Mayoral candidate Bill Crumplin says his counterpart in the race for the top city council job has “his head in the sand” when it comes to the opioid crisis.
Crumplin issued a statement last week (published here on Sudbury.com on Aug. 7) arguing if the province won’t fund a safe injection site for intravenous drug users, then the city should find a way to do itself.
His fellow candidate, Dan Melanson, was quick to respond, issuing a statement in which he argued it would be far too expensive for the municipality to fund a service that rightfully should be funded by higher levels of government, which are responsible for funding health care.
“I read with disappointment the article in which Dan Melanson simply buries his head in the sand regarding a very disturbing reality in Western society – we have an Opioid crisis!” Crumplin said. “It is here in Sudbury. People are dying. And it is costing us money with policing, clean up, ambulance service and stress on our over-extended hospital resources.”
Calling it irresponsible to ignore the issue, he said it is the responsibility of the local community to address issues of concern, but said he wasn’t necessarily talking about local taxpayers funding a safe injection site.
“In my press release, I stressed that I would spend the ‘political capital’ to bring a safe injection site to Sudbury,” he said. “Political capital means lobbying the provincial and federal governments as the Mayor of Sudbury, with the backing of council, to step up and do their part to fund a safe injection site.”
In the statement he issued, Melanson said it costs the City of Vancouver $3 million to operate its Insite safe injection site for a year, a cost he suggests would be similar here.
“I will take (Melanson’s) figure at face value,” Crumplin said. “If we look at that figure in a per capita context, given that there are approximately 2.4 million people living in Vancouver, this amounts to $1.20 per capita to run Insite for a year!
“While there might be some economies of scale available in the context of Vancouver versus Sudbury, I feel it would be the responsible thing to consider funding even if it were to cost twice as much, in per capita terms, as in Vancouver. In other words, is $2.50 per person per year to help fund a safe injection site in Sudbury too much?”
