City of Greater Sudbury

The City of Greater Sudbury is a regional capital in Northeastern Ontario formed on January 1, 2001, through the amalgamation of the towns and cities comprising the former Regional Municipality of Sudbury (Sudbury, Capreol, Nickel Centre, Onaping Falls, Rayside-Balfour, Valley East and Walden) and several unincorporated townships (Fraleck, Parkin, Aylmer, Mackelcan, Rathbun, Scadding, Dryden, Cleland and Dill).

The city is a mining centre. Mining companies in Greater Sudbury employ approximately 6,000 people and support a 300-company mining supply and service sector cluster that employs a further 10,000 people. The Greater Sudbury mining complex contains nine operating mines, two mills, two smelters and a nickel refinery. The Sudbury Basin contains the world’s second largest nickel deposit and is one of only a few to produce Class 1 nickel for the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries.

Greater Sudbury is centrally located in Northeastern Ontario at the convergence of three major highways. The city is 3,186 square kilometres in area, making it the geographically largest municipality in Ontario and second largest in Canada. It is located on the Canadian Shield in the Great Lakes Basin and is composed of a rich mix of urban, suburban, rural and wilderness environments. Greater Sudbury is considered a city of lakes, containing 330 lakes and the world’s largest lake contained within a city, Lake Wanapitei. In 2018, Greater Sudbury was home to approximately 166,000 people. It is a multicultural and truly bilingual community with Canada’s third-largest French population outside of Quebec. Approximately 38 per cent of people identify as knowing both official languages. Italian, Finnish, German, Ukrainian and Polish are the top five non-official languages spoken in the city. More than six per cent of people living in the city are First Nations.

The city is a regional centre in financial and business services, tourism, health care and research, education and government for Northeastern Ontario, an area that stretches from the Quebec border west to the eastern shore of Lake Superior and north to the James and Hudson’s Bay coastlines, a market of 555,000. The city hosts three post-secondary institutions: Laurentian University, a bilingual institution offering programs at the graduate and undergraduate levels; Cambrian College providing courses in applied arts and technology with a vibrant community of more than 14,000 learners including over 4,500 students in 70 full-time programs and over 7,500 students in almost 900 part-time courses and programs across three campuses; and College Boreal, a French-language community college that opened in 1995 with six satellite campuses located across Ontario and over 60 post-secondary programs.

The Economic Development division of the City of Greater Sudbury is focused on growing the local economy by supporting local businesses, attracting investment opportunities, and promoting export opportunities. The division assists in attracting and retaining workers to support businesses with workforce development needs. Through the Regional Business Centre, the division supports small business, entrepreneurs and start-ups. The tourism and culture team promotes Sudbury and supports the local arts and culture sector, including the film industry. The Greater Sudbury Development Corporation (GSDC) is a not-for-profit agency of the city governed by an 18-member Board of Directors and oversees a $1 million Community Economic Development (C.E.D.) Fund, the distribution of Arts and Culture Grants and the Tourism Development Fund through the Tourism Development Committee.

The concentrated effort at land reclamation has been ongoing since the late seventies, with the region’s success in regreening surrounding lands and rehabilitating local lakes earning Sudbury worldwide recognition for environmental efforts. Science North is a popular interactive science centre and IMAX theatre anchoring a vibrant tourism trade. Dynamic Earth, a new attraction focussed on earth sciences, officially opened in April 2003.