Reaction to province's bill to ban CTS sites near schools and daycares

CTS advocates react to new Ontario bill A new bill to shutdown CTS sites in Kitchener and Guelph is being met with concern in the community. Krista Simpson reports.

A bill was tabled Monday to shutdown 10 supervised consumption sites, including the ones in Kitchener and Guelph, that the province says are too close to local schools and daycares.

Municipalities previously had to apply directly to the federal government if they wanted to build a CTS.

But under the new bill, they’ll have to go to the province first and ask for an exemption.

With a Progressive Conservative government, however, it’s unlikely to be approved.

“I want to be very clear, there will be no further safe injection sites in the province of Ontario under our government,” Health Minister Sylvia Jones stated.

Ontario has already announced its plan to switch to an abstinence-based model. The “homelessness and addiction recovery treatment” hubs, or HART hubs, are expected to be operational by March, when the 10 CTS sites flagged by the province will be shuttered.

Reaction in Waterloo Region

Sanguen Health Centre operates the Kitchener Consumption and Treatment Services Site.

Julie Kalbfleisch, its director of communications and fundraising, said more than 1,000 overdoses have been reversed or managed since opening the site opened in 2019.

“We are highly regulated, we take real care in collecting data that we present on our dashboard, and it shows in plain numbers that we are having an impact,” she told CTV News Monday.

Now that the government’s bill has been tabled, Sanguen Health Centre has questions about what will happen to the people using their services if they have to close their doors.

“If it should pass, then we're looking at a situation where we believe there will be an increase in public drug use, increase in public overdoses, people using bathrooms and other locations to consume their drugs and then the public will have more exposure than they do right now to these types of situations,” Kalbfleisch explained, noting the public will also likely see more discarded needles around the community.

As March approaches, she added, “some of our focus will shift towards preparing the community for what is to come.” That could include more Naloxone training, outreach and public education, so people can help if they encounter someone overdosing.

“The hope is that we'll be able to prevent senseless deaths. But we know, because we were just here that long ago when we didn't have a CTS, that that's going to be very difficult to do.”

Drug strategy specialist Michael Parkinson, who also volunteers with the non-partisan Waterloo Region Drug Action Team, said shutting down CTS sites won’t improve health or safety in the community, but instead do the opposite.

“We should be terrified,” he stated. “Unequivocally, people are going to die, communities are going to become less safe, and that is the wrong direction.”

Parkinson said it’s distressing to see the government forge ahead with its plan to shut CTS sites, in spite of the wide range of voices speaking up against it.

While HART hubs will provide needed services, he added, harm reduction is also critical.

“The HART hubs are unequivocally no substitute for consumption and treatment service. They are very different. And we need both and we need more of them.”