Windsor's drug consumption, treatment site application won't move forward: provincial government

Windsor's first-ever drug consumption and treatment site, SafePoint, won't be reopening its doors, according to the provincial government. 

On Tuesday, provincial health minister Sylvia Jones said the government would ban supervised drug consumption and treatment sites (CTS) that are close to schools and daycares, and that it would not be approving any new ones. That includes Windsor's SafePoint, which closed at the end of December 2023 as it was waiting on approval from the provincial government.

Supervised consumption sites allow people to use drugs under supervision to reduce the risk of overdose.

Conservative MPP for Essex, Anthony Leardi, told CBC News that Windsor's site won't be moving forward. 

"There will be no new injection sites," said Leardi, who is also the parliamentary assistant for the minister of health. 

"What this means specifically for Windsor is that the application that was on file for an injection site ... will not be allowed to proceed." 

Leardi added that the government doesn't want to encourage drug use or trafficking and wants to ensure that people move toward recovery. 

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) had opened SafePoint at Goyeau and Wyandotte Street East in April 2023 after it got federal approval to operate as an urgent public health needs site. 

The health unit had decided to temporarily fund the site, until it could get provincial approval. 

But, it's application was held up for more than a year, and WECHU could no longer budget for it. The application was stalled, along with others in the province, as the government undertook an Ontario-wide review of all sites following a shooting near a CTS in Toronto in August 2023. 

The WECHU was not available for comment Tuesday. 

Advocate says more people will die in Windsor without CTS 

After hearing the news today, one of the members of a local CTS advocacy coalition Rielly McLaren says he felt his heart "sink into my gut." 

"I know this going to lead to more grieving families, more funerals, more supporting families who have lost loved ones to overdoses and drug poisonings," said McLaren, who is also a pastor at Windsor Mennonite Fellowship. 

Early coroner's data shows that 128 people in Windsor-Essex died from a drug-related cause last year. 

The government said it wants to focus on treatment, rather than providing people with spaces to safely consume substances as that encourages drug use. 

But McLaren says that people who are dead can't get into recovery or treatment.

The government also says that several sites in the province have high crime rates, but McLaren says they cannot attribute the crime to the CTS sites. 

"These sites exist where the problems already are," said McLaren. 

"[The government] is falsely attributing these urban issues to the sites themselves and I think that's very dishonest." 

While Windsor's site was operational, five overdoses were reversed. 

Government wants to switch CTS sites to addiction treatment hubs

Instead of having CTS sites, the provincial government says instead it will give $378 million to fund 19 new Homelessness and Addictions Recovery Treatment (HART) hubs. It emphasized that these spaces will not be about safe drug consumption or supplying people with drug equipment, rather they will focus on treatment. 

In particular, these spaces will provide more recovery treatment beds. 

Municipalities that want a HART hub will have to apply to the province.