	38.6
Derek Young	516	13.0
Will Brunette	329	8.3

• Jacques Barbeau was president of Walden Minor Hockey before entering political life.^[31] He opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and wrote a letter supporting Canada's decision to remain out of the war.^[32] He was first elected to council in 2006, defeating incumbent Terry Kett in the city's second ward. Barbeau centred his campaign on improvements to roads and infrastructure.^[33]
• Terry Kett was a high school teacher in private life, and worked as a management consultant after his retirement.^[34] He was a councillor in Walden for six years, and was its mayor from 1991 to 1997. He also served for twelve years on Sudbury's regional government, and was a board member of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities from 1992 to 1997.^[35] In this period, he defended the interests of municipalities against the province on the issue of road maintenance.^[36] He opposed the amalgation of Sudbury with neighbouring communities, as enacted by Mike Harris's provincial government in 2000.^[37] He considered running for Mayor of Greater Sudbury in 2003, but withdrew in favour of Paul Marleau.^[38] Kett instead sought and was elected to a seat on city council, representing its first ward.^[39] He was later named as Greater Sudbury's representative to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and was re-elected to the board of that organization in 2005.^[35] In December 2003, he was appointed to the board of Greater Sudbury Utilities Inc.^[40] He opposed a money-sharing deal between the federal, provincial and municipal governments based on gas taxes during this period, arguing that the price of gasoline fluctuates too much to be a stable income source.^[41] In early 2004, he spearheaded a change in the management of Sudbury's airport.^[42] He opposed borrowing money for infrastructure spending, and recommended a cut in the 2004 police budget.^[43] He also led a successful campaign for greater community control of mental health facilities.^[44] In 2005, he argued that Sudbury councillors needed to be upgraded from part-time to full-time workers to maximize their job efficiency.^[10] Kett was narrowly defeated in 2006, losing to Jacques Barbeau in the city's restructured second ward.
• Doug Craig is retired teacher and principal, and a veteran city councillor in Sudbury. He was elected to the city and regional council in 1994, and was returned in 1997. He served as deputy mayor, and was acting regional chairman for part of 1998 following the death in office of Peter Wong.^[45] Craig supported Sudbury Mayor Jim Gordon's plan for the amalgamation of the Greater Sudbury in 1999.^[46] He also supported plans to build a multi-pad arena in downtown Sudbury,^[47] and opposed full deregulation of municipal shopping hours.^[48] He supported the construction of a Wal-Mart in Sudbury in 2000, and criticized subsequent legal delays to the project.^[49] Craig served on the executive of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in the late 1990s.^[50] In 1999, he opposed a proposal for taxpayer relief of National Hockey League teams in Canada.^[51] During this period, he was also known as council's most vocal supporter a fundraising campaign centred around long-term health services.^[52] He supported the provincial workfare program, introduced by the provincial government of Mike Harris.^[53] However, in his capacity as chairman of the regional municipality's health and social services committee, he opposed the Harris government's harsh punishments on persons convicted of welfare fraud.^[54] Just before the 2000 election, he vocally opposed a plan to ship garbage from Toronto to the Adams Mine near Kirkland Lake.^[55] He was elected to the new council of Greater Sudbury in 2000, and was chosen as deputy mayor of the amalgamated city in January 2001.^[56] Craig underwent heart surgery the following month, but recovered quickly and returned to work in March.^[57] He was appointed to the board of Science North in July 2001.^[58] In November 2002, he was honoured by the Sudbury Multicultural Folk Arts Association.^[59] Craig contemplated running for mayor in the 2003 municipal election, but declined and was returned to council instead.^[60] He was appointed to the board of Greater Sudbury Utilities Inc. in December 2003, and became its chair in March 2004.^[61] Unionized workers at the utility went on strike later in the year, over the utility's plan to cut benefits to retirees. Craig argued that the change was necessary due to increasing health costs, and said that it would not impact on current employees.^[62] At one stage in this dispute, Craig accused two councillors who criticized his approach of being "in the pocket" of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represented the striking workers. A national CUPE representative responded that Craig was thwarting democracy.^[63] The strike ended after four months, when the union and utility agreed on a new benefits formula.^[64] In June 2004, Craig was presented with the Ontario Medical Association's Community Service Award.^[65] He also served on the board of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario in this period, and supported a 2004 agreement for AMO representatives to be present in federal/provincial negotiations pertaining to municipal services.^[66] In 2005, Craig led a successful bid for Greater Sudbury to host the next Ontario Aboriginal Summer Games.^[67] He was reappointed as a deputy mayor in July 2005.^[68] In August of the same year, he called for the province to sell local Hydro One assets to the GSU, arguing that prices were too high under the existing model.^[69] He was re-elected again in 2006, in the city's restructured ninth ward, and was confirmed to another term as chair of Greater Sudbury Utilities after the election.^[70]
• James Austin Davey is a chartered accountant and financial planner, and is an assistant professor at Laurentian University. He organized the Sudbury Save The FlowThrough Committee in 1988, taking part in a successful effort to oppose federal tax changes detrimental to the mineral exploration industry.^[71] He was elected as a city and regional councillor in the old city of Sudbury in 1994, and was re-elected in 1997.^[72] He initially supported the principle of a one-tier amalgamated municipal government for Sudbury, but opposed the provincial government of Mike Harris's decision to set up an unelected transition board that would carry out the process. During one council debate, Davey referred to the unelected board as "a committee of Conservative factotums".^[73] He later described the Harris government's amalgamation policy as a "failed ideological experiment".^[74] Davey was elected to the board of the Sudbury Arts Council in September 1999.^[75] He voted against a hiring freeze on full-time city employees later in the year,^[76] and supported an unsuccessful motion to deregulate Sudbury's shopping hours.^[77] He was a vocal proponent of an initiative to create a Ramsey Lake Community Development Corporation in 2000, and called for a tract of land on its eastern shore to be targeted for development.^[78] Like most other Sudbury councillors, he opposed a proposal for Toronto to ship its garbage to the Adams Mine near Kirkland Lake.^[55] He was elected to the new council of Greater Sudbury in 2000 following amalgamation. When the new council met, he strongly opposed the transition board's recommendation to have an appointed rather than an elected board lead Greater Sudbury Utilities.^[79] He also criticized Mayor Jim Gordon's campaign to remove the utility's chair, and called for an inquiry into the matter.^[80] Davey was the only councillor to vote against a "strategic business plan" for the GSU, arguing that the plan failed to take changes in the telecommunications and technology sectors into account.^[81] In May 2001, he supported a shift to a user-pay system on water and sewer rates.^[82] He coordinated the city's bid to take over Sudbury's Union Gas distribution system later in the year,^[83] while also calling for the city to sell Greater Sudbury Utilities.^[84] Perhaps somewhat ironically, he was elected to the GSU board as Treasurer in December 2001.^[85] City council narrowly voted to end the Union Gas purchase in March 2002 after an unfavourable court ruling; Davey described this as a "huge strategic error".^[86] He opposed the Harris government's changes to the Ontario municipal act in 2001, and criticized the government for not holding any public hearings in Northern Ontario.^[87] He also argued that councillors had become overworked following amalgamation, and called for an increase from 12 to 20 councillors.^[88] Davey chaired Greater Sudbury's budget talks in 2002, and introduced a long-range financial approach to deal with new costs following amalgamation.^[89] In 2003, he served as vice-chair of the financial & program accountability committee.^[90] He criticized Union Gas's bid for a rate increase in July 2003, and called for Northern Ontario to have permanent representation on the Ontario Energy Board.^[91] Davey was defeated in the 2003 municipal election, narrowly losing the second seat in Ward Five to Frances Caldarelli. He was re-appointed to a two-year term on the Greater Sudbury Utilities Board as a community representative in February 2004, and was subsequently reconfirmed as its treasurer.^[92] He was also elected to the boards of the Sudbury Metro Centre and Downtown Sudbury in the same period.^[93] In November 2004, Davey wrote a detailed opinion piece on improvements to Sudbury's budgetary process.^[94] He was appointed as chair of the Northern Ontario Grow Bonds Corporation in February 2005.^[95] Davey sought re-election in 2006, but was defeated.
• Janet Gasparini (born 1957)^[96] worked as a nurse for twelve years, and became executive-director of the Sudbury Social Planning Council in the late 1990s.^[97] In 1999, she championed a pilot project to help low-income pregnant teens use the internet to assist their pregnancy.^[98] During the same year, she was award a peace medal by the YMCA for her role in conducting workshops on racism and stereotyping.^[99] Gasparini was also elected to the Sudbury District Roman Catholic Separate School Board in 1994, and returned in 1997. She was its chair in 1998-99, when it was restructured as the Sudbury Catholic District School Board.^[100] Near the end of her term, she wrote an editorial piece criticizing the Youth News Network, which offered free computers to schools in return for requiring that students watch ten minutes of its news programming and two minutes of commercials every school day.^[101] She also supported the retention of junior kindergarten, as the only universal accessible program available to the children of low- and middle-income parents.^[102] Gasparini first ran for the Greater Sudbury council in the 2000 municipal election, and was narrowly defeated for the second seat in Ward Six.^[103] At a speech to the Elizabeth Fry Society in 2001, she argued that homeless, mentally ill and criminal persons were being "targeted for destruction" in modern Canadian society.^[104] She was strongly critical of the provincial government of Mike Harris in 2002 following the death of Kimberly Rogers, a pregnant woman who died while under house arrest for welfare fraud. Gasparini noted that the activities leading to Rogers' arrest (collecting welfare while also receiving a student loan) were not illegal until the Harris government came to power.^[105] During this period, Gasparini was social policy director for the group Justice With Dignity.^[106] She ran for council a second time in 2003, and won a seat in Ward Six. She was appointed to lead the Sudbury and District Board of Health in January 2004, and was later appointed to lead the Mayor's and Council's Roundtable on Children.^[107] In 2005, she co-chaired a panel that brought forward a comprehensive plan to improve Greater Sudbury's health by focusing on the promotion of healthy lifestyles and poverty reduction.^[108] She called for a pan on cosmetic pesticides in June 2006.^[109] Three months later, she declared that September 18–22 would be declared Sexual Assault Prevention Week.^[110] She was re-elected to council in 2006, in the redistributed eleventh ward. Gasparini was strongly critical of mayoral candidate John Rodriguez in this election, saying that his pledge to end homelessness was unrealistic and irresponsible.^[111] Rodriguez was subsequently elected over incumbent David Courtemanche, and Gasparini later criticized Rodriguez's decision to downsize the board of Greater Sudbury Utilities.^[112] She was re-elected as chair of the Sudbury and District Board of Health in January 2007, and urged the provincial government to provide assistance to residents unable to afford proper nourishment.^[113] Although she opposed a fair wage policy for Greater Sudbury in 2005, she supported it when it was passed into law in 2007.^[114] Gasparini was chair of the Ontario Social Planning Network during the 2007 provincial election, and lobbied politicians of all parties to devote more attention to child poverty issues.^[115] She remains the executive director of the Sudbury Social Planning Council as of 2008.^[116] In 2009, she announced that she will stand as a candidate for the Liberal nomination in the federal riding of Sudbury in the 2011 federal election.^[117]
• Mike Petryna has a military background, and was an employee with the Canadian Corps of Commissioners in private life.^[118] He was elected to the old Sudbury City Council in 1997, also served on the Sudbury Regional Council, and was deputy mayor of Sudbury for a time.^[119] He was elected to the board of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) in 1997, and again in 2000.^[120] He chaired the regional council's Public Works Committee in 1999, and complained that provincial grants had declined significantly in recent years.^[121] He also chaired an ad hoc committee to open an indoor soccer centre in Sudbury, and helped convince council to fund this project prior to the introduction of a spending freeze.^[122] He oversaw the city's budget talks for 2000, and in the same period chaired a committee to permit expansion for one of two competing arenas.^[123] Petryna was elected to the new Greater Sudbury Council in 2000, winning the second of two seats in Ward Six. Over the next three years, he chaired the Sudbury Metro Centre, the Downtown Sudbury Farmers' Market, the Greater Sudbury Accessibility Advisory Committee, the cemetery advisory panel and the Transportation for the Disabled committee, and served on the boards of the Nickel District Conservation Authority, the public library, and the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation.^[124] He was also re-elected to the AMO board in 2001 and 2002,^[125] and was appointed to the board of the newly-created Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) by the provincial government of Mike Harris.^[126] In July 2002, he spoke in support of a proposed wind energy farm in Sudbury.^[127] Petryna initially sought the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario's nomination for Sudbury in 2002, but withdrew before the nomination meeting.^[128] He became Deputy Mayor of Greater Sudbury in 2003.^[129] Petryna was narrowly defeated in the 2003 municipal election, losing to Lynne Reynolds by fewer than 300 votes.^[130] He applied for a position on Greater Sudbury's Police Services Board in January 2004, but was passed over in favour of his brother, Dave Petryna.^[131] He sought a return to council in 2006, but lost to Janet Gasparini in the city's redistributed eleventh ward.^[132]
• John Caruso was born in Barrie, and moved to Sudbury for his education.^[133] He is a businessman in Greater Sudbury. Caruso served on the Sudbury Regional Development Corporation, and became the first chair of the Greater Sudbury Community Development Corporation in March 2001.^[134] In a December 2001 interview, he said that the group's key objectives included local education and training, support for local conventions, and tourist promotion in francophone areas.^[135] He later endorsed a local wind turbine farm,^[136] and called for Greater Sudbury to be declared a centre of excellence for mining technology.^[137] In early 2003, he called for the deregulation of Sudbury's shopping hours.^[138] Caruso introduced a comprehensive strategic plan in June 2003, entitled "Coming of Age in the 21st Century, an Economic Development Strategic Plan for Greater Sudbury 2015".^[139] Shortly thereafter, he announced his candidacy for Mayor of Greater Sudbury in the 2003 municipal election. He promised to make council function more effectively as a team, and called for key strategic investments in infrastructure.^[140] Caruso also said that he would negotiate with the provincial government for lower hydro rates, and would be willing to borrow from the province to conduct road repairs.^[141] He was endorsed by the Sudbury and District Labour Council.^[142] On election day, he received 4,693 votes (8.71%), finishing fifth against David Courtemanche. In late 2004, Caruso helped spearhead an image branding campaign for Greater Sudbury.^[143] His term as chair of the development corporation came to an end in June 2005, although he continued as a member of the board until 2006.^[144] In July 2005, he joined the board of the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce.^[145] He was also chair of the Northern Consulting Group, and wrote an extended piece on First Nations housing needs in 2005.^[146] He was 54 years old during the 2006 campaign, and was working as an adviser to the town of Smooth Rock Falls.^[147] Caruso was skeptical of the provincial government's plan to increase the minimum wage in 2007, arguing that other means could be sought to transfer wealth to lower-income Canadians.^[148]

School trustees

2006 Greater Sudbury election, Trustee, Rainbow District School Board, Area 1

Candidate	Total votes	% of total votes
(x)Gord Santala	accl.	.

• Gord Santala is an employment councillor.^[149] He was first elected to the Rainbow District School Board in 2000, defeating longtime trustee Muiriel MacLeod. He was returned without opposition in 2003 and 2006.

2006 Greater Sudbury election, Trustee, Sudbury Catholic District School Board, Ward Five

Candidate	Total votes	% of total votes
(x)Paula Peroni	1,570	49.73
Ted Szilva	1,038	32.88
Geraldine Meskell	549	17.39
Total valid votes	3,157	100.00

Followup

The new council was sworn in on December 6, 2006. In his inaugural speech, Rodriguez laid out an ambitious "first 100 days" agenda for change in the city, which included eliminating the transfer fee on the city's TransCab service (which offers taxi service to residents of remote areas of the city not served by Greater Sudbury Transit), and creating citizen committees to oversee a number of projects, including the implementation of Floyd Laughren's report on service improvements in the amalgamated city, reviewing the city's recreational facilities and pursuing the creation of an arts centre, revising the city's corporate taxation base, pursuing economic growth opportunities in the health care sector, and devolving some legislative authority to the existing local community action networks.

Rodriguez also ignited some controversy by making two unilateral decisions on his first day in office, reaffirming that stores in the city would not be permitted to open on Boxing Day and authorizing the Franco-Ontarian flag to be flown at Tom Davies Square.^[150] The latter decision invoked polarized opinion, with some praising the mayor for taking authoritative action and others criticizing him for isolating other cultural groups in the community.

Reynolds announced in December that she would be a candidate for the Liberal Party nomination for Nickel Belt in the next federal election, following Ray Bonin's announcement that he would retire from office at the end of the current parliamentary session. She later withdrew from the race, endorsing competitor Sylvain Beaudry; however, the nomination was ultimately won by Louise Portelance, who was also a defeated municipal council candidate in 2006.

Floyd Laughren tabled his committee report on January 10, 2007, making 34 recommendations for improvements in the city's municipal ward structure, communications, transportation, recreation and transit services. Rodriguez and most council members responded favourably to the report, indicating that they would attempt to implement as many of the recommendations as possible.

References

External links

• City of Greater Sudbury Municipal Election site

Elections in Greater Sudbury Municipal elections 1910 · 1911 · 1912 · 1913 · 1914 · 1915 · 1916 · 1917 · 1918 · 1919 · 1920 · 1921 · 1922 · 1923 · 1924 · 1925 · 1926 · 1927 · 1928 · 1929 · 1930 · 1931 · 1932 · 1933 · 1934 · 1935 · 1936 · 1937 · 1938 · 1939 · 1940 · 1941 · 1942 · 1943 · 1944 · 1945 · 1946 · 1947 · 1948 · 1949 · 1950 · 1951 · 1952 · 1953 · 1954 · 1955 · 1956 · 1958 · 1960 · 1961 · 1963 · 1965  · 1967 · 1969 · 1972 · 1974 · 1976 · 1978 · 1980 · 1982 · 1985 · 1988 · 1991 · 1994 · 1997 Post-amalgamation: 2000 · 2003 · 2006 · 2010