2010 Greater Sudbury municipal election

One of the dominant issues in the election campaign was the status of the city's St. Joseph's Hospital. With the completion of the new Sudbury Regional Hospital facility, the closure of the St. Joseph's site was imminent — however, despite the city's longtime interest in acquiring the property due to its adjacency to Bell Park and Lake Ramsey, the Sisters of St. Joseph sold the site in 2010 to Panoramic Properties, a condominium developer from Niagara Falls.[3] The campaign was subsequently marked by conflicting claims about how much notice the Sisters gave to city council, and how much time and money the city did or didn't have to prepare a counteroffer for the site; a community group, Save Bell Park, formed to lobby for the site's protection.[4]

Less dramatically, most voters identified road maintenance and property taxes as their other key priorities in the election.[5] For the first time since the 2000 election, notably, the municipal amalgamation of the Regional Municipality of Sudbury into the current city of Greater Sudbury, which took place in 2000, did not register as a prominent election issue.

The issue of retail store hours in the city also became an election issue when Marianne Matichuk supported allowing businesses to set their own hours without regulation from the city. If passed, this would include allowing stores in the city to open on Boxing Day for the first time; with labour unions being a prominent political force in the city, the issue of balancing the rights of retailers to set business hours against the rights of workers to holiday time at Christmas has been a persistent debate in Sudbury's municipal politics.[6]

The mayoral candidacy of David Popescu, a perennial candidate in the Sudbury area who was convicted of hate speech after advocating the execution of homosexuals in the 2008 federal election campaign, also emerged as a minor issue when he was permitted to participate in a mayoral debate sponsored by the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce.[7] Marianne Matichuk publicly criticized the Chamber of Commerce for not excluding Popescu from the debate, while candidate Derek Young called Matichuk's move a populist ploy that would both undermine the democratic process and distract from other issues in the debate, and the Chamber of Commerce reiterated that its standing policy when sponsoring political debates was to invite all registered candidates regardless of their personal views.[7] Popescu had already participated in other mayoral debates during the 2010 election campaign without incident, and none of the candidates for mayor, including Matichuk, opted to boycott the Chamber of Commerce debate over Popescu's inclusion.

On the final Friday of the election campaign, the Sudbury Star endorsed Matichuk for the mayor's chair. The following day, the paper published an article headlined "City misled public about manager's dismissal", alleging that Rodriguez and the incumbent council had deliberately lied to the public about the resignation of Alan Stephen, the former manager of the city's infrastructure and emergency services division, in 2006;[8] however, the incident described in the article was one in which the city appeared to simply have followed its legal obligation to maintain confidentiality around matters involving employee relations. The newspaper subsequently faced criticism for its portrayal of the story and for publishing the story only after it would be too late for Rodriguez or any other member of the city's staff to respond ahead of election day; in an interview on CBC Northern Ontario's Points North following the election, Sudbury Star managing editor Brian MacLeod stated that the paper had received the information in an anonymous brown envelope several days before the story went to print.[9] The Ontario Provincial Police subsequently announced that they were conducting an investigation into the leak.[10]

Although incumbent mayor John Rodriguez faced significant criticism of his first term as mayor, an Oraclepoll Research survey released on October 13, 2010, twelve days before the election, suggested that he remained in the lead with 41.6 per cent of decided voters; however, this represented a drop of 10.2 per cent from his winning margin in the 2006 election.[5] Matichuk, a political neophyte who was virtually unknown before announcing her campaign in early September, was in second place with 31.5 per cent support,[5] while councillor Ted Callaghan had 22.7 per cent support.[5] All of the other candidates combined had a total of 4.1 per cent support; notably, the poll did not register a single decided voter for either Popescu or Ed Pokonzie.[11]

A subsequent CTV Northern Ontario poll, released in the final week of the campaign, showed significant tightening of the race, with 32 per cent support for Rodriguez, 28 per cent for Matichuk and 18 per cent for Callaghan, with 21 per cent undecided.[12]

Although Rodriguez and incumbent councillor Ted Callaghan were defeated for the mayoralty, all incumbent councillors who ran for council seats were re-elected. Of the three open seats on city council, only one was won by a political newcomer; the other two were won by former mayors of two of the city's pre-amalgamation suburbs.

• City of Greater Sudbury Municipal Elections 2010