Ontario to close drug dens near schools, promote drug treatment

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The Ford government is closing several so-called safe drug consumption sites near schools across the province and investing in new centres focused on treatment and support services.

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Health Minister Sylvia Jones will make the announcement in a speech to a gathering of city leaders on Tuesday afternoon.

Under the new rules, drug use dens — where heroin, fentanyl and other drugs are consumed — cannot be set up within 200 metres of a school. The change will result in 10 sites in Ottawa, Guelph, Hamilton, Thunder Bay, Kitchener and Toronto being closed by March 31, 2025.

This means that Toronto’s South Riverdale Community Health Centre will have to close its consumption site. The SRCHC was the focus of controversy last summer after Karolina Huebner-Makurat, a 44-year-old mother of two, was killed by a stray bullet during a shootout in a park near the consumption site.

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Huebner-Makurat was walking down the street when the bullet struck her.

After setting up a consumption point and being selected by the Trudeau government in Ottawa to host a so-called safe supply site, where drugs are given out for free, the SRHC became a hub for drug dealers. People get the so-called safe drugs from the centre, which are then sold or traded to dealers in exchange for the more potent and deadly fentanyl.

The Ford government cited rising crime rates around the centres as the reason some will close, while others will shift to focus on treatment and support services.

In areas around Toronto venues, assaults rose 113 per cent and robberies rose 97 per cent, according to government reports. Reports of violent crime near Hamilton venues rose 195 per cent, and near Ottawa venues rose 250 per cent, compared with the rest of the city.

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The idea of ​​these centers is to treat addicts when they are ready to quit. But that is not the case, instead we see an increase in crime and the radicals who run these centers are not interested in treatment.

While provincial regulations require such sites to provide users with access to treatment, most, if not all, sites no longer view the act of offering treatment as judgmental. At SRCHC, its website openly states that the organization “does not judge, expect, or want people to stop using drugs.”

This distorted philosophy was proudly displayed on its website and in print until last year, when it was published in this newspaper following the tragic shooting. Sadly, the SRCHC in Toronto is not the only institution that practices this, and the idea that hard drug use is an acceptable lifestyle choice, even for people who are clearly in trouble, permeates the system.

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On Tuesday, Jones will announce that the province will invest $378 million in 19 sites known as Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) centres. The centres will include what the province calls 375 “highly supportive housing units” as well as addiction recovery and treatment beds.

The government says that because the sites focus on treatment, they will not offer the “safer” supply model that the federal government has pushed for. In addition to the health and treatment programs, the Ford government says it will focus on prevention, trying to stop people from becoming addicted in the first place.

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This is a welcome move considering the progress we have already made in harm reduction.

The four pillars of Canadian drug policy have always been prevention, enforcement, harm reduction and treatment. Over the past few years, the other three pillars have been neglected while all the focus has been on harm reduction.

Given the way we implement harm reduction, this feels more like aiding and abetting drug users than providing them with compassionate care.

These moves will be welcomed by many mayors, including some in communities where sites will be closed. Others will oppose the changes, but ask them, what are they doing to support treatment besides providing free medicine and places for people to use it?

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