Doug Ford to ban safe injection sites within 200 metres of schools and child-care centres

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 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, adding “the cycle of addiction is not being broken by using drug consumption sites.”
Jones said Queen’s Park will spend $378 million on 19 new “Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment” (HART) hubs with 375 supportive housing units as well as addiction recovery and treatment beds.
The new HART facilities, designed to help thousands of people transition to long-term housing annually, will not offer supervised drug consumption or safe supply of narcotics or needle exchange programs.
Ford, who has spoken candidly in the past about the ravages of addiction in his own family, has said he’s “not sold on these safe injection sites that are in neighbourhoods and needles are all flowing around — it’s a haven for drug dealers.” 
Angela Robertson, executive director at Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre, warned the decision could result in the deaths of drug users who would otherwise survive.
“If any of those people had overdosed in a public washroom or another place without immediate response, they likely would have died,” said Robertson, adding the two sites she oversees reversed 766 overdoses last year.
The zoning changes are not a surprise — Ford has privately wondered to aides why CTS locations shouldn’t face at least the same restrictions as provincially regulated cannabis stores, which under Ontario law must be at least 150 metres from schools.
Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said “of course these sites should not be next to schools.”
“But it is so important we find smart, compassionate solutions to helping our loved ones and neighbours fight these challenges,” Crombie said Tuesday.
“For too many of our families — including my own — we have raw personal connections to the addictions and mental-health crisis,” she said, noting Ford “having to scramble to make changes” after dismantling the previous Liberal administration’s “opioid emergency task force as soon as he formed government.”
Crombie said “Doug Ford is taking away more services (and) he needs to be clear on how they will maintain the capacity required to provide treatment to those who need it.”
NDP MPP France Gélinas (Nickel Belt) blasted the premier’s reforms.
“Not a single community in our province is asking the government to take away existing resources and programs,” said Gélinas.
“This government is cynically attacking health infrastructure and putting ideology over evidence. It’s time to fund the treatments and support programs we need so we can stop the loss of life,” she said.
Green Leader Mike Schreiner said, “Make no mistake — Ontario will lose more lives because of this government’s attack on harm reduction services.”
Toronto’s first supervised consumption service opened in 2017 and there are now 10 here, mostly downtown. Five CTS centres that receive provincial funding are affected.
All the facilities require an exemption to the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act granted by Health Canada.
The City of Toronto has been supportive of safe injection sites, pointing to studies showing the facilities save lives because they prevent overdoses while reducing the spread of disease and helping drug users access social services and treatment.
While Mayor Olivia Chow backs them, she welcomed the provincial review of the 17 CTS facilities that Queen’s Park announced last August, weeks after the shooting death of Huebner-Makurat.
The mother of two was killed by a stray bullet outside the South Riverdale Community Health Centre CTS in July 2023.
Two men were arrested and charged and a third suspect is believed to have fled Canada after the shooting. The men were in a dispute at Queen Street East and Carlaw Avenue when she was shot.
“We need a place where it’s safe inside, but it’s also safe outside. The residents deserve no less,” Chow said at the time.
Her office said Tuesday she “welcomes new funding for treatment and supportive housing” but “is concerned that the closure of existing harm reduction services in Toronto will have significant consequences, such as increased overdose deaths, greater strain on first responders and emergency rooms, and more public drug consumption.”
There have been complaints about increases in robberies and other property crimes as well as assaults in the vicinity of some of the sites.
Jones said there were 113 per cent higher reports of assaults near these sites in Toronto, violent crime was up 146 per cent near an Ottawa CTS, and “homicide was 450 per cent higher near Hamilton’s Urban Core site.”
After Huebner-Makurat’s death, Leslieville residents Jeri Brown and Andrea Nickel organized a townhall meeting with residents to voice their concerns with authorities. 
Upon hearing the news Tuesday, Brown said she hoped there would be adequate supports for people who need help in the area.
“There is no way that a site like that should ever have been open that close to school. The fact that nobody seemed to have considered that when they were making this decision to open is obviously concerning, and we saw the consequences of that last summer,” she said.
Nickel said she was “pleasantly surprised” the Ontario government has acted on community concerns.
“It’s really wonderful to see the Ford government and many health officials listening to community concerns and to the reasonable ask of balancing community safety — specifically kids’ safety — with the delivery of addiction programs,” said Nickel.
Coun. Dianne Saxe, whose University-Rosedale ward hosts a Kensington Market site that will close, said she’s received many complaints about open narcotics use, as well as condoms and drug paraphernalia being left in a nearby schoolyard. 
But she said it’s just as likely those problems are related to a homeless encampment in Bellevue Square Park, down the street from the supervised consumption facility on Augusta Avenue.
Along with Kensington, South Riverdale and Parkdale’s Bathurst Street facility, the Regent Park Community Health Centre on Dundas Street East and the Toronto Public Health facility on Victoria Street will close.
Parkdale’s Queen Street West site will remain operational as will the Fred Victor facility on Jarvis Street, the Moss Park CTS on Sherbourne Street, Casey House on Isabella Street and Street Health on Dundas Street East.
Dan Werb, an associate professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, said the only way supervised consumption sites can operate is “if there’s sufficient community support for them.”
Research co-authored by Werb and published in the Lancet earlier this year found a two-thirds reduction in overdose deaths in neighbourhoods within 500 metres of the sites.
He warned closing the facilities will “undoubtedly” lead to more people dying and argued the province should instead be increasing funding to the facilities to ensure those who use them can be connected to social supports that can improve their lives.
According to preliminary figures released by Toronto Public Health earlier this year, 523 people died from opioid toxicity in the city in 2023.
That’s a 74 per cent increase from the 301 deaths in 2019. 
At the six CTS provincially funded sites, there have been 7,444 non-fatal overdoses since 2017 with trained staff supervising drug consumption.
With files from Raju Mudhar