When it comes to community safety and well-being, Greater Sudburians appear to be deeply concerned about drug use and its trickle-down impacts.
In a recent poll, Greater Sudbury Police Service reached out to 1,377 residents and 239 business representatives to ask a series of questions, including, “In your opinion, what are important issues that impact community safety and well-being in the Greater Sudbury area?”
The top-three selections are all in the same ballpark.
Addictions/substance use tops the list at 83 per cent, followed by drug trafficking (76 per cent) and homelessness (73 per cent).
Although homelessness isn’t always tied to drug use (the majority of drug poisoning deaths are among people who are housed), open drug use has been an ongoing concern downtown and addictions treatment has been a key piece in the city’s transitional housing efforts.
In a 2024 survey, which 229 of an estimated 505 people experiencing homelessness responded to, 73 per cent of survey respondents reported a substance use issue and 71 per cent reported a mental health issue.
City Community Well-Being general manager Tyler Campbell told Sudbury.com recently that approximately 78 per cent of the homeless people on the city’s by-name list are high-acuity, which could mean they have such things as mental health and addictions concerns.
The full list of community safety and well-being concerns was, in order:
- Addictions/substance use: 83 per cent
- Drug trafficking: 76 per cent
- Homelessness: 73 per cent
- Property crimes (including crimes such as break and enters, theft from vehicles, shoplifting, mischief, property damage): 64 per cent
- Violent crime (including assault, harassment, homicide, sexual assault, threats, robbery): 58 per cent
- Mental health: 54 per cent
- Social disorder (includes loitering, panhandling): 53 per cent
- Human trafficking: 53 per cent
- Illegal firearms/guns: 49 per cent
- Impaired driving: 48 per cent
- Traffic issues (includes speeding, distracted driving): 42 per cent
- Intimate partner violence: 41 per cent
- Other: seven per cent
The police board declared a gender-based violence epidemic last year, a toxic drug crisis epidemic earlier this year, and spent November undertaking a monthlong crackdown on downtown Sudbury drug use and social disorder. A municipally sanctioned homeless encampment has been established at Energy Court.
The Festive RIDE check-stop program is underway, and by the end of October GSPS had laid 496 charges in 293 alleged impaired driving incidents so far this year.
Sudbury’s Angels of Hope Against Human Trafficking launched a region-wide anti-human trafficking awareness campaign this year, including billboards and a virtual awareness event.
As for mental health calls, approximately 85 per cent of calls police respond to are not criminal in nature (there were 64,752 calls last year, including 3,344 mental health-related calls), and police have addressed mental health concerns through such efforts as the Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team (police are paired with crisis workers), which was engaged 837 times last year.
Meanwhile, although the crime severity index dropped by 12 per cent last year, hitting the lowest point it has been since 2015, the latest GSPS poll shows that people have become more concerned about public safety.
Of respondents, 38 per cent were “very concerned” about community safety (versus 35 per cent in a 2022 survey), while 47 per cent were concerned (46 per cent in 2022)
There was a significant spike in people feeling “very poor” about how tax dollars are spent on policing in relation to the level of service provided, with 27 per cent responding as such this year and only 12-per-cent selecting very poor in 2022.
Since that time, GSPS has boosted their complement of sworn members 30 and accounted for the lion’s share of recent tax increases, including more than half of the 3.9-per-cent tax levy hike city council members approved recently for 2026.
Greater Sudburians also appear to want police on the streets, but don’t want to pay for them.
While 45 per cent of Greater Sudburians would be willing or very willing to pay more through taxes to improve community safety and well-being, 71 per cent are not at all willing to support decreasing taxes if it will result in a decrease in the provision of police services.
The survey results are part of the agenda for Wednesday’s police board meeting. The meeting will be held at the fifth floor of police headquarters (190 Brady St.) beginning at 10 a.m. The meeting can be viewed in-person (go to the front desk and ask to be let up) or livestreamed on Zoom by clicking here.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.