The Ford government’s impending ban on supervised consumption sites in Ontario could result in increased emergency department usage, more overdoses and even death, according to the province’s own internal assessment of the policy’s impact, seen by Global News.
The Progressive Conservative government is set to table new legislation that would prevent a supervised consumption site from operating within a 200-metre radius of a school or child care centre — effectively shutting down the centres by March 31, 2025.
The plan, which was first announced in the summer, will see a total of 10 sites forced to close across the province, including five located in Toronto.
The proposed law would also ban the operators from re-opening a supervised consumption site in new locations and would restrict a municipality from requesting access to the federal government’s safer supply program, which Premier Doug Ford has argued worsens addiction instead of addressing the root causes.
Instead, the Ministry of Health is spending almost $380 million to create 19 new intensive addiction recovery centres — titled HART Hubs — which offer much of the services offered at supervised consumption sites but without access to clean products for drug users.
The move has been met with fierce opposition from public health advocates, and the groups who operate the supervised consumption sites. They have argued the change will lead to more overdoses and deaths, something the province has dismissed.
“People are not going to die, they’re going to get access to service,” Health Minister Sylvia Jones said in August. “I do not call watching someone inject an illicit drug to be health care in the province of Ontario. We need to do better and we can do better.”
Internal government documents, however, appear to echo community concerns and suggest the policy change could have severe impacts for some.
“There is a high risk that reducing access to harm reduction and overdose support services will result in increased emergency department visits, health impacts, overdose and death,” a confidential government document, seen by Global News, warns.
“Indigenous, Black and low-income individuals may be more adversely impacted as they face higher barriers to healthcare and for Indigenous populations, disproportionately higher rates of opioid-related deaths,” the government document added.
The internal document also warned that the provincial government faced a “high risk of continued criticism” from public health advocates and that municipalities “may be critical of the province limiting their autonomy in addressing the opioid crisis.”
The province has repeatedly dismissed criticism of its supervised consumption site ban, citing the unpopularity of the spaces and concerns from community residents about safety and discarded needles in neighbourhoods.
“This was supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread — it is the worst thing that could ever happen to the community to have one of these safe injection sites in their neighbourhood,” Ford said in August.
But the internal advice suggested removing the sites would actually increase public drug use.
“There is an associated risk that closure of supervised consumption sites will make drug use and discarded drug paraphernalia more dispersed and more visible in the community,” the document stated.
A spokesperson for the minister of health said the government had heard widespread backlash against supervised consumption sites.
“Communities, parents, and families across Ontario have made it clear that the presence of drug consumption sites near schools and daycares is leading to serious safety problems,” they said in a statement.
“Ontarians deserve more than a health care system focused on providing people struggling with addiction with tools to use illegal drugs.”
The government also received legal advice that the prohibition of supervised consumption sites within 200 metres of a school or childcare centre creates a “high risk” of infringing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Specifically, the advice laid out that section seven of the charter — “life, liberty, security of the person of site users” — could be contravened.
In order to win a charter challenge, the document stated, the government would have to demonstrate that the operation of a supervised consumption site is “always unsafe or harmful, even when operated under reasonable conditions.”
“Counsel is unaware of such evidence,” the document said.
The planned new bill that contains the changes, tentatively titled “Community Care and Recovery Act”, was originally set to be tabled on Nov. 4, but was delayed until mid-November after other parts of the legislation that would have given the Ford government more control over police service boards had to be scrubbed in the wake of PC caucus concerns.
Even the name of the legislation has encountered internal issues.
Government lawyers told the government that the proposed title is “unhelpful” and could be perceived as “misleading.”
“‘Community Care’ and ‘Recovery’ have fairly well-understood meanings,” the advice said, “But the new act does not deal with either concept.”