Bill Sinclair was surprised and upset when he saw the name of the Toronto overdose prevention centre he runs included on a list of similar facilities in Ontario the government has ordered to close.
The Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site, run by Neighbourhood Group Community Services in Toronto, is one of 10 sites across the province that will be forced to close before next April because they’re located close to either a school or a daycare centre.
“I was surprised about the entire announcement,” Sinclair, CEO of Neighbourhood Group Community Services, told Global News. “They didn’t talk to us in advance. They didn’t contact us before or since or after.”
The announcement came on Tuesday in Ottawa when Minister of Health Sylvia Jones took to the stage at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario’s annual conference. She unveiled almost $380 in funding for new addiction recovery facilities while ordering many of the province’s supervised drug consumption sites to close.
Nine publicly-funded facilities were on the list, along with the Kensington site, which is run by the local non-profit.
Jones also promised to stop municipalities or other entities from asking the federal government to greenlight supervised consumption sites, adding the province would also not approve more.
“The announcement has been quite clear that moving isn’t an option,” Sinclair said. “They will not approve any new sites anywhere, so they aren’t asking us to move. They’re only asking us to close.”
The government’s announcement was met with deep concern by many involved in overdose prevention, addiction and recovery.
Chair of the Toronto Board of Health Chris Moise grimly predicted that “people will die” as a result of the change, which directly contracted the suggestions in two government reviews.
Ontario NDP health critic France Gélinas predicted a similarly bleak outcome.
“Everybody needs to be saved. When you know how to save a life, how could you turn your back on that?” she said. “But that’s what they’re doing.”
At the Kensington site, senior manager of harm reduction and drop-in programs Barb Panter said a range of people visit. Some, she said, come for a day or two, others show up again and again and even more are referred through to permanent solutions.
“I would say the majority of people do make some changes in their lives,” she told Global News.
“They get into housing or they 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 their community — they want to be engaged.”
The non-profit that runs the Kensington site is also responsible for housing units, language programs and daycare, among other programs. It has a history stretching back more than 100 years, with 50 at its current site and, more recently, it moved into the overdose prevention space.
“The community needed us to step up,” Sinclair recalled. “People were dying and are dying and have died increasingly each year for the last six years.”
Despite the pleas from those involved in administering supervised consumption sites, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his government have been resolute. They have pointed particularly to statistics that indicate high crime rates around supervised consumption sites and vocal dissatisfaction from some living around them.
Speaking on Wednesday, Ford said he had been receiving “endless phone calls about needles being in the parks,” suggesting he didn’t “believe” in supervised consumption sites.
“Giving an addict a place to do their injections — we haven’t seen get better,” he said. “This was supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. It is the worst thing that could ever happen to a community to have one of these safe injection sites in their neighbourhood.”
Panter said the comments showed a “real lack of understanding” from a premier who doesn’t “understand what we do.”
The comments, Sinclair said, worried him because he felt they unfairly portray people who rely on supervised consumption sites.
“I am very concerned that a lot of the discussions have represented people who use safe consumption sites, or we call ours an overdose prevention site, or people who use drugs at all as monsters or enemies of the community,” he said.
“When all the people we see here are people someone’s son and daughter, brother, sister, father and mother, they are people from our community.”
While the government forges ahead with its plan — ordering centres like the Kensington site to close by March 31, 2025 — questions remain over how and when its replacement will roll out.
Jones said the province is encouraging supervised consumption sites that have to close to apply to transition into the new $378 million addiction recovery centres — nicknamed HART hubs.
Ontario has pledged funds to build 19 new sites but few details have yet been released on how the process will work and there are concerns they won’t be set up in time for current sites to close.
Panter said the two systems could run in tandem for a period to allow an orderly transfer, using the relationships she and her staff have built over the years to ensure those who need them most are helped first.
“Keep our site running and the other sites funded until these new hubs are set up and then we could be doing warm referrals,” she suggested. “You come in and see us because we’ve got five years of relationships, and then we’re going to take you over to this HART hub, and we’re going to get you set up there.”
Sinclair urged the government to stick to its $378 million funding promise but reverse the order to close supervised consumption sites.
“We hope the government will have a change of heart and a change of course — we think this service is important,” he said.
“We think we can keep doing it. We would like to do that in cooperation with the government. We want to be part of the solution. People are dying and people are in distress.”