What Residents of the Amalgamated Communities Are Telling City Hall
Since 2001, Greater Sudbury has been one city made up of former towns and townships — places like Chelmsford, Capreol, Val Therese, Azilda, Lively, and Coniston — that each used to run their own local government. SudburyCIA asked residents of those communities how amalgamation looks and feels to them today: how they rate their services, whether they think their community gets a fair share of investment, and whether their voice reaches City Hall.
Over an eight-day window, 266 people answered an open online survey. This page reports what they said, in their own numbers and, where useful, in their own words.
About this data. This was an open online survey, not a random or scientific poll. Anyone could respond, and people who feel strongly about an issue are more likely to take the time to answer one. What follows is an honest account of what 266 self-selected residents told us — a real and useful signal about the intensity of feeling in these communities, not a statistically representative measure of everyone in Greater Sudbury.
Contact information was optional and used only to allow follow-up. No names, phone numbers, or emails from respondents appear on this page. Quotes are trimmed for length only; spelling and wording are left as submitted.
The headline numbers
Four separate questions asked, in different ways, whether these communities feel seen, heard, and fairly treated since amalgamation. The answers were consistent.
Who responded
Responses came from all twelve wards, though not evenly. Walden (Ward 2) and the Onaping Falls and Valley East areas (Wards 3 and 6) make up the largest single blocks of respondents.
Responses by ward
| Ward | Responses | Share |
|---|
How residents rate their services today
Nearly six in ten respondents rated municipal services in their community as “Poor.” Roads and winter maintenance were named as underserved far more often than any other service.
Overall service quality
Services named as underserved
Investment, identity, and voice
Beyond service quality, the survey asked about fairness of investment, whether local identity has held up since 2001, and whether residents feel represented and heard. On every measure, the answers lean heavily in one direction.
Share giving the most negative response, by question
Fair share of infrastructure investment?
Connected to Council’s decisions?
A question residents said didn’t fit
The survey asked, in yes-or-no terms, whether amalgamation has been a net benefit or net loss for the respondent’s community. Dozens of respondents answered the question directly — and dozens more told us the yes-or-no framing didn’t capture their answer. We are reporting that honestly rather than forcing a precise number out of an imprecise question.
Where respondents did answer plainly, the overwhelming majority described amalgamation in terms of loss — lost services, lost revenue, lost local decision-making — rather than benefit. Very few respondents described a net benefit to their specific community, and most of those were concentrated in wards closer to the urban core.
What communities say they’ve lost
Four themes came up again and again across wards, in respondents’ own words.
Local emergency services and local decision-making
Many respondents in Wards 2, 3, 6, 7, and 9 described losing their own police detachment, fire equipment, or hydro utility at amalgamation, along with the ability to make decisions locally instead of at Tom Davies Square.
Casino revenue
Respondents in the Chelmsford/Rayside-Balfour area and in Azilda repeatedly raised the loss of local casino (OLG) revenue that once funded projects directly in their community, and now flows to the City instead.
Community facilities under repeated threat
Arenas, pools, ski hills, and community centres came up constantly — not always because they had already closed, but because residents feel they are perpetually on a closure list. Capreol’s ski hill, Lively’s Meatbird Lake swim area, and Onaping Falls’s arena, pool, and school were each named more than once.
Trust that tax dollars are spent where they’re raised
The downtown event centre and arena project came up unprompted in dozens of responses across nearly every ward — almost always as an example of downtown spending crowding out roads, policing, and recreation in outlying communities.
What communities say is overlooked
Asked what their community contributes to Greater Sudbury that goes undervalued, respondents most often named natural resources and mining, tourism and outdoor recreation, and their share of the tax base.
Onaping Falls and Chelmsford residents pointed repeatedly to mining employment and to attractions like the High Falls Trail System and the Onaping River. Walden and Coniston residents pointed to industrial parks, Vale’s Copper Cliff operations, and natural resources. Several respondents in Val Therese, Hanmer, and Azilda noted their communities are among the fastest-growing in Greater Sudbury and said that growth in their tax contributions has not been matched by growth in services. A smaller number of respondents named Francophone and Finnish cultural heritage specifically.
What residents want from the next term of Council
Asked for the single most important thing the City could do, respondents converged on a short list.
Fix the roads. By a wide margin, road repair and winter snow and ice control were the most common answer of all — named in some form by a majority of respondents, regardless of ward.
Spend where the taxes are raised. Many respondents asked, specifically, that spending on the downtown event centre and arena be redirected toward community-level infrastructure and services instead.
Show up and follow through. A recurring request was for ward councillors to be visible in the community outside of election season, and for decisions to be explained before they are made rather than announced afterward.
Not every response was critical. A handful of respondents rated their services well and said little needed to change, and one respondent from Ward 12 — closer to the urban core — pushed back on the framing of the survey itself, arguing downtown investment benefits the whole city and that the more urgent priority is addressing homelessness downtown. The results below reflect the full range of what was said, not only the loudest complaints.
Methodology and limitations
The Amalgamated Communities Survey was hosted online by SudburyCIA and open from July 12 to July 19, 2026. It was shared publicly rather than sent to a randomly selected sample, so it should be read as a self-selected snapshot of residents motivated enough to respond — not a scientific poll of Greater Sudbury as a whole. 266 submissions were received and are reflected in this report.
Ward is self-reported from a dropdown of the City’s twelve wards, plus “not sure which ward” and “prefer not to say.” Matching individual wards to their specific pre-2001 former municipalities is still being verified against City records and is not asserted in this report beyond the ward descriptions respondents saw in the survey itself.
The “underserved services” question allowed multiple selections, and a number of respondents wrote in their own answer instead of choosing from the list provided. Percentages reported here count exact matches to the listed options and should be read as approximate floors, not precise totals.
Quotes are presented anonymously by ward only. Contact information collected in the survey was optional, used only to allow follow-up with respondents, and is not published here.