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Bill Sinclair was surprised and upset when he saw the name of the Toronto Overdose Prevention Centre he ran was included on a list of similar facilities the Ontario government had ordered closed.
this Kensington Market An overdose prevention site run by Toronto neighbourhood group Community Services is one of 10 across the province that will be forced to close by next April because of their proximity to schools or daycare centres.
“I was surprised by the whole announcement,” Sinclair, CEO of the Community Services Community Group, told Global News. “They didn’t talk to us beforehand. They didn’t contact us before or since.”
Health Minister Sylvia Jones made the announcement Tuesday at the Ontario Municipal Association’s annual conference in Ottawa, announcing nearly $380 million in funding for new drug rehabilitation facilities while ordering the closure of many of the province’s supervised drug use sites.
There are nine publicly funded facilities on the list, as well as the Kensington venue, which is managed by a local nonprofit.
Jones also pledged to prevent municipalities or other entities from asking the federal government for approval to set up supervised consumption sites, adding that the province would not approve more of them either.
“The announcement made it very clear that relocation was not an option,” Sinclair said. “They were not going to approve any new sites anywhere, so they didn’t ask us to relocate. They just asked us to close.”
The administration’s announcement has caused deep concern among many people involved in overdose prevention, addiction and recovery efforts.
Chris Moise, chair of the Toronto Board of Health, grimly predicted that the change would cause “people to die.” Direct adoption of recommendations from two government reviews.
Ontario NDP health critic France Gélinas predicted the results would be similarly bleak.
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“Everyone needs to be saved. How can you say no when you know how to save lives?” she said. “But they are doing it.”
In Kensington, Barb Panter, senior manager of harm reduction and interim programs, said visitors are a diverse group. Some come for one or two days, some come again and again, and even more are referred for permanent solutions, she said.
“I would say most people do make some changes in their lives,” she told Global News.
“They move into housing or sign up for our peer training program. We had over 130 people apply for 11 spots in our peer training program because they want to do something, they want to contribute to the community — they want to be involved.”
The nonprofit that runs the Kensington site also oversees housing, language programs and day care, among other programs. The organization dates back more than 100 years, and the site is now 50 years old, but more recently it has moved into overdose prevention.
“The community needed us to step up,” Sinclair recalled. “People had been dying for the past six years, and more were dying every year.”
Despite pleas from SCS managers, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his government have stood firm, pointing to statistics showing high crime rates around SCSs and complaints from some residents about the neighborhoods.
Ford said Wednesday that he has “received numerous calls about needles in parks,” suggesting he does not “believe” in supervised drug use sites.
“Giving drug addicts a place to inject — we’ve never seen anything better,” he said. “This should be the greatest thing since sliced bread. But it’s the worst thing that can happen to a community to have a safe injection site in their community.”
Painter said the comments showed a “real lack of understanding” by the governor and that he “didn’t understand what we were doing.”
Sinclair said the comments concerned him because he felt they unfairly portrayed people who rely on supervised consumption sites.
“I’m very concerned that a lot of the discussion is treating people who use safe consumption sites, or what we call overdose prevention sites, or people who use drugs at all as monsters or enemies of the community,” he said.
“When all the people we see here are somebody’s son and daughter, brother, sister, father and mother, they are people from our community.”
While the government presses ahead with its plans for centres such as Kensington to close by March 31, 2025, questions remain about how and when their replacements will be rolled out.
Jones said the provincial government is encouraging supervised consumption sites that must close to apply to transform into new, $378-million addiction recovery centres, or HART centres.
Ontario has pledged funding to build 19 new stations, but details about how that will happen have not been released, and there are concerns that they won’t be built in time before existing sites close.
Panter said the two systems could run simultaneously for a while to allow for an orderly transfer, leveraging the relationships she and her staff have built over the years to ensure those most in need get help first.
“Until these new centers are built, keep our site open and fund the others, and then we can make warm referrals,” she advised. “You can come to us because we have a five-year relationship, and then we’ll take you to this HART center and we’ll help you get settled there.”
Sinclair urged the government to stick to its $378 million funding commitment but to rescind its order to close supervised consumption sites.
He said: “We are hoping the government will change their mind and change tack – we think this service is important.”
“We think we can continue to do this. We’re willing to work with the government. We want to be part of the solution. People are dying, people are in distress.”
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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