Public Health Sudbury and city officials are pleased with the two-day opioid drug summit held in Sudbury, but it doesn't appear anyone is ready to rethink municipal support of the supervised consumption site.
Organizers of the two-day summit held to discuss the opioid crisis said they're hoping the event will unite the health and social communities to be able to improve harm reduction for people with addiction and to use ideas that came out of the summit to come up with new strategies.
"So that would be our first step with the teams that were there, putting everything together so that we can have a comprehensive idea of what items were identified, the sub-ideas that kind of came out with some of the suggestions and so on, for that to be compiled," said René Lapierre, chair of the Public Health Sudbury and Districts (PHSD) board of health.
Details of the ideas and items he spoke about were not revealed since the Sudbury media was barred from covering the meeting that was held at the Dr. Edgar Leclair Community Centre and Arena in Azilda.
Media were invited, however, to participate in a brief news conference after the event on Friday afternoon where reporters were allowed two questions each.
Lapierre was asked about the future of the Sudbury supervised consumption site, a place where people with addictions can go to administer their drugs in a supervised manner, in a way that help is nearby if the users get sick or are in danger of overdosing.
Although the municipality of Greater Sudbury subsidized the site in the first year of operation by spending just over $1 million, city council earlier this year decided to discontinue the subsidy.
The consumption site, known as The Spot, is located at Energy Court, close to the Lorne Street beer store. The site is run by Réseau ACCESS Network, a local non-profit, community-based charitable organization, committed to promoting wellness, harm and risk reduction and education.
The funding subsidy was due to run out at the end of December, but Vale Base Metals stepped up earlier this week with a $75,000 donation to keep the site running for another month.
Many community leaders have been lobbying the provincial government to come through with funding to keep the site operational.
Provincial funding is already being used to keep several other consumption sites operational in other cities across Ontario, so it is expected that Queen's Park should also provide funding for Sudbury. So far, despite intense lobbying, that has not happened.
After January, it appears the future of the Sudbury site is unknown. Lapierre was asked if this might be a good time for city council to rethink and reintroduce the $1 million subsidy and to put the money battle with Queen's Park on the backburner for the time being.
Lapierre, who is also a member of city council, said there are a lot of variables. He did not commit.
"Yeah, so I can't speak for city council as a whole yet, because I'm only one vote. But the business cases that were approved in the past, were approved on consideration that we would receive funding from the province," he said.
"Unfortunately, our application was put on hold. So therefore, I'm not aware of a business case so far that is in the budget process for the future, to help support that."
Lapierre said the city's budget discussions would be starting soon and it might be a starting point if any member of council wished to initiate a discussion to have the municipality go back to funding the consumption site.
"How would you vote?" Lapierre was asked by Sudbury.com.
"I'm not sure," he replied. "It depends on everything else. There's so many needs so many programs, not just The Spot that helps this vulnerable population, we have other programs. There are a multitude of programs; actually service providers that offer even more programs to reduce harm reduction and The Spot is one of them. So therefore, we have to look at the whole programs that we have and that we support as a whole and then decide from there what our budget can afford," said Lapierre.
It was a similar story in an interview with Greater Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre as he left the summit. He said he was pleased with what he saw because so many members of different agencies were in the same room
"This is the first time ever that we've had all these numbers of organizations that work at the front lines," said the mayor.
"And so that's the first time we've ever had this type of summit to talk about opioids. And the challenges of this new world that we're faced with. What is going to come out of this is an action plan of even more collaboration. So many of these organizations here have never met each other, right. All of a sudden, they're talking to each other. So it's so important to get together and to have that," said Lefebvre.
With respect to the idea of reintroducing the $1 million subsidy to save the supervised consumption site, Lefebvre said the whole reason the previous city council decided to provide funding was an understanding with Ontario that provincial funding was imminent. He said funding was provided only on an interim basis.
He said Sudbury was one of the few municipalities paying more than its share to get the consumption site up and running.
Lefebvre said there is no reason for the province to hold back on a health equity issue.
"We actually stepped up and did our part. But it's now up to the province to do their part as well," said Lefebvre who added that if anyone on city council wants to reintroduce the matter, that can be their choice.
"Again, with this anybody from council can bring this up if they wish to bring this back," said the mayor.
"And we're having our budget deliberations and they can have a vote on it. So okay, that's a possibility," he said.
Would Lefebvre vote to bring back municipal funding for the consumption site?
"No, probably not. Because I want to send the message to the province," he said.
Lefebvre said it is not the responsibility of the municipality to pick up the pieces if other levels of government do not do their part.
"And that's why for me, again, I am all for The Spot. Don't get me wrong. I want The Spot to continue. Right. It has to be funded by Health Ontario and the Ontario minister of health has that responsibility. Not the mayor of Sudbury."
Len Gillis covers health care and also mining stories for Sudbury.com.
