A new report comparing municipal services in several Ontario cities paints a rosy picture of Greater Sudbury — including in some areas often seen as problems.

The Ontario Municipal Benchmarking Initiative compares numbers from 16 different Ontario cities in several different areas, such as snowplowing costs. In Sudbury, clearing a kilometre of road costs about $3,000 — but it's double that in Toronto.

When it comes to social housing the report said 38 per cent of Sudburians on the waiting list are placed every year, while only 15 per cent of people on Hamilton’s waiting list receive a place to live.

Ambulance delays at Sudbury hospital have made headlines in recent years, but the report showed paramedics in Sudbury spend 12 per cent of their time waiting at emergency. In Thunder Bay and Ottawa, that wait time is double.

The report also showed Sudbury has far more city-owned parking spaces than its southern Ontario rivals, as well as more parkland. There are 2,400 hectares of green space for every Sudburian — about 10 times that of a Torontonian.

Home sweet home

The OMBI report also showed Sudbury outpaced London, Hamilton and other southern cities in housing construction last year.

Those Sudbury homes also put out a lot less trash on the curb — slightly more than half a tonne per household — about half of what they throw out in Barrie.

The cost of picking up and dumping that garbage is about $37 dollars per tonne in Sudbury, a fraction of the $202 dollars for a tonne it costs Toronto to rid itself of trash. But Sudbury costs are still not as low as the $25 per tonne the city of London pays to do the same.

For those who don't have a home, people who stay in Sudbury shelters for an average of about nine days. In Waterloo that number is 13 and 23 in Halton Region.

But giving someone a bed for the night costs taxpayers in Sudbury about $53, while it's only $15 dollars in Windsor.