Dozens of people turned out in Kensington Market outside one of the supervised consumption sites set to close in a community where, unlike some others in the city, many say it’s supported.
The Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site is one of five Toronto sites set to shut down after the Ford government’s decision last month to close facilities close to schools and childcare centres by the end of next March. On Friday, clients, supporters, community organizations and politicians showed up to make the case that providing a safe space for drug use saves lives.
“When you don’t have supervised consumption, you have unsupervised consumption. And living in an alleyway, I know where there they’ll go, seeing the park, we know where they’ll go. The conversation around public bathrooms, we know where they’ll go,” said Serena Purdy, chair of the community group Friends of Kensington Market.
Those in charge of the centre say they were taken back by the decision, believing they have provided more help than harm.
“We were hoping there’d be an announcement to talk about how sites, there could be more sites, bigger sites, more hours of care and support. But the opposite happened, and they’re cutting the services in Toronto drastically and dramatically,” said Bill Sinclair, the CEO of The Neighbourhood Group Community Services which houses the safe consumption site.
Again this week, Premier Doug Ford defended the province’s actions.
“We’ve seen over and over again since the safe consumption sites have come in, it hasn’t gotten better. It’s gotten worse, a lot worse,” he said during an unrelated announcement on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones told CityNews, “Communities, parents and families across Ontario have made it clear that the presence of drug consumption sites near schools and daycares is leading to serious safety problems. We agree.”
The province says it will spend $380 million to create addiction recovery hubs while the opposition continues to try and make the case to keep sites like the one in Kensington open.
“We are going to use every tool we have to make sure that we’re making decisions based on evidence because we need to solve our pure addiction crisis by meeting people where they’re at,” said University-Rosedale NDP MPP Jessica Bell.
There are currently 17 provincially regulated consumption sites in the province. Ten of them are in Toronto, and most of those are downtown.
The Ford government is also introducing legislation that, if passed, prohibits municipalities from requesting the decriminalization of illegal drugs from the federal government.
The legislation would also prohibit municipalities or any organization from setting up new consumption sites or participating in federal so-called “safer” supply initiatives.