Talk:Sudbury District

The 2005 population and land area that were added to this article are both problematic figures, because the provided source is clearly not paying attention to the fact that the city of Greater Sudbury is not part of the Sudbury District. A 2005 population estimate of 183,543 for the district would clearly only be possible if the city were part of the district, but at the same time until we can get a sourced city-specific population estimate for the same year we could only give the district's population figure as "District in 2005" minus "City in 2001", which would clearly be a distorted figure. And for the land area, it's actually not clear whether the figure they've given is inclusive of Greater Sudbury or not; if it is, it also has to be chopped down to 38,361.

The 2006 census data should be released soon; in the meantime, please don't readd the 2005 estimates until we can source them back to the original StatsCan report that the MNDM marketing pamphlet's figures were taken from. Bearcat 08:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Quality Rating

I have assigned an initial assessment of "Start", but the article needs content; perhaps something about how the District is governed, its major industries, recreation and attractions would help. PKT (talk) 13:40, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The City of Greater Sudbury is part of the Sudbury District

I don't know how to edit Wikipedia pages, so I am writing this in the hope that Bearcat or someone else will read this post and make the necessary changes.

This page says that "the city of Greater Sudbury... is not politically part of the district." This is incorrect. Division of Ontario into geographic areas, O. Reg. 180/03 <http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/regs/english/elaws_regs_030180_e.htm>—a regulation under the Territorial Division Act, 2002, S.O. 2002, c. 17, Sch. E <http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/statutes/english/elaws_statutes_02t17_e.htm>—provides as follows:

Division into geographic areas
1. Ontario is divided into the geographic areas named and described in Schedules 1 and 2.
...
Schedule 2
GEOGRAPHIC AREAS (TERRITORIAL DISTRICTS)
...
SUDBURY
Consisting of the geographic area of the Territorial District of Sudbury which consists of,

(a) the single-tier municipalities of,

Baldwin,

Chapleau,

Espanola,

French River,

Greater Sudbury,

Killarney,

Markstay-Warren,

Nairn and Hyman,

Sables-Spanish Rivers,

St.-Charles;

(b) the geographic townships and the remaining territory set out in clause (d) of paragraph 50 of the Schedule to the Territorial Division Act, as that clause read on December 31, 2002, excluding the portion of the geographic township of Janes that was annexed to the Municipality of West Nipissing by a Minister’s order dated August 15, 1997 and published in The Ontario Gazette on September 13, 1997;

(c) the islands annexed to the Municipality of Killarney as described in a Minister’s order dated May 1, 2000 and published in The Ontario Gazette on May 20, 2000;

(d) that portion of the District of Manitoulin, as it existed on December 31, 2002, that was annexed to the Municipality of Killarney by a Minister’s order dated October 31, 1998 and published in The Ontario Gazette on November 21, 1998;

(e) the geographic township of Tennyson; and

(f) that portion of the District of Parry Sound, as it existed on December 31, 2002, that was annexed to the Municipality of Killarney by a Minister’s order dated October 31, 1998 and published in The Ontario Gazette on November 21, 1998.

Greater Sudbury is indeed "one of only five cities in Ontario — the others are Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton and Kawartha Lakes — that constitute their own independent census divisions": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury,_Ontario>. This may be the source of the confusion, since Greater Sudbury is not part of the Sudbury District census division. One should not confuse census divisions with Territorial Districts: the former are drawn up by Statistics Canada; the latter are creatures of provincial statute. Unfortunately, the Ontario territorial-district pages are inconsistent in this regard. The pages for Sudbury District, Manitoulin District and Nipissing District start as follows: "X is a district in ... the Canadian province of Ontario." However, the pages for Algoma District, Cochrane District, Kenora District, Rainy River District, Thunder Bay District and Timiskaming District start as follows: "X is a district and census division in ... the Canadian province of Ontario." The page for Parry Sound District starts as follows: "X is a census division of the Canadian province of Ontario." These inconsistencies need to be straightened out. Either all of the District pages should be about Territorial Districts or all of them should be about census divisions. You can't have them all listed under the same category, but actually be about different kinds of entities: some only about a district, others about both a district and a census division, and yet another only about a census division.

Statistics Canada may modify Ontario's territorial divisions for its own purposes; e.g. by exempting a city from a Territorial District for the purposes of the census. However, Ontario's territorial divisions are defined by Ontario's statutes and regulations, not by Statistics Canada. At the bottom of the page, the district is listed under the category "Subdivisions of Ontario" in the subcategory "Districts", along with other subcategories such as "Counties", "Regional municipalities", "Single-tier municipalities" and "Separated municipalities". These categories are all creatures of provincial statute. They imply that the entities listed under those headings are districts, counties, regional municipalities, &c., as defined in Ontario law, not as defined in Statistics Canada's administrative practice. Accordingly, the page should be edited to reflect the fact that the Territorial District of Sudbury includes the City of Greater Sudbury.

The issue is more than just purely academic. For example, several of Ontario's statutes and regulations define "Northern Ontario" by listing the Territorial Districts included therein. This particular page can cause confusion regarding whether residents of Greater Sudbury live in Northern Ontario within the meaning of such regulations. It is, therefore, important that such misleading information not be disseminated on Wikipedia.

Please feel free to contact me if you wish to discuss this matter.

Milovan Prelević

T (416) 325-2476
F (416) 327-0260
E milovan.prelevic@ontario.ca

Ministry of Finance
Personal Tax Policy and Design Branch
5th Floor, Frost Building South
7 Queen's Park Crescent
Toronto ON M7A 1Y7

The problem is that what you're suggesting would, strictly speaking, create an unsourceable claim that Greater Sudbury holds some sort of sui generis status as an entity that simultaneously exists both as a county-equivalent division in its own right (a single-tier municipality now, a regional municipality prior to 2001) and as an integral part of another county-equivalent division. It would hold a status that has no precedent or other analogue anywhere in Ontario's entire history — no other county, regional municipality or district in the province has ever been simultaneously both its own jurisdictional division and part of another jurisdictional division at the same time.

And also, it simply isn't possible to have a set of 50 articles about "Ontario's jurisdictional divisions as defined under provincial statute" and a separate set of 50 articles about "Ontario's census divisions as defined by Statistics Canada" — given that the correspondence between the two sets is effectively one-to-one outside of a couple of very odd exceptions, there would be no viable or logical or even particularly possible way to separate them into two distinct sets of articles. For example, since Ontario doesn't conduct its own distinct census, Statistics Canada is the only source that exists for the population, the land area or the statistical demographics of a county, regional municipality, district or single-tier municipality in Ontario — so if we were to separate "provincial jurisdictional divisions" from "federal census divisions", the former set of articles would be more or less empty since virtually all the sourceable and encyclopedic content would get taken away by the latter set.

And finally, any discrepancy between the way different articles' introductions are written is just because they weren't all written by the same person, not because there's any intent to mislead or confuse anybody here.

I will try to find a way to resolve your concerns, but it's not going to be easy to do without being entirely confusing or making an unsupportable claim that Sudbury has ever been given some kind of unique double status. It would likely be more accurate to describe it as a territorial vs. political distinction; for example, there are a good many provincial government services — the very ones, in fact, which are generally delivered at the county/RM/district/single-tier-municipality level right across the province — for which Greater Sudbury and Sudbury District-Manitoulin are two distinct service jurisdictions. For example, the Manitoulin-Sudbury District Services Board does not include Greater Sudbury in its jurisdictional area. Bearcat (talk) 01:12, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

This is a common problem with Wikipedia, at least for Ontario. For whatever reason it is using census divisions to define Districts. Ontario Districts and Counties have a long history and are not defined by Statistics Canada. If Wikipedia wants to have articles on Census Divisions fine. But these articles leave the reader with the impression they are about Ontario Districts and Counties. On top of that, most of these articles go back and forth between describing Ontario Districts and Counties and Statistics Canada's census divisions. Not only does this create inaccuracies it is also incredibly confusing. If a clear line was drawn between the two and the articles stayed within those lines there wouldn't be any problems. Perhaps there could be two separate articles for each area as well; one for the census division and one for the actual District or County. As is, these are terrible. Sorry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.193.18.194 (talk) 14:46, 9 June 2014 (UTC)