Officials plead with province to provide timeline for SafePoint decision

Five months after SafePoint opened, how the supervised consumption and treatment site (CTS) will be funded in the future is up in the air after the province said it's hitting pause on reviewing new site applications.

In August, the Ministry of Health said all of the province's CTS sites would face a review after a fatal shooting near a site in Toronto.

"The unfortunate incident in Toronto has caused a pause for the province, but we still need to know...where we're at and more specifically, how long this review is going to take," Fabio Costante, chair of the Board of Health for Windsor-Essex, said at a press conference on Friday afternoon.

The Windsor CTS site, which has been open since late April, costs about $700,000 to run per year.

The site is primarily funded through the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit's (WECHU) budget. WECHU expected to temporarily cover the costs while it awaited word on the status of its application to the provincial government that was sent more than a year ago.

The board wrote to the minister of health this week asking for a timeline on that application, Costante said.

Costante said the board needs answers because it will be discussing its budget — and how to pay for the site going forward — next month.

Without answers, Costante says all options on are on the table. 

"If we don't get any certainty from the ministry, the board of health is going have to make a decision on Nov. 20 in light of that," he said. "And I can only say to you that the board of health will make a responsible decision for our community, for our stakeholders."

The push to open a CTS in Windsor dates back about seven years, amid a surge in opioid overdoses and deaths.

SafePoint initially opened with federal approval as what's called an "urgent public health needs site." In addition to providing a supervised space for people to use drugs, it also provides other supports including connections to addictions services. 

Costante says it has been a success, with month-over-month increases in usership.

SafePoint has seen 600 total users since opening, and 149 or so diverted to other social services.

Last year, 105 people died of opioid overdoses in Windsor-Essex and five additional deaths are still waiting confirmation, according to provincial data. That's an increase of at least 20 deaths from 2021.