The COVID-19 pandemic, now five years since it hit Greater Sudbury, carried trickle-down impacts which continue to affect City of Greater Sudbury operations today.
Since the pandemic hit, the city’s annual expenditures on housing, health, safety and well-being roughly doubled to more than $50 million to meet rising demands.
Although senior levels of government have stepped up to a degree, “It certainly isn’t dollar for dollar,” then-interim city CAO Kevin Fowke told Sudbury.com earlier this week.
(Shari Lichterman subsequently assumed the role of CAO on Thursday, shifting Fowke back to his prior role as Corporate Services general manager.)
Of the total cost, the city is funding approximately $29,308,000, which includes such things as emergency shelters, housing assistance, community outreach and support services, client support services for those who are unhoused or underhoused, and various other social efforts.
“Partners that used to provide those services either stepped away, haven’t come back or their focus is elsewhere,” Fowke said, describing this as a notable shift during the pandemic which has altered municipal operations into the long term.
“We’ve been quite successful in advocating for the province to help us with those things, but frankly, they were services that were provided by the province in the past, they don’t anymore.”
The city’s community paramedicine program, which is funded by the province, “stood up during the pandemic and has been a really great program,” Fowke said, crediting it as something with strong legs beyond the pandemic.
The program finds paramedics travel throughout the community to check in on at-risk residents and reduce 911 calls by transporting non-urgent patients to the hospital.
In 2023, the program helped 2,326 people in 14,211 visits, with those enrolled reporting a 24-per-cent reduction in emergency department visits and a 19-per-cent drop in hospital admission within the first six months.
The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on Greater Sudbury was wide-sweeping during its first few weeks beginning in March 2020, prompting the city to close various municipal facilities, end non-essential services and temporarily lay off more than 300 seasonal and part-time staff.
Although Fowke said it was unfortunate some people had to be laid off, the city managed to stave off having to pare down permanent full-time staff, whom the city shifted to other areas — most notably Pioneer Manor, where approximately 60 people did screening, masking and took care of personal-protective equipment.
Some staff took to cleaning out public transit buses on a regular basis in what was believed at the time to stem the spread of COVID-19, while some staff undertook curbside delivery efforts.
Although municipal operations have long-since reopened, certain pandemic-era practices have remained in place.
City council members, for example, are still able to attend meetings virtually whenever they choose, and certain qualifying employees are able to work from home.
Approximately 350 municipal staff currently maintain varying work-from-home arrangements, the majority of whom with part-time remote work plans in place.
This helps with the upcoming Cultural Hub at Tom Davies Square library/art gallery project, Fowke said. The project will see most municipal staff shift from 200 Brady St. to the city-owned tower at 199 Larch St. With some municipal staff working from home, and provincial employees vacating office space at 199 Larch St. due to their work-from-home arrangements, Fowke said enough space has freed up to make the municipal relocation project work.
Meanwhile, the lasting legacy of social disorder issues prevail, whose costs city council members have handled in various decisions made in council chambers both during annual budget deliberations and during regular meetings throughout the year.
They’ve ramped up shelter and warming centre options, temporarily funded a supervised consumption site (which closed last year due to the province declining to step up with funding), set up a 40-unit transitional housing complex on Lorraine Street and bolstered downtown security efforts with municipal law enforcement officers.
Last year, city council members voted to approve (in principle, with funding to come from municipal and senior levels of government later) a $350-million plan to bring a functional end to homelessness in Greater Sudbury by 2030.
The pandemic, Fowke said, “exacerbated and created new conditions for those folks who needed help,” which created an increased strain on social services the city continues to contend with today.
These new conditions were certainly felt by Greater Sudbury Police, Insp. Dan Despatie said, noting that landlord/tenant issues, intimate partner violence, mental health-related calls and suspected fatal overdoses all spiked during this time, and have remained higher than pre-pandemic levels since.
Although Despatie didn’t have pre- and post-pandemic numbers to add context to many of these increases, Public Health Sudbury and Districts counted 79 suspected drug toxicity deaths in Sudbury and Manitoulin districts in 2019, and between 131 and 143 every year since.
“People were dealt with the situation going through COVID which none of us have dealt with before … and all kinds of stuff manifested at that time,” Despatie said.
Police introduced their mobile crisis rapid response teams in 2021, which pair police officers with social workers and nurses to respond to mental health calls, city council and the police board both declared intimate partner violence epidemics, and police grew in number during the past few years. In 2019, there were 268 sworn officers, and Greater Sudbury Police Service currently has an authorized strength of 304 sworn officers.
“It’s about community safety and well-being, and as the world changes, the police continue to deal with and face new challenges and work with our communities,” Despatie said.
Another lasting municipal impact coming out of the pandemic was the city’s vaccine policy, which saw 51 city employees lose their jobs for refusing COVID-19 vaccinations.
The labour arbitrator between CUPE Local 4705 and the City of Greater Sudbury ultimately ruled that the vaccine requirement was “a reasonable exercise in the city’s management rights at all material times.”
The vast majority of these employees did not return, Fowke said, having found work elsewhere by the time the city’s vaccine mandate was suspended on May 1, 2023.
There was plenty of precedent for these rules, Fowke said, noting that in addition to relying on the expertise of Public Health Sudbury and Districts, there were broader vaccine mandates which set the stage.
Reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic, Fowke said the city’s much better prepared now than it was before in the event of another public health emergency.
“We collaborated very well in the pandemic of 2020, but if it happened again, I think we’re in an even better spot in terms of our communities working together,” he said, noting that various community partners have continued coming together as part of the Community Safety and Well-Being Advisory Panel, which keeps everyone at the table and connected on issues.
“We learned a lot" through the pandemic, Fowke said. “If there was a positive from the whole thing, we came out knowing more about each other’s business and demonstrating that we can collaborate and do that kind of thing when the chips are down.”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
