North Shore Succeeds in HART Hub Lottery
Two drug and homelessness recovery centers to open as soon as possible
A Shore Report special edition for paid subscribers.
Sault Ste Marie Mayor, Matthew Shoemaker at HART Hub announcement — image courtesy the mayor’s Facebook page
December’s Shore Report covered Sault Ste Marie Mayor, Matthew Shoemaker’s campaign to land one of 18 new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs following on the provincial government’s announced closure of certain supervised drug consumption sites designed to mitigate the dangers of the opioid and street drugs crisis.
Sault MPP Ross Romano announced Monday, January 27th that recovery Hubs would be coming to downtown Sault Ste Marie and a series of satellite locations serving North Shore First Nation communities.
Upwards of $6 million has been earmarked to create Sault Ste Marie’s Hub from existing facilities. The Community Resource Centre will operate in the city, while Maamwesying North Shore Community Health Services will cover the shore, utilizing and linking existing facilities and creating new ones where required. The Hart Hubs initiative is part of the province’s larger Roadmap to Wellness Addictions Recovery Fund that plans to spend hundreds of millions in coming years to address the ongoing addictions crisis.
Ontario opioid mortality stats courtesy Public Health Ontario
As noted in our earlier report, Sault Ste Marie currently has the province’s highest mortality rate for opioid toxicity. And while news of the HART Hubs is being welcomed by the municipal governments receiving them, not everyone agrees with the change in approach to the drug addiction crisis.
A Toronto social services agency, The Neighbourhood Group, has launched a legal challenge to the Ford government’s legislation (introduced last year) banning supervised drug consumption sites located near schools and daycare centers in communities throughout the province. Hart Hubs will not provide safe consumption services for addicts, a fact many believe will cause an increase in public exposure to drug consumption.
The closing of these existing sites has been heavily criticized by those on the frontlines. A recent Canadian Press story quotes Toronto doctor Dr. Ahmed Bayoumi, lead author for a study by St. Michael’s Hospital’s MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions.
“It'll likely mean more unsupervised drug use, so more overdoses," said Dr. Bayoumi.
According to coroner statistics gathered by the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network (ODPRN), there were 254 “suspect drug-related deaths” in the province in September 2024 alone, and 850 in the three months prior. These numbers represent “a 91% increase from the same time period five years ago (June 2019 – September 2019).”
Recent media reports indicate the Ford government has hired private investigators to gather evidence concerning the consumption sites in order to prepare their defence in the Neighbourhood Group lawsuit. In a current television commercial, Premier Doug Ford appears to be doing some early election campaigning on the promise of closing safe consumption sites, and switching to the treatment model exemplified by HART Hubs.
Take the informal Shore Report poll below, and have your say.