The huge Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference (commonly known as PDAC) happening in Toronto from March 1-5, will attract scores of local mining supply firms, mining education agencies and actual mining companies heading for annual convention in Toronto

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The City of Greater Sudbury, the largest actual mining municipality in Ontario, will be well-represented at the annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention, the massive yearly mining convention happening in Toronto next week.

Sudbury's municipal economic development office — Invest Sudbury — is touting the city's role in showcasing strong Indigenous partnerships and the promotion of mining excellence.

PDAC, which runs March 1-5, is known as the leading voice of the mining exploration and development community, an industry that employs more than 665,000 individuals, and contributed $125 billion to Canada's GDP in 2024, said a PDAC news release..

The annual convention, which has been held in Toronto since 1932, is the main event in bringing together prospectors, mining explorationists, mining entrepreneurs, mining suppliers, investors, mining companies and, mining educators and innovators, from around the world.

Sudbury, as a leading mineral producer and home base for mining supply firms, has been taking part in the convention for decades, not only to attract investors but also to sell the city's unique geological profile as a place where new mineral deposits can be discovered and older legacy projects can be rejuvenated.

mayor Paul Lefebvre will take part in a special panel session on Sunday at 2 p.m. on the important role of Indigenous partnerships in mining and municipal government.

Other speakers at this event will include Atikameksheng Anishnawbek Gimaa (chief) Craig Nootchtai, Vale Base Metals head of Ontario operations Gord Gilpin, and Wahnapitae First Nation Chief Larry Roque, all from Sudbury.

Sudbury is also home base for MineConnect, the agency that represents hundreds of Ontario's mining supply and service companies that provide what mining companies need to actually extract the ore and process the minerals.

It means more than 100 Sudbury-based firms will be taking part in the Toronto event, showing off their goods, services and opportunities to a global mining audience.

"With global markets actively seeking critical resources, Greater Sudbury stands as the world’s largest integrated mining complex and a leading hub of mining innovation, with the ability to deliver,” said Mayor Lefebvre in a municipal news release.

“PDAC is an essential platform to showcase the cutting-edge technologies our companies are developing and to promote the opportunities that position our city at the forefront of the mining industry and economic growth worldwide.”

The city will play an active role in promoting and marketing Sudbury by taking part in a speakers panel, hosting the annual Sudbury Mining Cluster Reception at the iconic Fairmont Royal York, a happy hour event at the booth with Cambrian College booth, student tours, and one-on-one business meetings.

While Greater Sudbury will have its own display booth at PDAC (No. 653 in the South Hall) there will also be dozens of local businesses taking part in the Northern Ontario Mining Showcase (NOMS), which is the largest single display pavilion at the convention.

NOMS is one of the Northern Ontario success stories that began after several smaller mining supply firms discovered the cost of being an exhibitor at PDAC was straining their budgets. The idea was formed in 2017 to create a single and affordable Northern Ontario pavilion where smaller firms were invited to join.

NOMS was formed with financial support from FedNor and now hosts more than 100 Northern Ontario mining supply and service groups, nearly half of them from Sudbury alone.

Some of the Sudbury companies in the showcase include A10 Fabrication, Black Diamond Drilling Tools, Blue Heron Environmental, Cambrian College, Covergalls Inc., FedNor, Kovatera Inc., Maestro Digital Mine, MIRARCO Mining Innovation, NORCAT, OCP Construction, Rastall Mine Supply, Tracks and Wheels and the Walden Group, just to name a few.

Sudbury will also be represented across a wider area of the convention, at the tradeshow and at the Investor's Exchange. This includes such firms as Boart Longyear, Cementation, Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI), Corelift, Epiroc, Frontier Lithium Inc., IAMGOLD Corp. Côté Gold, Laurentian University, MacLean Engineering, Magna Mining, Major Drilling, Rock Tech, Stantec, Vale Canada Ltd. and Wallbridge Mining.

Len Gillis covers mining and health care for Sudbury.com.

The federal government is helping the City of Greater Sudbury address homelessness through funding to help with the addition of more shelter spaces and warming centres.

Liberal MP for Sudbury, Viviane Lapointe announced that Ottawa is providing $8,457,271 in funding to the city to help the municipality cope with the homelessness crisis. Sudbury has seen the number of unhoused people rise over the past three years.

The investment includes $1,532,256 over two years through the Unsheltered Homelessness and Encampments Initiative, which will help support activities under a Community Engagement Response Plan. The plan includes the additional warming centre services at Energy Court and the Samaritan Centre over the winter months that were added at the start of the season.

The remainder of the funds, $6,925,015 over four years, is coming through the Reaching Home: Designated Communities fund, which will assist the city in continuing to offer more shelter support.

"This funding will directly support community-based efforts to provide warmth, safety, and stability for vulnerable homeless adults and youth," said Lapointe in a statement.

"By expanding the capacity of warming centres, outreach services and shelters, we are working to improve the lives of people in our city."

A portion of the $6 million investment is going to the Elizabeth Fry Society's Safe Harbour House, a low barrier emergency shelter for adult women and gender-diverse people. The organization, which recently opened a new, larger location on Cedar Street in December, has added 16 more shelter beds to its services for a total of 26.

"The need has certainly grown over time," said Cory Roslyn, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society.

"It didn't take long when we opened Safe Harbour House at our old location in 2021 for those 10 beds to fill up. But since we've been here for just over a month, we're almost full again at 26 beds. And so that really shows us the need that exists in our community and our organization."

Safe Harbour House is also expanding its services to include homeless female youth between the ages of 16 and 18, which will help to fill a gap in youth services left behind with last year's closure of the Sudbury Action Centre for Youth (SACY).

"It is a real shame that SACY had to close and that gap was created," said Roslyn.

"So really, what we're doing is just responding to that need. And girls 16, 17, 18-years-old really are probably the most vulnerable group that we work with at Elizabeth Fry. And so it was important to us to be able to expand and offer that safety for them."

Roslyn added that despite additional shelter and transitional housing spaces being added in the city, what is really needed is more permanent, affordable housing to solve the housing and homelessness crises.

That's something the city is working on as it continues to try and reach its goal of ending homelessness by 2030, according to Greater Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre. He says the city is in a better position now than it was 18 months ago.

"I think we're in a better spot. That being said, the challenge remains and sometimes it's trying to find apartments for our most vulnerable," said Lefebvre.

"We're really trying to focus on that, certainly on the coldest nights of the year that we've been seeing. So a lot of effort has been going on in the past number of years to do this and we're going to keep going."

As homelessness continues to be a crisis in many cities right across the country, the federal government announced on Wednesday some major funding to help Greater Sudbury, Ont., deal with the growing numbers and need for social services and resources.

Sudbury MP Viviane Lapointe announced more than $8 million over the next four years to help the City of Greater Sudbury cope with homelessness.

“Means that we are giving that help to the City of Greater Sudbury to deal with this crisis,” said Lapointe.

“They can’t do it alone we need all levels of government to come together.”

City officials said the money will go directly towards increasing local services.

“We do see mental health and addiction really impacting our vulnerable population right now. So, this money this investment is really important to be able to make sure that the services are in place that we are connecting and supporting people experiencing homelessness,” said Gail Spencer, the city’s manager of housing stability and homelessness.

“The two warming centres is an increase in service levels that we have not seen before in our communities,” said Tyler Campbell, Greater Sudbury’s director of children and social services.

“That increase along with an increase in our shelter beds has been great for the community in terms of this announcement.”

The money will help Safe Harbour House Shelter, located on Cedar Street, increase its capacity from 10 to 26 beds with the goal of offering transitional housing later this year.

“We are continuing to offer overnight shelter for women and gender diverse people along with youth 16-19,” said Cory Roslyn, Elizabeth Fry Society Executive Director.

Mayor Paul Lefebvre said transitional housing is a big part of the city’s long-term plan to help homeless people get housed.

“For us it’s trying to break the cycle of homelessness because often what we would see is folks that we would provide an apartment for however they weren’t well and after a month or two the state of the apartment is really not where it’s supposed to be and often they would return to the street,” said Lefebvre.

Officials confirmed with CTV News that there are currently 300 people on the Greater Sudbury emergency housing list and 200 people living outdoors across 36 sites across the city.

Leah Miller looks at her watch as she juggles a fistful of keys, standing outside a locked door on a cold northern Ontario evening.

This is the first of five rental property open houses she is holding in the next couple of hours for property management company the Jordan Group.

"I just open up the unit, turn the lights all on, show the place around," says Miller, a travel agent who picked up showing apartments as a side hustle during the pandemic.

"So I'm the Vanna White here."

This first place is a one-bedroom house, that's more of a cabin-in-the-woods, down in the southern reaches of Greater Sudbury, near Richard Lake.

It's $1,395 a month plus utilities, which is within budget for the only person to come out to look at it on this cold night.

"Rental properties are very scarce and if they do come up, they are very expensive," said Paul Recollet, who currently lives in an off-grid home down the Killarney highway and has a long commute every morning to his job in the French River area.

"It's very hard to find affordable housing that's not in a ghetto. It's really all about convenience for me."

After a quick tour and answering a few of Recollet's questions, Miller is off in the car to the next open house and waits for 10 minutes to see if anyone shows up, before locking the door again and jetting off across the city to the next place.

"I've had nights where there's people lined up around the house to get in, but some nights I'll have nobody show up," she said.

While she doesn't go through a prospective tenant's application, Miller says she does frequently hear from people who are having a hard time finding a rental unit they can afford and sees the same people week after week.

"I hear it all the time. 'I'm sleeping in my car'... Unfortunately I could have 100 people look at the property and only one of them works," she said.

"It's about credit. Everyone's hurting. But I do see the prices starting to come down."

Sherry Jordan, the property manager behind the Jordan Group, looks after some 300 rental properties in Greater Sudbury for about 50 different landlords, most of them from the Toronto area.

She's been in the business for 25 years, but she says southern Ontario landlords have really taken an interest in Sudbury and the rest of the north since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The best part about Sudbury and many areas of the north is that the cost of real estate is low and the rents are high. And they're not going to find that in the GTA," said Jordan.

"I have never seen anything like this before. Because the market does fluctuate, but it's stayed high. So I don't think it's going down to the wonderful pricing that we used to have."

Jordan says with cases before the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board taking up to a year to be settled, landlords are more focused than ever on picking the right tenant.

"They hire me because they've chosen bad tenants and because 99 per cent of the time, my company gets it right when we choose a tenant," Jordan said.

"But I tell my clients, I don't have a crystal ball."

She says that involves "everything the Ontario government will allow us to do," including checking credit scores, bank statements, pay stubs, landlord references and "sometimes" looking prospective tenants up on Facebook and even driving by some of their past addresses.

Morning North11:07Housing crisis in northern Ontario - the rental market

For our weekly look at the housing crisis in northern Ontario, CBC producer Erik White takes us apartment hunting. He went to see five apartments in one night and spoke with potential renters and a representative from a property management company that finds tenants for landlords.

Jane Bujold is a 58-year-old retailer worker, who lives with her dog in what she describes as "the smallest apartment in Sudbury."

She's looking for another place and is willing to go up to $1,300 per month rent, saying "sometimes you have to pay that just to move."

"If you want a nice place, like in an apartment building, you're going to pay," she said.

But Bujold says her apartment hunt is being made worse by the delays she sees in hearing back from landlords after filing an application.

"Nobody gets back to for like a week or so. So that screws us right there for time to give proper notice," Bujold said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Erik White is a CBC journalist based in Sudbury. He covers a wide range of stories about northern Ontario. Send story ideas to erik.white@cbc.ca

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The Caruso Club, a cornerstone of Sudbury’s Italian community, is gearing up to host its annual Bella Donna event on Feb. 21, with a goal of raising $2 million to fund renovations aimed at preserving and promoting Italian culture and language in the city.

The club, which has long been a hub for Italian heritage, plans to modernize its facilities, including its restaurant, member lounge, and bocce courts, which have remained largely untouched since 1992. The renovations will also expand the club’s educational offerings, such as Italian language classes and cooking lessons, to meet growing community interest.

Sharon Oliver, a student in the club’s Italian language program, has been attending classes for two years in hopes of becoming fluent.

“I am Italian, but I wanted to be a real Italian woman,” Oliver said.

“I had a trip planned, and then I had a longer trip planned, and now I have another trip planned. So, I’m hoping to be fluent by the end of these courses and I’m getting there.”

The Caruso Club has offered beginner Italian classes for years, but recent demand has led to the introduction of advanced-level courses. Diana Colilli, chair of the club’s Education and Culture Committee and a former Italian culture and language professor at Laurentian University, has been instrumental in expanding the program.

“We have a big Italian community that lost one of its points of reference at Laurentian,” Colilli said.

“So, this is the place to be if you want to learn to be Italian, to cook Italian, to speak Italian. You have to come to the club.”

Stephanie Sindoni, president of the Caruso Club, emphasized the importance of updating the facility to better serve the community, when speaking with CTV News.

“Most of this main floor has not been renovated since 1992,” Sindoni said.

“Our restaurant hasn’t been touched in well over 30 years. So, the goal is to update the restaurant, the members lounge, the bocce courts, the entire main floor so that it serves dual purposes and is changing with the needs of the club.

The Bella Donna event, a key fundraiser for the renovations, will take place on Feb. 21. Tickets are available online or by calling the Caruso Club office at 705-675-1357.

Those interested in supporting the Italian learning centre can contact Diana Colilli at paulcolillifoundation@gmail.com.

The Caruso Club’s efforts reflect a broader mission to strengthen Italian heritage in Sudbury while adapting to the evolving needs of its members and the wider community.