Don’t cluster safe injection sites, councillors warn

WATERLOO REGION — Potential locations for supervised injection sites in Waterloo Region will be made public by January, as Waterloo Region Public Health begins a feasibility study into whether the harm reduction service is needed here, what concerns the community might have and how to address them.

A supervised injection site would provide a safe, clean place for people to use their own drugs under the care of trained staff. Its goals would be to reduce overdose rates and overdose deaths; reduce transmission of diseases from shared needles; help drug users connect to other health and social services, including drug treatment; and reduce drug use in public places and the amount of unsafely discarded needles and other litter.

Regional councillors expressed strong support for the project at a community services committee meeting on Tuesday. But they made it clear that if the project goes ahead, they don’t want to see the controversial service concentrated in one area.

Waterloo Region can learn from the experience of Vancouver, which has run supervised injection sites for years, said Coun. Sean Strickland. But he said that “we certainly don’t want to replicate East Hastings Street” in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which he described as a “national shame. … We can’t end up having a concentration that is so dense of servic-

es in one area that it creates a social travesty.”

Harm reduction is “important work,” said Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic. “I believe this is the direction we need to go.”

But he warned that it’s “extremely important” to make sure services are “appropriately spread out throughout the region, because this is a challenge that exists in varying degrees throughout our community and throughout our region.”

Vrbanovic also stressed that public consultation and education are vital. “It’s also important that as we do it we do it in a way where we bring the community along with us. Because one of the most detrimental or harmful things would be to end up somewhere where quite frankly it’s not wanted in any way, shape or form, and clashes start happening. It’s not good for the initiative, it’s not good for community building and most importantly, it wouldn’t be good for those who need the help.”

Local statistics paint a grim picture of escalating overdoses.

From January to September, paramedics in the region responded to 529 overdose calls, almost as many overdose calls as they got in all of 2016, according to the Waterloo Region Integrated Drugs Strategy. That’s almost 50 per cent more overdoses than for the same period in 2016, and 135 per cent more than the same period in 2015.

To get federal permission to run a safe injection site, the region must prove it has carried out extensive consultation with the community and has a plan to address concerns. Those heading the proposal outlined several ways the region will consult with the community between now and early December:

Starting Wednesday, members of the public will be able to comment on the proposal in an online survey available at regionofwaterloo.ca/ph.

Public health officials will interview injection drug users about whether they would use a supervised injection site, where it should be located, when it should be open and what services it should offer.

They will also interview groups that work with drug users about whether the sites are needed in the region, what other services they could offer, and how they might affect the community.

Responses from those groups will help narrow potential locations, said Grace Bermingham, manager of planning and harm reduction at the region. Ontario doesn’t allow standalone injection sites; they must be integrated with agencies that help drug users, such as public health units.

Once potential sites have been identified, likely around the end of November, health officials will talk to groups who live, work or go to school close to those sites, to hear their concerns and determine how to address those concerns.

The list of potential sites will be contained in a report to the committee in January.