With the looming closures of Ottawa’s two remaining supervised consumption sites, some people who use drugs and want help ingesting them safely are heading across the river to Quebec.
“We started to see an increase big time,” said Adrien St-Onge, co-ordinator of the supervised consumption site at 194 rue Eddy in Gatineau.
It’s operated by the Bureau régional d’action sida or BRAS Outaouais and opened at its current location in late 2022, becoming one of two sites offering supervised consumption services in western Quebec’s largest city.
Of the 850 visits to BRAS Outaouais this April and May, 120 were clients from Ottawa, said St-Onge.
The organization receives $300,000 annually from Santé Québec to run the supervised consumption site, which operates seven hours a day, seven days a week.
The province is kicking in another $650,000 to renovate the building, which is being upgraded and expanded to include an inhalation room and a place for clients to relax.
The supervised consumption site on rue Eddy in Gatineau, Que., is operated by Bureau régional d’action sida or BRAS Outaouais and opened at its current location in late 2022. (Submitted by Adrien St-Onge)
The Ontario government has been pulling back from supervised consumption sites for a number of years, first by converting sites near schools and daycares into treatment centres called Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs.
More recently, the province announced it’s pulling all funding for any remaining supervised consumption sites.
People are coming to get gear because they’re having a hard time finding it in Ottawa.- Janick Allyson, CIPTO
There are two sites left in Ottawa: at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre and at a trailer operated by Ottawa Inner City Health at the Shepherds of Good Hope in the ByWard Market. Both are expected to run out of funding and close by June 13.
“We were scared and sadly, disappointed,” said St-Onge about the pending closures.
Ontario’s Ministry of Health has defended its decision to cut funding for supervised consumption sites, even as public officials in Ottawa have warned of dire consequences.
“Instead of giving people tools to use harmful, illegal drugs, our government is helping people break the tragic cycle of drug addiction by making record investments in more mental health and wrap-around supports,” the ministry said in a statement last week.
The ministry noted it’s investing $560 million to build 29 HART Hubs in communities across Ontario, “replacing the failed approach of drug injection sites.”
(Rebecca Zandbergen/CBC)
Mobile site responds to service calls
In a parking lot just down the road from 194 rue Eddy is a second supervised consumption service in Gatineau — a white van recently retrofitted to allow people to both inject and inhale drugs.
“We have people of all walks of life who are using drugs with us,” said Janick Allyson, with Centre d’intervention et de prévention en toxicomanie de l’Outaouais (CIPTO).
The mobile service’s clients include federal bureaucrats and hospital workers, she said.
CIPTO serves six or seven people each evening, when staff operate the van and respond to calls for service. They also deliver consumption gear — syringes, PVC tubes and straws for inhaling — and can test people’s drugs before they consume them.
“So we can tell people what we can find in their drugs and then we can adapt their usage with what they know about what they’re getting,” said Allyson.
Santé Québec covered the $100,000 bill to purchase and retrofit the van, and also pays $300,000 to run the program each year.
Allyson is bracing for an influx of clients from Ottawa after the remaining sites there close down.
“It’s going to up the demand on the Gatineau side of things because people need those services,” she said. “Right now people are coming to get gear because they’re having a hard time finding it in Ottawa, which we know is bad news for HIV and disease transmission.”
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