Northern Ontario communities compete for limited number of funded HART hubs

There are at least six applications in northern Ontario to host Homelessness and Addictions Recovery Treatment (HART) hubs funded by the province.

In August, Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced the province would set aside $378 million to run 19 HART Hubs — 10 are due to open by next winter.

In the same announcement, Jones said Ontario would ban supervised drug consumption sites located within 200 metres of schools and child-care centres.

That means 10 supervised consumption sites across Ontario will have to shutter their doors by March 2025. 

Jones said the HART hubs will offer drug treatment and recovery services, along with on-site referral to shelter and transitional housing services.But they won't have supervised consumption services, and won't be a place where people can access a safe drug supply.

"Continuing to enable people to use drugs is not a pathway to treatment," said Jones at a press conference in August.

She added that communities losing supervised consumption sites will get priority when the province chooses where to locate the 19 HART hubs.

6 potential sites in the north

In northern Ontario, the cities of Sudbury, North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins and Thunder Bay have all applied to receive funding for one of the 19 sites. Communities in the East Algoma region have also banded together for an application to have a site in the small city of Elliot Lake.

Mary Margaret Fuller, executive director of the Counselling Centre of East Algoma, said the application would serve around 35,000 people spread out along the north shore of Lake Huron.

"As much as mayors speak about the larger centres struggling, and that is absolutely true, it is also absolutely true in smaller communities and in rural communities," she said.

"And so we need the local resources to be able to support those individuals and to create the prevention, as well as the intervention and the aftercare for those individuals."

Thunder Bay currently has a supervised consumption site that will close by March due to its proximity to a school. That would give it priority to receive $6.3 million in annual funding from the province to run a HART hub.

Both Sudbury and Timmins had supervised consumption sites but they closed their doors due to a lack of funding in March and August, respectively.

Timmins Mayor Michelle Boileau said her city started brainstorming around ideas similar to the HART hubs a few years ago.

"We have limited mental health and addictions treatment capacity at the moment. And so we know that we need to work on increasing our capacity here," she said.

"I don't know if I would say that the need is greater compared to, you know, counterparts in Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury. We're all facing significant challenges."

High opioid death rates

Northern Ontario cities have among the highest rates of opioid-related deaths in the province.

According to the Office of the Chief Coroner, Sault Ste. Marie had the highest rate with 64.2 opioid-related deaths per 100,000 population in the first two quarters of 2024.

Thunder Bay was second on the list, with an opioid related death rate of 59.6 per 100,000 population. Timmins, North Bay and Sudbury also have among the highest opioid related death rates in Ontario. The three cities are at or above 45 opioid related deaths per 100,000 population.

Kirkland Lake Mayor Stacy Wight said the homelessness and addiction crisis doesn't just affect the larger cities in northern Ontario.

"In a small community, these people are not just faceless among the crowd. These are people that perhaps you've gone to school with, that you were raised and grew up with, people that you've worked with previously," she said.

Wight said Kirkland Lake did not submit an application for a HART hub because it's difficult to compete with bigger municipalities for one of the 19 spots.

She said the province should set aside a separate stream of funding for communities with less than 10,000 people to help them deal with the same issues.

Karla Ghartey, a community health nurse and assistant professor at Nipissing University, who researches harm reduction, said HART hubs can't solve the province's drug crisis on their own.

"We also need to look at all the other aspects that are fueling this drug toxicity crisis," she said. 

"The lack of housing is a huge component, but that still doesn't deal with the toxicity of the drug supply. That still doesn't deal with the lack of harm reduction… We're still going to lose lives in our community."

Ghartey was part of a group that started an unsanctioned supervised drug consumption site in Sudbury before the sanctioned site called The Spot opened. That site later closed when funding ran out.

Communities could learn if their bids to host a HART hub are successful as early as next spring.