The head of an organization operating a drug consumption and treatment site in Sudbury said she was struck with "such emotion" after the site had to close its doors on Friday due to a lack of stable funding.
"This morning I had such emotion because I saw people that we would normally see at the opening of the CSC (supervised consumption site) every day and here they are on the street, alone," Heidi Eisenhauer, executive director of the Réseau ACCESS Network, told The Trillium on Tuesday morning.
It's been more than two years since the organization applied to the province for funding for the site. Its closure comes as the Ford government continues its review of supervised consumption sites and after a report from the province's chief medical officer of health called for more supervised consumption services across Ontario.
"We're just waiting to hear because all these delays equal deaths and our closure of the site is so sad — this is a public health emergency," said Eisenhauer, adding it would have an average of 300 visits each month. "We do of course hope that the government will move forward with funding supervised consumptions after they lift the pause."
The government launched its review of consumption and treatment services (CTS) sites after a shooting outside of a site in Toronto's Leslieville neighbourhood last summer. The review means pending and new applications for supervised consumption sites in the province will have to wait.
Premier Doug Ford said the review "shouldn't be too much longer" during a press conference on March 11. Minister Michael Tibollo, the associate minister of mental health and addictions, told SooToday in January that the review was expected to be done within two months.
The province funds 17 consumption and treatment services sites and has capped the total number of sites at 21. The premier suggested at the same press conference that the plan is to stick to that cap.
"In total, we said there'd be 21 sites. We're at 17, so there's four more to go," Ford said.
Leading up to the province's March 26 budget, the manager of Réseau ACCESS Network's supervised consumption site said the organization submitted an application for funding to the province in August 2021. Its site, known as The Spot, had been operating since September 2022. Funding it was receiving from the city expired at the end of last year, with the site running on donations for the past few months.
"Especially when we're in this urgent, toxic drug crisis, a timely response is a month — we've waited 30 months," said Eisenhauer. "We couldn't fundraise month-by-month and be able to keep our staff. It really was about retention with people being in that place of precarious employment and having month-by-month contracts."
Supervised consumption sites need to apply and get approval from the federal government in the form of an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. According to a federal website, the Sudbury site's exemption is valid until May 30, 2025.
In his 2023 annual report, Dr. Kieran Moore, the province's chief medical officer of health, highlighted the need for a "comprehensive strategy designed to reduce opioid-related harms."
Visits to emergency departments and deaths related to opioids increased each year in Ontario from 2013-2022, the report stated, with 28,419 visits to ERs in 2020 compared to 15,275 visits in 2013.
Among his recommendations to reduce harm, Moore said there needs to be increased access to "integrated harm reduction services for people who use opioids, including: supervised consumption services (including for smoking/inhalation)."
He said while Ontario has funding a range of services to address the "opioid toxicity crisis" like naloxone programs and consumption and treatment services, "the existing CTS programs are not widely available across the province, and they do not allow people to smoke or inhale opioids, which has become an increasingly common form of use: people who only smoke rather than inject opioids now account for about one-third of opioid toxicity deaths.
"Because the substances that people use and how they take them are continually changing, harm reduction policies must be more nimble. To be effective, harm reduction services must be able to adapt quickly to changes in patterns of substance use," Moore continued.
Eisenhauer agreed, saying "absolutely, 100 per cent" consumption and treatment services sites should include inhalation or smoking services and be able to have these funded by the province.
"Whether or not you smoke the substance or inject it, it's a toxic drug crisis — you're going to have a same adulterants within the substance," she said, adding that Moore's report reinforced the idea that supervised consumption sites "save lives and they're part of health care."
She said the closure of their site "represents the unfairness of harm reduction services in the north," with the organization warning during their pre-budget presentation in January that the closure would mean no supervised consumption sites between Toronto and Thunder Bay.
"We just recognize that we're losing people at a rate that is higher than many of our communities in Ontario, and the toxic drug supply is not getting any better," Eisenhauer said.
In a letter posted on Sudbury.com on March 30, NDP MPP Jamie West called the lack of funding and the site's closure a "massive misstep and failure of judgment (that) has cost us lives and continues to affect the mental health of our friends, family, and neighbours."
Meanwhile, the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) is calling on the Ford government to "lift the freeze on approvals and immediately fund supervised consumption sites in every Ontario community in need."
"The government’s freeze on approvals for supervised consumption sites is forcing the closure of sites across the province and gambling with the lives of persons in our communities," the organization has stated in a call for action. "The Ontario government freeze comes in the context of a toxic drug supply that continues to claim the lives of more than seven people per day in Ontario, on average."
The site in Windsor has also paused its operations as of Jan. 1.
Asked about the closure of the Sudbury site and its funding concerns, Hannah Jensen, spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones, referred to the reviews — a ministry review of all CTS sites and a third-party review of the Toronto site — saying they "remain ongoing and will inform the next steps taken by the Ministry of Health including funding, location and application decisions."
She highlighted the province's recent budget, including $396 million more over three years for mental health and addictions services. Part of this will go toward funding additional recovery beds and new mobile mental health clinics, she added.
Jensen also said the province has invested $525 million since 2019 in different addiction treatment services and supports, such as new youth wellness hubs, including in Sudbury.
-With files from Jack Hauen
