The week that was in Greater Sudbury: Police concerned about hate crimes
Health care and drug addiction also caught people's attention
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Sudbury police now treating attack as hate crime; lay attempt murder charge
Greater Sudbury Police are treating an incident this week in which a man tried to throw another man in front of an oncoming vehicle as a hate crime.
Investigators also believe the suspect charged in the case may be responsible for similar crimes.
In a release, police said officers arrested the suspect at about 11:30 a.m. on Friday.
“Throughout the course of this investigation, the Greater Sudbury Police Service (had) reasonable grounds to believe that this incident was hate-motivated,” police said.
The man was arrested near Brady Street at Paris Street without incident and remains in custody.
He has been charged with attempting to commit murder. His name cannot be released as the information has not yet been sworn to through the court process., police said.
Police said that just after 3 p.m. on Aug. 22, officers received a call in relation to a serious assault that had just taken place on the eastbound sidewalk along Paris Street, between Cedar and Larch streets.
The caller advised that around 2:50 p.m., they were driving their truck northbound on Paris Street when they witnessed a man get forcefully grabbed by another man and thrown in front of the caller’s oncoming vehicle.
Fortunately, the caller was able to apply their brakes in time to stop before hitting the man.
The matter has now been assigned to detectives in the Major Crime Section of the Criminal Investigations Division specifically trained as hate crime and hate-bias/hate-motivated investigators.
’Almost died a few times’ – Sudbury grapples with opioids
Crystal Plume sits in the shade of a tree near a busy intersection in downtown Sudbury and carefully injects fentanyl into a vein on the back of her hand before licking the speck of blood left behind.
The 36-year-old who regularly panhandles in the city says her substance use disorder has worsened in recent years and she’s lost many friends to opioid overdoses.
“Before there used to be the drunks, the winos, but you don’t see those anymore,” says Plume.
“Everyone is using drugs now. It’s the fastest and easiest way to numb your pain. I was only smoking at first, now I smash it.”
Plume says she turns to opioids as a way to deal with past domestic abuse and other personal trauma. She lives with a friend who also uses opioids and says they’ve both come close to fatal overdoses.
“I’ve almost died a few times,” she says.
Local crisis workers and city authorities say that since 2019, some Northern Ontario cities, such as Sudbury and Thunder Bay, have been ground zero of a drug overdose crisis that has become increasingly difficult to address.
Data from Ontario’s coroner’s office shows that from April 2022 to March 2023, Public Health Sudbury and Districts had a fatal opioid overdose rate of approximately 50 per 100,000 population — the third highest in the province after the Thunder Bay and Algoma public health units, also in Northern Ontario.
The provincial rate for that time period was 17 per 100,000 population.
Support for Sudbury’s vulnerable ’has actually gotten worse,’ critics say
Better sanitation services and more shelter beds are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to addressing the chronically underfunded support system for the city’s vulnerable population, say those who attended a downtown rally and information session Monday at Tom Davies Square.
The rally was organized by former outreach worker Brittany Laurie to pressure the City of Greater Sudbury to respond to the homelessness crisis. Those who attended the rally spoke to the need for better coordinated services at both the local and provincial level to help the homeless population, many of whom are caught in a perpetual cycle of addiction and mental illness. From basic needs like toilet facilities to shelters, rehabilitation, transitional and affordable housing, supporters called for a unifying effort to address the problem.
Aurora Stone had many reasons to attend the rally with her toddler and baby.
“I want my daughter to have empathy for people who are down on their luck, people who are homeless, people who have been discriminated against,” said Stone who also works at Reseau ACCESS Network. “I don’t want her to be one of those people who look past them.”
Stone has experienced homelessness and is now five years in recovery. “It was a cycle I just couldn’t break,” she said about her time on the street. “Every time I went to look at an apartment, people would look at me and think I looked homeless and didn’t want to rent to me. It was hard to get out of that cycle and honestly, we’re really just one paycheque away from that. And that’s most of us now with inflation. I don’t want my daughter to take for granted what she has.”
Sudbury’s hospital needs 104 new beds, 1,007 more staff: Report
The Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE is calling for a significant cash injection from the province to address what it terms a hospital crisis in the province and in Sudbury.
According to a new report, Health Sciences North in Sudbury needs 104 more beds and 1,007 staff over the next four years. Those numbers represent an equivalent to $20.4 million in additional funding per year over the four-year term, an amount that doesn’t take inflation into account.
In North Bay, an extra 90 beds and 470 staff are needed over the next four years.
The report entitled, Ontario’s Hospital Crisis: No Capacity, No Plan, No End includes data from Statistics Canada and the Canadian Institute for Health Information and paints a disturbing picture of the current health-care situation in Ontario.
According to the report, over the next four years, to address the aging and growing population, the real need in Ontario is an extra 60,000 hospital staff and more than 8,000 beds, representing an extra 1.25 billion a year in additional funding.
From the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to rolling emergency room closures in rural communities, increased surgical wait times and hallway medicine, the current funding for Ontario’s health-care system is inadequate and unsustainable in wake of a growing and aging population, said Doug Allan, a researcher with CUPE, and Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE, who were in Sudbury on Friday to speak to the report.
Greater Sudbury’s mayor sees no need for strong mayor powers
Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced this week he is extending strong mayor powers to more than 20 new communities, including Greater Sudbury, and he announced millions in funding to address the ongoing housing crisis.
At the annual conference of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario this week, Ford announced that 21 additional mayors of sizeable cities would be bestowed with the power to act unilaterally or with a minority of council approval.
Strong mayor powers will allow mayors to propose housing-related bylaws and pass them with the support of one-third of councillors. It will also enable mayors to override council approval of some bylaws.
But Mayor Paul Lefebvre said he does not plan to use his amplified powers. He said he prefers collaboration.
“I’ve been working on collaboration and consensus-building,” he said. “We’re very fortunate to have people around the table who do believe we need to move forward with housing and creating those opportunities.”
Lefebvre said with the current iteration of council, he sees no need for augmented power.
“I think we’re all going in the same direction to build more housing,” he commented. “I prefer to use consensus and collaboration to move this forward. That’s how I run things. … I really don’t see a use for it at this time.”
Liberal leadership candidate promises to better connect Northern Ontario
As he travels the region, Yasir Naqvi is getting a first-hand taste of the tricky highways and iffy cell connections that make living and travelling here a challenge, and he wants to change that.
“The provincial government has a very important role to play in creating economic opportunities in the North so people can get good-paying jobs, or start businesses, and grow their families,” the candidate for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership said in Sudbury “For that you need to make sure there’s the connectivity — both in terms of transportation, how you get from one place to the other, but also in terms of access to good internet.”
The latter is particularly important, he said, in attracting professionals who have become accustomed to working virtually.
“They’re going to want places where there is good internet available, and I think we undermine the economic opportunities for the North by not providing that,” he said.
The Ottawa Centre MP was speaking Tuesday evening from Timmins, where he was able to get a strong cell signal, but this hadn’t been his experience during other points on the tour.
“You realize how spotty the service is and recognize that this is not optimum for a G7 country like ours,” he said. “People living in the North deserve the same quality of service as anyone else.”
Naqvi paid a visit to Sudbury this week, inviting members of the public to meet him on Sunday evening at Tandoori Tastes. The event drew about 75 people, he said, including members of the Muslim and Sikh communities.
“It was a great turnout; we took over the whole restaurant,” he said. “It was a great mix of people who came, from different communities and backgrounds. And this is what we’re trying to do — open up the party and make it more inclusive.”
Naqvi can identify with newcomers to Ontario and the challenge of starting life afresh, having arrived himself as a teen from Pakistan, speaking little English and not knowing anyone outside his own family of five.
Sudbury region looking for a new medical officer of health
The Sudbury area’s health unit is looking for a new leader.
On Thursday, the board of health for Public Health Sudbury and Districts announced that is beginning efforts to find a replacement for Dr. Penny Sutcliffe.
Sutcliffe plans to take a sabbatical and then retire after 23 years with Public Health. She is the agency’s medical officer of health and chief executive officer.
“Dr. Penny Sutcliffe will continue to lead the agency and ensure Public Health meets the needs of our communities as the board undertakes its recruitment for her successor and as she prepares for her long-planned sabbatical and future retirement,” René Lapierre, chair of the health board, said in a statement.
“Dr. Sutcliffe has been our passionate and exemplary leader for over 23 years and has been unwavering in her commitment to public health and health equity, both locally and in her many contributions to Ontario’s public health system,” said Lapierre.
Elliot Lake woman wins Sudbury hospital draw worth almost $500,000
Betty Ann Schroeder buys her tickets for Health Sciences North’s 50/50 at the start of every month and then kind of forgets about it.
But not this month: The Elliot Lake woman won the August draw and takes home $495,152, the HSN Foundation, NEO Kids Foundation, the Northern Cancer Foundation and HSN Volunteer Association announced.
“I’m just so surprised. When I got the call this morning, I didn’t even know what the jackpot was at,” Schroeder said in a release. “I just buy my tickets at the start of every draw and consider it a good way to support the hospital.”
Even after confirming her tickets, Schroeder said she was in shock.
“It just never occurred to me that I could win. I haven’t thought about what I could use the money for at all.”
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