Paul Lefebvre

Paul Lefebvre is a Liberal MP from Sudbury who has fought for Northern Ontario's interests in Ottawa. Sudbury is a resource town with real economic pressures — mine closures, healthcare access issues, the cost of living in a community that depends heavily on a few major employers. He works the file, shows up for his constituents, and raises these issues in Parliament. Honestly he seems like one of the better backbench MPs. But being a good backbencher in a government that failed on the big files — housing, cost of living — still means your constituents didn't get what they needed from the federal government. That's not entirely on him but it's the reality.

Paul Lefebvre told Sudbury residents the city had taken on no new debt. Then the 2024-27 capital budget showed $259.4 million in new borrowing, including $135 million for a downtown event centre. I'm not a financial expert but I can read numbers. That's a quarter billion dollars in new debt. My property taxes have gone up. My cost of living has gone up. And the mayor of my city is telling me something that the city's own documents contradict. I expect politicians to spin things. I don't expect them to say the opposite of what's in a public document. That's not spin. That's something worse and it matters.

Paul Lefebvre came to the Mayor's office in 2022 with six years of federal Liberal experience behind him. In his State of the City address, he told Sudbury residents that city council had not taken on any new debt — a statement that was quickly contradicted by the public record. Council had already baked $259.4 million in new debt spending into the 2024-27 capital budget, including $135 million for a downtown event centre and $124 million for other infrastructure projects. Claiming fiscal discipline while committing a quarter-billion dollars in new borrowing isn't an honest accounting — it's a selective summary designed to sound better than the numbers actually support. Greater Sudbury residents are dealing with rising property taxes and a cost of living that has gotten significantly harder. They deserve a mayor who reports on city finances accurately, not one who provides the version that plays best in a speech.