Cambridge must face its inconvenient truth

We plan for student housing to be conveniently close to universities.

We put soup kitchens and homeless shelters downtown, where it’s easy for poor and homeless people to find them.

And we should also put supervised injection sites close to where drug addicts are.

Sorry, Cambridge, but this is the inconvenient truth.

The small downtown core of Galt is vulnerable, no question. Residents’ fears that its small shops and beautiful riverfront will be too easily overwhelmed by discarded needles and visiting drug addicts are real. Those fears shouldn’t be dismissed.

But let’s face it: Drug overdosing is already a huge problem there.

Along with downtown Kitchener, the centre of Cambridge’s Galt section is the place where most opioid overdoses take place.

According to a study last year from Region of Waterloo Paramedic Services, the number of opioid-related overdose emergency calls is soaring in the region, and Cambridge carries far more than its share of the problem.

In 2017 there were 71 deaths in Waterloo Region in which drug overdose was suspected. Twentynine of those deaths were in Cambridge.

It’s a city with 22 per cent of the population, but 41 per cent of the overdose deaths.

As the Region of Waterloo moves to establish supervised injection sites and/or overdose protection sites — where addicts can take their illegal drugs with the benefit of medical supervision, access to counselling and other support — Cambridge representatives asked for the core areas of Preston, Galt, and Hespeler to be excluded.

Regional council deferred that request Tuesday, reasoning it didn’t want to prejudice its own process.

Later in the day, Cambridge council made a countermove. Councillors passed an interim

control bylaw prohibiting any kind of overdose-prevention or supervised-injection facility from being established in any of its core areas.

The ban extends to a 500-metre “buffer zone” around the cores as well. The city will hire a consultant to recommend the best locations for this facility.

One of the places that will likely be looked at is Cambridge Memorial Hospital on Coronation Boulevard. But it’s not easy to get to without a car.

The city’s bylaw stays in effect for a year, which buys time for the councillors to make it through the municipal elections this fall without incurring the wrath of downtown businesses and homeowners.

Who it doesn’t buy time for are the people who are overdosing in the library, the riverside trails and other public places. These people are taking drugs in public mostly because they’re homeless and have nowhere else to go. This is the most common reason given in a survey of drug users done by the Region of Waterloo, as part of the research going into decisions about supervised injection sites.

A supervised facility where they can take their crystal meth and their painkilling opioids should cut down on the number of people doing it outdoors or in public buildings.

It should make Galt’s downtown a safer and more pleasant place to be.