Reports ordered by Doug Ford government urge fixes, not shuttering of safe injection site

The Ford government had two provincially commissioned reports strongly urging continued safe drug consumption services at a Queen Street East health centre when it announced rules that will halt the service and close nine other such sites across Ontario.
Health Minister Sylvia Jones referred to the July 2023 gunfire slaying of a Leslieville mother outside the South Riverdale Community Health Centre while announcing the changes Tuesday, citing a need to especially protect children. She did not mention the studies she has received in recent months, quietly posted online Monday, that affirm the community value of safe consumption and harm reduction.
Premier Doug Ford had voiced strong opposition to allowing supervised drug use, with medical supports to reverse possible overdose and expose users to treatment options and other health services, before Jones revealed that any such sites within 200 metres of a school or child-care centre must close by March 31. Four more of Toronto’s 10 sites are set to shut, along with others in Hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener, Ottawa and Thunder Bay.
Last year, after the stray-bullet slaying of Karolina (Caroline) Huebner-Makurat on Queen Street, Jones’s ministry ordered a review of the South Riverdale site and its safe consumption services by Jill Campbell, the centre’s provincially appointed supervisor, plus an external review by Unity Health Toronto, “as a means of identifying opportunities for improvement.”
Both reviews concluded that safe consumption should continue but with improved community safety supports to address concerns of neighbouring residents, businesses and child-care providers about violence, discarded needles, visible drug deals and more.
After five months of research, a review team from Unity Health, a hospital network affiliated with the University of Toronto, ”found a clear need for the (safe consumption) service at 955 Queen Street East, based on the number of clients being serviced and the broad range of health services clients are accessing via referrals and integrated services in the community health centre …
“It is suitable to maintain funding,” for the supervised consumption service.
The centre had 11,858 total visits for supervised drug use between September 2022 and September 2023. In 2022, centre staff reversed more than 100 potentially fatal overdoses. In the first seven months of 2023, they referred at least 165 clients to other services in the building such as a dietitian and mental health supports.
However, Unity Health also concluded that health centre managers had been only “somewhat responsive to local community concerns with room for improvement” when it came to security around the site, and communications with community members who had raised concerns before Huebner-Makurat’s slaying triggered community outrage and public calls for closure.
The report notes that the health centre did take steps to address concerns following the passerby’s death, including expanded sweeps to pick up discarded needles, increasing outreach to Toronto police and improving exterior lighting, but said it should do more.
Recommendations include hiring a licensed security firm to provide better protection around the site, improved communication with local community members including regular open houses, improved use of security cameras and establishing an “ongoing, formal avenue of communication” with Toronto police that “could help build relationships and address ongoing community and staff safety concerns.”
Unity Health noted that neighbours, which include a public school and several child-care facilities, reported a long list of concerns such as intoxicated people outside the centre acting belligerent and making threats, people defecating and urinating in public nearby, and dropped needles. Some centre visitors in turn complained they had been needlessly harassed and photographed by residents.
Hayley Mick, a Unity Health spokesperson, said Wednesday that the network is pleased with $378 million announced by Jones for “Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment” hubs that include addiction and treatment beds — but no safe consumption facilities or harm reduction materials such as needle exchange, safe injection kits or safe inhalation kits.
However, “we are concerned about the reduction in access to supervised consumption, which evidence shows saves lives, reduces pressure on emergency services and helps connect people to treatment,” she added. “We will continue to work closely with our community and government partners, as well as people use drugs, to address this health crisis.”
Toronto paramedics respond to an average of six suspected overdose deaths per week and 87 non-fatal overdose calls, according to city data.
The April 2024 report by Campbell, a former Centre for Addiction and Mental Health executive, concluded: “Evidence shows that consumption treatment services are a necessary public health service, implemented to save lives and prevent accidental overdose death related to substance abuse.”
Rather than shutter such sites, she urged the government to expand harm reduction services including safe consumption to “prevent further accidental substance-use death and provide additional safer treatment options for substance users across the spectrum of substance illness.”
Campbell’s other recommendations include the health ministry providing extra funding to sites close to schools and child-care centres for extra security officers and look at expanding the 15-metre zone around the centre where staff regularly search for discarded needles.
She noted the valid community concerns, but said some residents assumed that anyone doing anything objectionable near the centre was associated with it. A Leslieville social media account wrongly reported needles being found in a daycare playground when police reported they were in a private driveway next door.
“Although facts don’t always change feelings, the increase in visibility of poverty, drug usage, homelessness, and mental illness since the pandemic has played a major factor in the experiences of the South Riverdale community, and likely other neighbourhoods in Toronto,” Campbell concluded, adding the centre was established to serve the “weak and underserved” and should do so in collaboration with the surrounding community.
Campbell, who is no longer supervising the centre, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Alexandra Adamo, a spokesperson for the health minister, said in an email that “communities, parents and families across Ontario have made it clear that the presence of drug consumption sites near schools is leading to serious safety problems. We agree.”
She added that “yesterday’s actions will help protect the public, especially for our most vulnerable: Ontario’s children” and said police statistics show elevated crime around the sites.