Regional councillor calls on province to reverse 'heartless' decision to close consumption and treatment sites

A Region of Waterloo councillor is calling on the province to continue to fund consumption and treatment sites.

Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced last month the province would close 10 sites that are considered to be too close to schools or day cares. That includes sites in Kitchener and Guelph.

Regional Coun. Rob Deutschmann plans to bring forward a notice of motion to Tuesday's community and health services committee meeting to ask the province to continue to fund the sites.

"It doesn't make sense to me as to why they would decide to shut down the consumption and treatment sites, especially when you consider the Kitchener sites been operating so successfully for a number of years," Deutschmann told CBC News.

"On a whim — to me it seems like a whim — they've decided to go in a completely different direction."

'The idea is to try to save lives'

The province has announced it will switch focus to homelessness and addiction recovery treatment, or HART hubs. HART hubs won't include a safe consumption aspect, Jones said.

"Continuing to enable people to use drugs is not a pathway to treatment," Jones said when she announced the hubs at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in August.

Municipalities that currently have consumption and treatment sites can apply to have a new HART hub. Those applications are expected to be reviewed in October although Jones has not yet provided a timeline for when the HART hubs would open.

Deutschmann's notice of motion also calls on the province to continue with their plans for the HART hubs. But he says the HART hubs won't help people who are addicted and not yet ready for treatment.

"I consider it a cold and heartless decision to shut down these CTS sites and not have any alternative prevention other than the HART hub, which I don't think is going to deal with the injection issue and inhalation," he said.

"The idea is to try to save lives for as long as we can to get people to the point of where they want to voluntarily get treatment, because involuntary treatment doesn't work, is expensive, it's a waste of money and people relapse."

He says he's raising the issue because he feels like it's been a "rushed process."

"Anytime there's a rushed process, the outcomes are potentially questionable," he said. "Let's get it right. Let's take our time because this is a problem that was decades in the making."

Motion supported by local group

An advocacy group called the Waterloo Region Drug Action Team has written an open letter to regional councillors saying the group supports Deutschmann's motion.

The group says consumption and treatment sites were never meant to solve the addictions crisis.

"Literally no one has ever claimed that supervised consumption services are the single, required solution or are capable of serving a large portion of residents consuming unregulated drugs," the open letter posted to the social media website X says. The letter was also sent to councillors in the agenda package for Tuesday's meeting.

"It is difficult to fathom defunding an intervention proven to work during what is, by any measure, a public health emergency of historical proportions."

The group says the region should also look at other options, including the federal urgent public health need sites program. Health Canada's website describes these sites as "temporary spaces where people can consume drugs under supervision, to reduce risk of overdose death."

Applying for HART hubs

The Region of Waterloo and the Guelph Community Health Centre are currently in the process of applying to have a HART hub.

Melissa Kwiatkowski, chief executive officer of the Guelph Community Health Centre, told CBC News it's too early in the process to comment on the hubs and what they could potentially mean for the community.

In an interview last month, Julie Kalbfleisch, director of fundraising and communications for Sanguen Health Centre which runs Kitchener's site, said she is interested in hearing more about the HART hubs and what that could mean for the community.

"We are wondering where we fit into that because there will be folks who will continue to not be ready to access treatment but still need and deserve to have access to healthcare," she said.

"A lot of what HART hubs would be offering are what you already see at the CTS, so primary care, mental health services, addiction care and support, connections to social services and employment support."