Regional councillor calls on province to reverse 'heartless' decision to close consumption and treatment sites
CBC
A Region of Waterloo councillor is calling on the province to continue to fund consumption and treatment sites.
Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced last month the province would close 10 sites that are considered to be too close to schools or day cares. That includes sites in Kitchener and Guelph.
Regional Coun. Rob Deutschmann plans to bring forward a notice of motion to Tuesday's community and health services committee meeting to ask the province to continue to fund the sites.
"It doesn't make sense to me as to why they would decide to shut down the consumption and treatment sites, especially when you consider the Kitchener sites been operating so successfully for a number of years," Deutschmann told CBC News.
"On a whim — to me it seems like a whim — they've decided to go in a completely different direction."
The province has announced it will switch focus to homelessness and addiction recovery treatment, or HART hubs. HART hubs won't include a safe consumption aspect, Jones said.
"Continuing to enable people to use drugs is not a pathway to treatment," Jones said when she announced the hubs at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in August.
Municipalities that currently have consumption and treatment sites can apply to have a new HART hub. Those applications are expected to be reviewed in October although Jones has not yet provided a timeline for when the HART hubs would open.
Deutschmann's notice of motion also calls on the province to continue with their plans for the HART hubs. But he says the HART hubs won't help people who are addicted and not yet ready for treatment.
"I consider it a cold and heartless decision to shut down these CTS sites and not have any alternative prevention other than the HART hub, which I don't think is going to deal with the injection issue and inhalation," he said.
"The idea is to try to save lives for as long as we can to get people to the point of where they want to voluntarily get treatment, because involuntary treatment doesn't work, is expensive, it's a waste of money and people relapse."
He says he's raising the issue because he feels like it's been a "rushed process."
"Anytime there's a rushed process, the outcomes are potentially questionable," he said. "Let's get it right. Let's take our time because this is a problem that was decades in the making."
The Region of Waterloo and the Guelph Community Health Centre are currently in the process of applying to have a HART hub.
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