TIMMINS - Following news that Timmins will not get cash for a treatment facility, the Cochrane District Services Board (CDSB) is working on plans for what happens next.
Though, people needing the services slated for the Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub is the biggest concern for Jean Carriere, CDSB director of health who led the Timmins proposal.
"The ones that are in Sudbury and the two that are in Sault Ste Marie, which are the closest to our districts, didn't anticipate, nor did we have any conversations around extending care. So when we're talking about somebody from our district going to their HART Hub that is not set up, there is no referral process, and the capacity for their centre was based on their needs," said Carriere.
The Timmins HART Hub proposal was known as the Wellness Centre of Excellence.
The pitch was to bring multiple organizations under one roof to offer mental health and addiction treatment services and transitional housing.
Eighteen facilities were announced on Monday — eight more than was anticipated — for a total of 27 hubs across the province. Timmins didn't make the cut.
In the northeast, Sudbury is getting one of the facilities and Sault Ste. Marie is getting two — one run by CMHA Algoma and an Indigenous-led hub by Maamwesying.
The agencies on the Timmins application are still talking about the options, said Carriere.
"One of the things that really came out of developing the HART Hub application and the Wellness Centre of Excellence is emphasizing the importance of communication and working together. We've committed as a group to continue our meetings to see how we can support each other through different programs," he said.
Ultimately, he said, if there's no new money, there's no new programs. Work is ongoing to look at other funding options.
"This problem is not going away. Our region remains one of the highest when it comes to opiate deaths. It's still double the provincial average, and we service a large area," he said.
CDSB bought the Ramada Inn at 1800 Riverside Dr. in Timmins' for $11 million to house the HART Hub.
The building, said Carriere, is still an asset to the CDSB and plans B and C have been in front of the board.
"We want to present it at our next board meeting later in February to make sure that they're prepared to endorse that and move along with other options. But what I can tell you is that there's a very, very big demand for supportive housing throughout the district," he said, explaining it could be for the aging population or people who are precariously housed.
"Of course, the goal is to ensure that we can utilize the facility to its potential, while addressing the housing demands in the area."
Coun. Rock Whissell represents the area where the building is located and has been subjected to a lot of public scrutiny.
At what turned out to be the first and only public meeting for the proposed wellness centre, Whissell stepped down from the services board. At a council meeting in November, he said the project would end his political career.
With the HART Hub no longer on the table, he's looking for CDSB to share what plan B is.
"As the Ward 1 councillor, I'd really hope that (CDSB) is going to step up and make a presentation to the neighbourhood and to my constituents to know what direction they will be going now with this building, or if this building is at a point where they will sell it and return it," said Whissell on Tuesday.
Residents in the area would support a retirement home, he said.
"The companies and the businesses that have been reaching out to me for the last three months are in favour of the retirement home and in favour of actually helping DSSAB to create this facility that would be an enormous benefit to Ward 1," said Whissell.
Unique challenges to resolve
The approved HART Hub funding announcement was made in London by Sylvia Jones, who at the time was the Ontario Health Minister before the legislature was dissolved for an election.
Nearly nine hours away, a reporter in the room asked specifically about the Timmins application.
“Each community’s submission was unique and there are some unique concerns, challenges within the City of Timmins that they need to resolve,” said Jones.
TimminsToday asked Carriere about the comments. The question and response are:
Is there a plan to keep the community in that area and ... the broader residents in the know about what's happening? Because it does seem like from the minister's public comments on the Timmins application, that some of what's happening here has very much been on their radar. How do we learn from the lessons of this and how to do better as we move ahead?
Carriere: We're not used to providing feedback on proposals. And when we look at the HART hub proposals ... they handed out 27 of them, so there's a lot of HART Hubs that were established in Ontario. And when we look at the even the press conference that was on yesterday, London was specifically being asked, 'Where are you putting this HART hub and what building is it going?' They weren't even talking about that. They never even brought it forward. They haven't discussed with their community where they're putting the HART hubs, yet they're getting the HART hub funding. And what we did as an organization and with our partners is we said, 'Yes, we are planning a HART hub in this location.' We promoted that as a great location, as a place that had all of the services that we can bring into that. And so when it comes to public consultations, when we do submissions to the Ministry of Health, when we do submissions to any of our ministries, we don't necessarily do public consultations ahead of time because we don't know that those things are happening. And we submit all kinds of proposals all throughout the year for different programming as they become available. So to do something different when it comes to public consultations, yeah, if we want to go back to the September consultation. Would we do that differently? Most likely. But how we would do a public consultation? There's opportunity to change. But I have to say that looking back, hindsight's 20/20, but if we go back and at that time, we thought we were doing the right thing, with the right people providing that information, and we've been forthwith with that information. We've created our website, we did two hours of questions from city council, we've put out documentation, we've done virtual meetings with the Chamber of Commerce. And it seemed that no matter what we put out, we were still being questioned, and there was a lot of misinformation that was put out there, and we just we couldn't get our message across. So are we looking at different strategies? Absolutely. Are we doing that within the DSSAB, for sure, we're looking at different ways of promoting what social services do and what healthcare services do, and that's something that we've all admitted that we're not great at. We're not great at promoting what we do in the services we deliver in our community because we're busy delivering that service, but we realize that there's an important piece to that, and we're committed to making sure that we're able to share that information, so that when the public does have an opinion or they have questions, it's coming from an informed basis.
The plan for now
Since buying 1800 Riverside Dr., CDSB has had people staying in a block of rooms at the building, hall bookings are being honoured and some renovations have started.
The booking commitments are "diminishing".
"So part of those contracts was stepped housing, and it's actually supportive housing that is there now. Some of those contracts ... they're finding housing for these people. So there's less and less rooms that are being occupied," said Carriere.
Using space for meetings and conferences will continue to be looked at.
"We're going to keep promoting that aspect so that we can try and generate some revenue to help offset some of the costs while we develop our future plan," he said.
While there have been some minor renovations, CDSB isn't committing to major renovations until there's recommendations from their architects.
Two firms have been hired for planning and design work. The estimated cost for the consulting services is $35,000.
Carriere said the firms were asked to provide feedback on alternative plans within the contracts.