Chinatown to battle safe-injection sites in court
Group seeks review of drug exemption for three locations
Chinatown’s business association is taking its fight against Edmonton’s newly approved safe injection sites to court.
In a federal court application filed earlier this month, the Chinatown and Area Business Association is seeking a judicial review of the federal health minister’s Oct. 17 decision to grant an exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for three of the four planned community-based safe injection sites.
The sites, where intravenous drug users can inject under the supervision of medical professionals as a way to reduce overdose deaths, will be at the Boyle McCauley Health Centre, Boyle Street Community Services and the George Spady Society. A fourth facility is planned at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, but the business association is not applying to stop that site.
Access to Medically Supervised Injection Services Edmonton, a coalition of community, medical, academic and public sector representatives that developed the model for the city’s safe injection sites, were named as respondents on the application. The group plans to meet the challenge in court, and will be represented by Edmonton lawyer Nate Whitling.
In the meantime, the coalition’s chair, Shelley Williams, said work is continuing on plans to open two of the sites at George Spady and Boyle Street Community Services in December or early January.
Williams said it’s unfortunate, but not surprising, the association has filed the application, given its opposition to the sites being centralized in the core.
“We’ve developed a model that has been rigorously evaluated in Vancouver, and it’s based on the same principles, and our approach is consistent in terms of staffing and service with almost all of the supervised consumption sites that have been developed across Canada,” she said.
One of the assertions in the judicial review application is that having the three sites in such close proximity is “experimental and untested,” and that the approval should be set aside for that reason alone.
The association alleges the federal health minister’s office agreed to meet to discuss its concerns, but then approved the exemptions for the sites before the meeting happened. When representatives did attend an Oct. 19 meeting, they were allegedly told the decision was based on public health concerns.
In the application, the association argues that the approvals were “unfair” and “unreasonable” because issues of public safety, crime rates and community input were not given proper consideration, and because the public consultations were “flawed.”
The association argues that the conditions the sites will be subject to are not adequate, and it wants a judge to set aside the exemptions made for the three sites, and to have the matter be returned to the minister for reconsideration.