I hope you and your family enjoyed the summer and are looking forward to getting back to school.
In late August, the province announced that by March 31, 2025, any safe consumption site (SCS) within 200 metres of a school or child-care centre will need to close. As the province is not allowing new SCSs to relocate, this functionally means that these sites will be permanently lost.
In Toronto Centre this will mean the loss of the SCSs at The Works (277 Victoria Street) as well as at the Regent Park Community Health Centre (465 Dundas Street East). Moss Park Consumption Treatment Services (134 Sherbourne Street) is not impacted, but will be closing as the building it resides in is being redeveloped. These closures will join three others across the City, and as well as impact SCSs that are exclusively used by sites like Seaton House (339 George Street) for their clients. SCSs have been subject to no small amount of criticism for their perceived impact on public safety, which the province is using to justify the closure of these sites.
A small history lesson is in order.
In 2015, there were 137 deaths city-wide associated with opioids (i.e. overdoses), which in and of itself is a shocking and unreasonably high amount. Once drugs began being laced with fentanyl–which is 50 times more potent than heroin–overdoses skyrocketed, with deaths more than doubling to 315 in 2017. It was in this context that the first SCSs were created, including The Works and an unsanctioned site in Moss Park that would become the Moss Park Consumption Treatment Services.
These sites were an emergency response to keep people addicted to opioids alive. A conservative review of the numbers suggest that hundreds, if not thousands, of overdoses have been overturned at these SCSs since they opened. Not one person has died of an accidental overdose within an SCS in Toronto. If the goal of the SCSs was to help stem the loss of death due to the opioid crisis, it has been working. What hasn’t been working however, is the rest of the response to the crisis, which despite the efforts of SCSs has still led to over 3,000 people losing their life to the disease known as addiction to overdoses since 2017.
In a just world, the need for SCSs would have spurred governments to take action to open pathways and supports to address the ongoing addiction crisis. When this action failed to materialize, SCSs became the sites of substantial public scrutiny. Rather than becoming the first step on the path to recovery and stabilization, SCSs became what often seemed to be the end of the road for people living with addiction. And the demand grew and grew as we as a society allowed more and more people to fall through the social safety net into poverty and homelessness.
As the users of these SCSs were, fairly or not, associated with homelessness and mental health, they became flashpoints for community safety concerns. Improperly discarded needles, open drug use, drug dealing and anti-social behaviour were commonly reported near these sites. The fatal shooting of a mother near a Riverdale SCS in July 2023 was the final straw for many.
I do not want to minimize the feelings or concerns of residents who live near an SCS. A huge part of my work has been addressing community safety issues within the Downtown East. I have and continue to work with local communities, City staff and Toronto Police Services to improve safety, which can and does include working with organizations that operate SCSs. The safety concerns are real. But they extend far beyond the catchment areas of any SCS, because the anti-social behaviour residents are concerned about is not a function of the SCS. Safe consumption does not drive community safety concerns; poverty, homelessness and a lack of a social safety net do.
The trio of SCSs near Queen Street East and Sherbourne Street is not an accident; Moss Park was a hotspot for overdose deaths prior to 2017. Those SCSs are there because the demand for their use is there, which is true for many such locations.
Removing SCSs means that every individual who was using those services is still going to be living with addiction. Instead of using an SCS, they are going to self-medicate either in public–where they increase their chances of life-saving assistance if they overdose–or in private–where their risk of death exponentially increases. It will mean more needles in our parks, playgrounds and laneways, more unauthorized access to private property and more public displays of drug use that would otherwise have been prevented by an SCS. The anti-social behaviour bemoaned near SCSs will get worse–not better–if there is not a clear pathway to treatment and recovery for those living with addiction.
Over the past year, as your Councillor and the Chair of the Board of Health, I have worked hard with my colleagues and community partners to initiate several initiatives to address the crisis.
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In November 2023, we released “Our Health, Our City: A Mental Health, Substance Use, Harm Reduction and Treatment Strategy for Toronto”, which aims promote mental health and well-being across the lifespan and reduce the health and social impacts of substance use in our city, including actions to address the drug toxicity crisis.
- In June, Toronto Public Health and Toronto Police Service launched the Downtown Community Outreach Response and Engagement (CORE) Team, a one-year pilot led by a specialized team of public health nurses designed to address the complex health, mental health, substance use and housing needs of vulnerable individuals in the Yonge and Dundas corridor.
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In July, City Council approved a completely revamped Downtown East Action Plan for 2025-2030 and we released Toronto Public Health’s 2024-2028 Strategic Plan which prioritizes promoting conditions to support positive mental health and reduce the harms of substance use through strengthening public health services that are trauma-informed and reduce stigma and delivering public health interventions that promote mental health.
These are measures which seek to support individuals and communities through this crisis. I will continue working to deliver safer neighbourhoods, healthier communities, and better City services that support our most vulnerable residents.
The province has announced that along with the future closures of SCSs near schools and daycares, it is spending $378 million on 19 new “Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs”, along with 375 new supportive housing units, including addiction recovery and treatment beds. This investment is late by about a decade, but welcome news. However, these sites will specifically not act as SCSs, and not offer safe supplies or supervised drug consumption. In other words, they will not replace the life-saving work that SCSs perform. SCSs were intended to be the life saving bridge to allow people to access addiction and recovery when they were mentally ready to do so. To remove this function will fundamentally doom many hundreds, if not thousands, to die on our streets and in our parks.
I would welcome being proven wrong. However, my experience as a former hospital healthcare worker who directly assisted people living with severe addiction, and following the advice of health professionals lead me to believe this move to close SCSs will cost lives and not improve–and likely worsen–community safety.
Yours in Service,
Chris Moise
City Councillor
Ward 13 - Toronto Centre
