Kitchener city council will vote on motion tonight that calls on the province to halt the defunding and closure of 150 Duke St. as the region's only safe consumption and harm reduction location.
The province announced last month that it will be closing 10 CTS sites around Ontario next April, including the only one in the region located in Kitchener.
In their place, the province offered a Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub project to offer a suite of services to patients looking for support.
These hubs will have a mental health and addictions supportive housing component. However, advocates and members of regional council believe these hubs should be an addition, not a replacement.
"The province’s HART hubs are unequivocally no substitute for a consumption service. The people of this region deserve both and deserve more relief than is currently offered by the province," said the Waterloo Region Drug Action Team (WRDAT) in a press release.
The drug action team notes they are local volunteers with significant drug-related expertise and experience, "guided by evidence and the wisdom of community."
Despite claims from provincial and municipal politicians that these models will be cheaper to run than a CTS, WRDAT maintains that the CTS closure, and the absence of a funded alternative will result in deaths, injuries and other harms immediately.
"The additional burden on emergency services, non-profit staff, and health systems is universally unwelcome and unnecessarily more expensive," they wrote.
During last Wednesday's regional Council meeting, Coun. Rob Deutschmann tabled a motion calling on the province to support the CTS site in Kitchener. Cambridge Mayor Jan Liggett and Mayor of Wilmot Natasha Salonen voted against the motion.
The motion carried.
"These are facilities like the Kitchener CTS that have been developed through extensive review, preparation and collaboration leading to successful implementation. The Kitchener one has been operating effectively for years," said Deutschmann.
At the location in Kitchener, Sanguen, the organization managing the site, noted they have reversed over 1,000 overdoses and serviced 50,000 visits over the past five years.
Liggett, however, noted there is no point in trying to convince the province to reverse its decision and believes the region, along with its partners, need to focus on getting services into the HART Hubs.
"We need to get passed this decision of the government to close the CTS and really focus on what they are offering us, because this is where the solutions lie," she said.
Instead, the region will now urge the Ontario government to continue funding all existing consumption and treatment sites beyond their proposed end dates of March 2025. The message will be shared with the premier, ministers of health and finance as well as municipalities operating consumption and treatment sites.
"Safe consumption sites have helped to prevent thousands of drug overdose deaths. Their closure would put additional strain on emergency services and the healthcare system," wrote the region in a press release.
Kitchener will now follow suit and their councillors will be put to the same vote with a very similar motion.
The WRDAT will also be delegating at the Kitchener meeting and are hopeful the province will change their tune on the "life-saving" service.
"The WRDAT supports evidence-based policy making and rejects the radical, fact-free,opinion-based drug policies of Ontario’s P.C. government implicated in more than 21,000 overdose deaths since their election in 2018," said the organization in the release. "Defunding a life-saving service with proven results during a raging public health emergency benefits no one."
The drug action team also noted the province’s own review of the CTS sites did not recommend defunding CTS sites.
"We note the recommendations of sustaining if not expanding consumption services, from Ontario's chief medical officer of health to the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police to the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario to the Ontario Medical Association and many, many more entities over many years."
