‘We’re not rushing into this’: province will take its time to get supervised drug consumption site open

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This article was published 10/12/2023 (662 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The provincial government supports opening a supervised consumption site to save Manitobans from toxic overdose deaths but can’t say if it will take months or years to get one operating.

“We want to make sure that we do it right and we’re not rushing into this,” Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith said Friday.

“We know it’s a life-or-death situation and it’s something we’re working really hard on.”

The Point Douglas MLA lost a cousin and a brother-in-law to overdose deaths.

“We know that a supervised consumption site is needed. We’ve heard that resoundingly and that’s a priority for our government,” she told the Free Press.

The former Progressive Conservative government flatly rejected supervised consumption sites and evidence indicating they save lives, saying it would rather focus its support on addictions treatment.

As overdose deaths linked to a toxic drug supply climbed in Manitoba, the PCs dismissed urgent calls from harm-reduction advocates and then-opposition NDP for establishing a supervised consumption site.

Although the NDP is in power and has the will and the means, setting up a site is not that simple, said Smith, whose ministerial mandate is to establish a facility in downtown Winnipeg to save lives and connect people with health-care and social supports.

“We’re listening to everyone and making sure we’re getting everyone’s voice heard, including right across the province,” she said.

Because the previous government didn’t support the idea, she said the NDP is starting from scratch.

“We’re coming into this at ground zero,” she said, adding the facility will not be a revolving-door drop-in supervised consumption facility that doesn’t offer more help.

“We need to make sure we are saving lives in this province,” said Smith.

“With my brother-in-law, it was the yo-yo effect; he was in and out of treatment three times and he ended up passing away.”

Connecting people with social assistance, housing and primary care are the kinds of supports she envisions for the site.

“We want to make sure we have all of the supports under one roof,” she said.

Smith said she has visited facilities in Calgary and Vancouver and is consulting with local agencies and organizations including Nine Circles Community Health Centre, Main Street Project and Sunshine House.

She’s also seeking guidance from people who have substance-use disorders.

“They’re the experts,” the minister said.

Sunshine House executive director Levi Foy told the Free Press that the challenges harm-reduction agencies face have changed now that there’s a more receptive government in place.

“I think, in a perfect world, we’d have a brick-and-mortar overdose-prevention site in six to eight months,” Foy said.

The community drop-in and resource centre operates Manitoba’s first Mobile Overdose Prevention Site.

Foy recalled the growing pains and learning experiences that came with setting up the MOPS out of an RV manufactured for camping — not a lot of foot traffic in a Winnipeg winter — with a federal exemption and no provincial funding or support.

One of MOPS goals — aside from saving lives in the ongoing toxic-drug crisis — was to gather information and develop best practices for future supervised consumption sites in Winnipeg, said Jenny Henkelman, Sunshine House communications co-ordinator.

The organization is keen to share its findings with whatever agency operates Winnipeg’s site, she said.

Establishing an appropriate location and converting the space to serve its purpose will take time and resolve, Foy said.

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“There’s always going to be some sort of political pushback,” he said.

“One of the things that Sunshine House has really tried to work on is providing people with data and information that can kind of counter some of the fear-based and misinformed approaches to the provision of these types of services,” he said.

“There’s always going to be like, ‘We don’t want Winnipeg or the downtown to turn into the downtown East Side of Vancouver.’ Then don’t, then learn from those communities.”

Nine Circles, Main Street Project and the Manitoba Harm Reduction Network either declined or didn’t respond to Free Press requests for comment.

carol.sanders @freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.