MP suggests Ottawa behind plan for new Main Street Project shelter providing safe injections

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This article was published 10/05/2018 (2876 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The federal government is hinting that it supports Main Street Project’s bid to open an innovative homeless shelter, which may put pressure on the province to approve a supervised-injection site.

“Part of our strategy in dealing with chronic homelessness is helping organizations like Main Street Project find their own solutions that are going to work for Winnipeg,” said Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette.

Ouellette (Winnipeg Centre) be visiting the Mitchell Fabrics building Friday to reinforce a previous announcement made by federal Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos.

Earlier this month, Duclos unveiled some details of the housing co-investment fund, which will have Ottawa partner with other levels of government or the private sector to build and repair housing units.

Ouellette will be joining Main Street Project staff to outline how groups can apply for that funding. But holding that announcement at the Mitchell Fabrics building is no coincidence.

In March, the Free Press reported that MSP has been angling to build a $6.5-million shelter inside the building at Main Street and Logan Avenue to house 120 recovering drug addicts and homeless people undergoing medical procedures.

Main Street Project currently crams 85 people into its much smaller building. It’s the city’s only “low-barrier” shelter, meaning it welcomes individuals who have been drinking or are on drugs; other shelters are open only to the clean and sober.

MSP has submitted an application to Health Canada to open a safe-consumption site. It wants the Mitchell Fabrics project to include Manitoba’s first program that would be able to provide alcohol and supervised injections to clients with addictions.

The idea has met with a chilly response from the provincial government.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen has instead focused on opioid-replacement therapy, free injection supplies and educational campaigns.

Goertzen has said that Vancouver’s success with safe-injection sites may be due to opioid abuse being concentrated in a smaller area than in Winnipeg. However, his department found last summer that the overdose-reversing drug naloxone is being administered primarily downtown and in Point Douglas.

Ouellette said people need to get over their discomfort with harm-reduction projects; Main Street Project already advises clients on ways to limit health damage while living with their addictions.

“One of the things they were allowed to do, two years ago, was telling people, ‘Well, don’t use this type of paint-thinner; use this type of paint-thinner, because this paint-thinner is bad for your brain and this one is less bad for your brain,’” he said.

“That is the reality for a lot of people in the downtown core of our city. It’s stunning to think that this is where we’re at.”

No one from Main Street Project could be reached for comment Thursday.

The $13.2-billion co-investment fund is the biggest piece of the $40-billion national housing strategy the Liberals rolled out last November. Two-thirds of the fund will be distributed as loans and the rest in grants.

The Liberals are having some of their MPs drum up awareness about the available funds across Canada with the goal of securing proposals soon, possibly getting shovels in the ground within a year.

It’s unclear who the co-funder would be in the case of the MSP proposal.

Kildonan-area MP MaryAnn Mihychuk said Thursday she’s been pushing her Liberal counterparts to get the project funded, and soon.

“There’s a huge need and (MSP) have great management,” she said.

Main Street Project executive director Rick Lees visited Ottawa in March to meet housing officials and lobby MPs.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca