BARRIE, Ont. — Volunteers with Ryan’s Hope “died” on Monday for what they believe in, with the hope that the province’s supervised consumption sites can be saved from closure.
The Barrie-based non-profit organization that assists the homeless descended on Memorial Square in downtown Barrie on Monday during the lunch hour to speak out against the Ontario government’s plan to close the sites.
See related: Faith leaders call on Ford to reverse move to shutter supervised consumption sites
On Aug. 20, Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced the province would close 10 consumption and treatment services (CTS) sites within 200 metres of schools or child-care centres and ban future ones.
The event took place on the day the Ontario Legislative Assembly resumed.
Die-ins were scheduled to take place simultaneously across the province.
See also: Nurses union says consumption site announcement a ‘death sentence’
“I’m here because this is an attack on people who use drugs by the provincial government,” Mac Chown, a doctor who is now starting his own primary care practice for unhoused people in Barrie, told BarrieToday.
Chown recently stopped working in the emergency department of Orillia Soldier’s Memorial Hospital to focus on his new practice.
He thinks the government’s decision to close the supervised consumption sites “flies in the face of scientific evidence,” and is going to “kill people”.
“It’s playing political games to try to win votes, and direct anger against the most vulnerable people in our society because that’s a useful political tactic for them,” Chown said.
He believes the government’s strategy has nothing to do with science, and “It has nothing to do with what’s best for people. It has nothing to do with helping people, so it’s just cynical politics and it’s disgusting.”
See: Soo mayor: Problem isn’t safe consumption sites, it’s Doug Ford
The event heard from a few speakers, followed by eight minutes of silence, “which is one minute for each life lost per day in Ontario to the toxic drug crisis,” Ryan’s Hope director Christine Nayler told BarrieToday.
There were people with chalk who then went around during the die-in to make outlines of the protester’s bodies as they were lying down on the pavement in the square, “as a visual to show that these were people’s lives that were lost, and they mattered.”
TRILLIUM TALK: Supervised drug consumption site? Not in my backyard
Supervised consumption sites have closed in Sudbury and Timmins in the past year. There are none in northern Ontario, including in North Bay.
According to the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit, "A local task force comprised of community partners was established to assess the feasibility of establishing a safe consumption site for North Bay in 2022. Unfortunately, the lack of funding to support the start-up and long-term operation and staffing of a safe consumption site remains a barrier to having one established."
The Health Unit "continues to work together with community partners to prevent and reduce overdoses in the community, monitor current and emerging trends, reduce stigma, and increase access to naloxone and harm reduction services. We are also working with partners to address the factors that contribute to individuals starting to use substances, and to strengthen protective factors such as coping abilities, family and community belonging, safe, stable environments, and good standards of living."
— BarrieToday
