Windsor advocates rally at Queen's Park for funding to reopen SafePoint

Published May 28, 2024 • 2 minute read

The SafePoint Consumption and Treatment Service site in downtown Windsor is shown on Oct. 6, 2023. It was closed at the end of the year pending a provincial review of such facilities. Photo by Dan Janisse /Windsor Star

The future of SafePoint remains in limbo five months after shuttering its doors, but a group of advocates from Windsor joined a rally at Queen’s Park on Tuesday to change that.

Roughly 10 members of the Windsor CTS Advocacy Coalition joined groups from across the province to demand immediate funding from the Ontario government for supervised consumption services sites.

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The goal, according to Kathy Moreland, a member of Windsor’s group whose son died from a fentanyl overdose in 2020, is “to bring to the legislature’s attention that safe consumption services are an important part of harm reduction and saving lives, and to push the government for a decision to reopen the sites that have already closed and to fast track the applications.”

The provincial government has “paused” applications for new sites and withheld funding for certain existing facilities, including Windsor and Sudbury’s, forcing them to shutter.

Moreland called the province’s position — that they are awaiting the conclusion of a critical incident review of a fatal shooting outside a Toronto CTS site — insufficient during a “toxic drug crisis.”

“Supporting safe consumption sites does not mean you condone illicit drug use or the behaviours that go with it,” said Moreland, who is also a member of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario.

“It means that you recognize that the drug supply is excruciatingly toxic, and that all life is valuable. And that it’s going to take people changing their opinion for politicians to have the courage to make the changes they need to make.”

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More than 70 groups signed an open letter in March urging the Ministry of Health to provide emergency funding to reopen sites and prevent further closures.

Months have passed with no response from Minister of Health Sylvia Jones or Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Michael Tibollo, according to a press release from Friends of Ontario SCS.

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