Unionized nurses and other labour groups have called on Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones to reverse their positions on the announced shutdowns of supervised drug consumption sites across Ontario as well as the provincial plan to stop any new sites from opening or any existing sites from relocating.
The Ontario Nurses' Association (ONA) is among more than a dozen labour organizations and union locals to call on the province to change course on the decision against supervised drug consumption facilities that was announced on Aug. 20 by Jones.
Sudbury is one of the Ontario communities that was impacted by the decision. There was a supervised site called “The Spot”, the supervised consumption site at Energy Court was operated by Réseau ACCESS Network from September 2022 and operated through until the end of March in 2024.
Although the City of Greater Sudbury provided $1.1 million in funding to keep the facility open for just over a year, the city did not maintain that funding. The city expected the province to provide funding to continue operating the consumption site.
Other organizations were able to provide partial funding, but with no support from the Ontario government the Sudbury site was shut down at the end of March.
In Timmins, Safe Health Site Timmins stopped offering supervised consumption services on July 1, 2024, and was completely shuttered in August.
In a letter to the premier's office, the ONA said keeping consumption sites open would be a life-saving move.
"We call on the Ontario government to support and fund evidence-based health care services that save lives, amidst a public health emergency," said the letter.
The unions argue that reopening all the sites would be a necessary emergency measure.
"As workers in many different sectors and communities across Ontario, we are all impacted by the devastation of the toxic drug crisis: whether through experiencing the personal loss of a loved one, or the distress and pressure that affect communities due to ongoing poor management of this crisis. Rather than pouring fuel on the fire through devastating cuts, the Ontario government must immediately support and scale up SCS across the province as a necessary emergency response," said the letter.
Further to that, the letter said it was wrong to mislabel supervised sites as being detrimental to their host communities.
"We reject the false narrative that it is ‘unsafe’ to have SCS in proximity to schools and childcare centres – SCS keep our streets safer, bring drug use indoors, and create a place to build community," said the letter.
"The reality is that people who use drugs are part of our communities and deserve health-care services. In dense urban environments, it is inaccessible, stigmatizing, and wholly unfeasible to require two football fields of separation between a school or daycare and a healthcare facility, such as a SCS," said the letter.
It shouldn’t matter who you are or where you live – all people in Ontario deserve access to health care and supports, the letter concluded.
