Court to hear Charter challenge of Ontario's supervised consumption site law

An Ontario court will hear arguments Monday from a Toronto supervised consumption site challenging the legality of a new provincial law that will soon shut down 10 such sites and prevent new ones from opening.

The province passed legislation last year that banned consumption sites deemed too close to schools or daycares. The Neighbourhood Group, which runs the Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site in downtown Toronto, launched a lawsuit in December along with two people who use the space.

"Safe consumption sites are not a perfect solution, but they are part of the solution," the group's lawyer, Carlo Di Carlo, said in an interview.

"It's something that will minimize deaths and the spread of infectious disease and that will allow people to continue their fight to recover. And so that's what's at stake for not only our individual applicants, but anybody else throughout Ontario who's in that position."

The group points to evidence that the 10 sites have never had a death and have reversed several thousand overdoses.

The province is moving to an abstinence-based treatment model. Ten consumption sites will cease operations by April 1, when new rules take effect banning them within 200 metres of schools and daycares under the Community Care and Recovery Act.

Nine of those consumption sites will be converted to homelessness and addiction recovery treatment hubs, or HART hubs as the province refers to them. Ontario has also approved 18 new hubs across the province.

The province is investing $529 million into the plan that includes 540 highly supportive housing units.

Public health officials and harm reduction workers have warned that overdoses, deaths and calls to emergency services will increase after the supervised consumption sites close. However, Health Minister Sylvia Jones said last summer that no one will die as a result of the policy shift.

The legal challenge being heard this week argues the new law violates both the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution, including the right to life, liberty and security of the person.

Closing supervised consumption sites violates that right by forcing people who use them to resort to unhealthy and unsafe drug consumption, which carries a higher risk of death from overdose and increases the risk of criminal prosecution, the challenge argues.

It also argues the legislation goes against the division of powers between Ottawa and provinces, in that only the federal government can make criminal law and try to suppress what it considers a "socially undesirable practice."

The government ordered reviews of 17 consumption sites across the province following the killing of a Toronto woman who was hit by a stray bullet in a shooting near one of the sites. Karolina Huebner-Makurat was walking through her southeast Toronto neighbourhood of Leslieville on July 7, 2023, when she was shot as a fight broke out between three alleged drug dealers outside the South Riverdale Community Health Centre.

The province argues in a document filed in court that there is increased crime and disorder in the immediate vicinity of supervised consumption sites and that the sites themselves attract drug dealers. It points to eyewitness accounts from people who live and work near the sites as proof of the chaos.