Local harm reduction advocates finally have their answer, with Greater Sudbury city council members voting 9-2 earlier today against continued municipal funding for The Spot.
As such, the city’s only sanctioned supervised consumption site remains on track to close by the end of January.
During today’s 2024/25 municipal budget meeting, Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc tabled a motion asking the city to provide $450,000 to keep the site open until the end of July 2024.
Only Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann supported his effort.
The expenditure would have included a net 2024 tax levy impact of $194,500, with the balance taken from an anticipated year-end surplus from the 2023 amount budgeted for the facility.
(Staff shortages and shortened operating hours resulted in an under expenditure.)
Disappointed by the results of today’s vote, Leduc said he did what he could do.
“You can’t put a price tag on people’s lives,” he told Sudbury.com during a break in the meeting. Even so, he said that at a tax impact of only $194,500, he’d felt the cost was relatively low for what the site is capable of doing.
“There was industry watching to see what we would do to support, because that would depend on how much support they were willing to put forward,” he said, adding that he hopes external funding comes in regardless and that it’s able to remain open.
Leduc’s motion would have also addressed a common criticism of the site by directing staff “to engage with Public Health Sudbury and Districts and Réseau ACCESS Network to consider the potential relocation of the services to a site that is more accessible to its clients.”
The Spot has an annual operating budget of approximately $1,374,000 and is operated by Réseau ACCESS Network.
The city has been funding the site’s operations on a temporary basis since September 2022, which was only meant to last until the province stepped up to the plate. With health care under provincial jurisdiction, municipal funding was intended as a stop-gap.
“I don’t think there’s one person around this table that doesn’t support the concept of the site,” Landry-Altmann told Sudbury.com during a break in today’s meeting, adding that she remains disappointed the province has yet to come forward with operational funding for The Spot.
This, despite ongoing advocacy dating back to the previous city council.
Initially slated to close by the end of the year, Vale Base Metals recently made a $75,000 donation to keep the site open for the month of January.
Réseau ACCESS Network has been hosting a website called “Save The Spot!” as part of a public plea to keep it open. The website has urged people to reach out to municipal and provincial elected officials to ask them to keep the site open.
“With provincial funding, The Spot would be able to not only stay open, but expand their hours, move to a central location, and see upwards of 50 visits a day, helping curb the overdose crisis in Ontario,” according to the petition.
Various letters of support have been posted on the page, including from Public Health Sudbury and Districts medical officer of health and CEO Dr. Penny Sutcliffe.
There were 112 Sudbury and Manitoulin district residents who died from opioid-related drug poisoning in 2022 alone, which she noted is a rate of 54.1 deaths per 100,000 population and far exceeds the province’s overall average of 16.8.
“We believe that investing in an array of harm reduction services, including supervised consumption services, is a cost-effective strategy that saves lives, reduces health-care expenditures and strengthens our communities,” she wrote.
“Furthermore, offering harm reduction services and education serve as an important piece of the multipronged approach to addressing substance use stigma and improving the health and wellbeing of people who use drugs.”
A rally was held in support of The Spot at Memorial Park on Nov. 30, where Nickel Belt NDP MPP France Gélinas described the lack of program funding as “almost criminal.”
Funding from the province appears unlikely for some time, as they’ve put all funding applications on hold while they develop new safety protocols. The “critical incident review” comes in response to an incident in Toronto, where a 44-year-old woman was hit by a stray bullet from a fight that broke out in the area around a supervised consumption site in July.
Réseau ACCESS Network executive director Heidi Eisenhauer called the shooting a scapegoat used by the province to justify not funding sites.
Between Sept. 28, 2022, and Aug. 31 (the opening of The Spot and the last date of a recent study) a total of 470 unique clients accessed The Spot, representing 1,181 total visits and 1,605 total consumptions. The Spot reversed a total of 20 overdose (toxic poisoning) events, and no overdose required emergency medical services.
Although only Leduc and Landry-Altmann voted in favour of keeping The Spot open, Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini and Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier did not attend the Dec. 18 meeting.
While some members of city council did not raise their hands to lodge a vote, none declared a pecuniary interest. As such, their inaction was counted as a “no.”
Today’s 2024/25 municipal budget meeting saw the city’s elected officials vote on another amendment related to the city’s most vulnerable residents, which saw them pull $300,000 from homelessness services toward lowering future tax increases.
The province had agreed to provide the city with an additional $300,000 toward homelessness for the next three years. The city had planned on using it to hire three additional client navigators (people who help those experiencing homelessness connect with services).
This would have been on top of the city’s current staff of three full-time client navigators and six contract staff, bringing their new total to 12.
The city still plans on using the $300,000 from the province toward addressing homelessness — on paper, anyway. They’re also pulling $300,000 from existing municipal homelessness funding to help bring down the tax levy, and cancelled hiring three additional full-time client navigators.
Ward 6 Coun. René Lapierre introduced a motion to have the $300,000 remain within the budget for use on homelessness priorities, but a vote of 6-4 struck it down. The vote excluded Ward 1 Coun. Mark Signoretti, who was not in his seat at the time (plus Vagnini and Montpellier, who were not at the meeting).
Nothing has been set in stone during budget deliberations thus far, with all decisions still required to be ratified by city council as a whole.
Greater Sudbury 2024/25 budget deliberations will recommence at 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 19. The meeting can be attended in-person at Tom Davies Square or livestreamed by clicking here.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
