CMHA and North Bay Regional Health Centre to expand to offer new addiction treatment beds

Ontario Health has awarded funding to the North Bay Regional Health Centre (NBRHC) and the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) in North Bay, Ont., to provide addiction treatment and support for 39 new beds out of 53, initially allocated to Canadore College.

This comes almost three years after North Bay MPP Vic Fedeli announced more than $6 million would go toward the college establishing 53 beds at a Northern Ontario Addictions Recovery Centre of Excellence.

Renovations to a former car dealership on Lakeshore Drive were underway for the centre.

But last November, the province announced it had "lost confidence" in the college's ability to deliver and said it would find other service providers.

The new arrangement has funding given to the hospital for nine additional beds for people in withdrawal.

CMHA North Bay and District will receive funding to handle the additional treatment and supportive residential beds.

Mary Davis, CEO of CMHA North Bay and District, said once a person is discharged from hospital, the individual will go to the 90-day treatment facility. The existing building on Oak Street will be expanded to accommodate the 10 new beds.

Once treatment is finished there, Davis said, clients will go to supportive housing, of which there are 20 new spaces that will be incorporated into existing facilities.

That program, she said, can run up to two years.

Davis said the CMHA works well with the hospital and will be able to offer a continuum of care.

"There's aftercare, transitional recovery housing and we also have addiction supportive housing case managers, we have two of them," she said. "So it really is about the pathway from withdrawal management through treatment and then the aftercare and and just supporting people after they've been in residential treatment."

She said the additional 14 beds are still under discussion.

Details of the funding for the 39 beds is being worked out. The new beds are set to open at the end of March.

As for the building that was supposed to be the Northern Ontario Addictions Recovery Centre of Excellence on Lakeshore Drive, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health said it wasn't owned by the government, and a spokesperson for Canadore College said she doesn't know who owns it.