Reports urged province to keep safe drug site open

Queen St. E. facility offers needed service, two reviews found in wake of shooting

- DAVID RIDER

Toronto’s South Riverdale Community Health Centre, near where mother-of-two Karolina HuebnerMakurat was killed by a stray bullet last summer, will close after Premier Doug Ford announced that safe injection sites must be 200 metres away from schools and child-care centres.

The Ford government had two provincially commissioned reports strongly urging continued safe drug consumption services at a Queen Street East health centre when it announced rules that will halt the service and close nine other such sites across Ontario.

Health Minister Sylvia Jones referred to the July 2023 gunfire slaying of a Leslieville mother outside the South Riverdale Community Health Centre while announcing the changes Tuesday, citing a need especially to protect children. She did not mention the studies she has received in recent months, quietly posted online Monday, that affirm the community value of safe consumption and harm reduction.

Premier Doug Ford had voiced strong opposition to allowing supervised drug use, with medical supports to reverse possible overdoses and expose users to treatment options and other health services, before Jones revealed that any such sites within 200 metres of a school or child-care centre must close by March 31.

Four more of Toronto’s 10 sites are set to shut, along with others in Hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener, Ottawa and Thunder Bay.

Last year, after the stray-bullet slaying of Karolina (Caroline) Huebner-Makurat on Queen Street, Jones’s ministry ordered a review of the South Riverdale site and its safe consumption services by Jill Campbell, the centre’s provincially appointed supervisor, plus an external review by Unity Health Toronto, “as a means of identifying opportunities for improvement.”