Ford to ban safe drug sites near schools

Health advocates and critics predict more overdose deaths

- ROBERT BENZIE, BEN SPURR AND DAVID RIDER

Premier Doug Ford’s government announced Tuesday that 10 of the 17 safe injection sites across Ontario will be shuttered by March 31, five of which are in Toronto. Health Minister Sylvia Jones said Queen’s Park will spend $378 million on 19 new “Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment” hubs.

Premier Doug Ford is closing most safe injection sites by forcing them 200 metres away from schools and daycares while boosting provincial supports for addiction treatment.

In a change to supervised consumption rules criticized by some health advocates, who predict more overdose deaths, and hailed by local residents fed up with drug dealers, 10 of 17 sites across Ontario will be shuttered by March 31.

Five of those are in Toronto, including Leslieville’s South Riverdale Community Health Centre, near where mother-of-two Karolina Huebner-Makurat was killed by a stray bullet last summer in a crime that shocked the city.

Consumption and treatment service (CTS) sites in Hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener, Ottawa and Thunder Bay will also close.

“The status quo of drug consumption sites is not working,” Health Minister Sylvia Jones said Tuesday at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference in Ottawa.

“Parents are worried about discarded needles that their children could pick up. Some parents no longer feel comfortable sending their children to the local elementary school or have pulled them out of their local daycare,” said Jones, whose measures were applauded by some AMO delegates.

“Businesses and communities are concerned about disruptive behaviour that increases crime around drug consumption sites that impact their livelihoods,” she said.

“The cycle of addiction is not being broken by using drug consumption sites,” Jones added.