Sudbury's 'big score' turns 30 years old

It's been 30 years since the Nickel City also became the tax return city.

The Canada Revenue Agency opened its tax data centre in Sudbury in the spring of 1982 and along with it came 1,200 full-time jobs.

Gloria Corrente, the tax data centre director, said she was a Laurentian University student when the centre opened. She changed her course load so she'd have a better chance of getting hired.

"I didn't know a lot about it just what everyone else knew from what was in the media and what was announced," Corrente said. "The opportunity to work in a big organization doing something that important seemed exciting to me."

She said the first group of workers were almost all under 30 years of age and likely would have left Sudbury, if not for the Canada Revenue Agency.

Staying power

"I believe a lot of people who came to work here might not have found a job otherwise," Corrente said. "And a lot of people stayed here for their careers."

The mining industry had laid off thousands in the years leading up to the centre's opening, and some feared Sudbury would shrink.

Former Mayor Jim Gordon said the centres opening was a big score for the city, and the first step towards diversifying the local economy.

"There are cities all over Canada that would have given their eye teeth to have a tax data centre," Gordon said.

Unlike mining and other resource industries, the number of jobs at the centre has stayed more or less the same over the past three decades.

The tax data centre also hires about 1,200 part-time workers every year most of them in the spring during tax filing season, when millions of returns flow through the building.