With funding for new safe consumption sites paused, Ontario's health minister says municipalities that opened sites without funding will have to make their own local decisions.
Last month, the province paused all new funding applications for new locations. It's to allow for a review of safe consumption sites after a woman was hit by a stray bullet and killed outside of a Toronto site this year.
Today, Health Minister Sylvie Jones wouldn't commit to a time frame for when the review would be done.
“I believe that this is an important enough issue that we need to be very careful and strategic in terms of what do we do in terms of next steps. I think that individual sites that went ahead with federal approval not having any provincial funding need to make their own determinations locally what they want to do. But I’m not going to rush this process because it’s too important. It’s too important for community and it’s too important for the staff who are working at those sites,” she said during a news conference today.
Time is critical for places like Timmins.
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The facilities are places for people to use previously obtained drugs in the presence of trained medical staff and connect to services.
Safe Health Site Timmins (SHST) has been open since July 2022. So far, its sole source of funding has been the City of Timmins, but that funding commitment ends Dec. 31, unless city council approves flowing more cash to the facility in the 2024 budget. The city has committed more than $1.5 million to operate the site to date.
The review that's underway, said Jones, is to see if more items need to be in future funding agreements. The province wants to take the time to do it right.
"That’s why we’ve put a pause on any future expansion. We want to see the status of the ones that are out there and operating now and we also want to say is there anything else that we need to look at to make sure that communities are as safe as the patients and individuals that are being served,” she said.
After the announcement was made about pausing new funding applications, the union representing workers at SHST was given notice that the facility's future is uncertain beyond December 2023.
SHST is an urgent public health needs site (UPHNS) and is a temporary solution to bridge the gap while applying to Health Canada to secure a permanent supervised consumption site. That federal approval, up until a month ago, opened up provincial funding opportunities.
The Health Canada approval for a permanent facility was received right before the funding was paused.
The temporary facility is being operated by Timmins and District Hospital. Once there is a permanent funding stream, it will be operated by the Canadian Mental Health Association Cochrane-Timiskaming.
TimminsToday has reached out to the hospital for comment.