Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks to the media in a school park during a press conference in Montreal on July 12.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
“Justin Trudeau must immediately close this hard-drug injection site to protect our families,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Friday in a playground beside the Maison Benôit Labre shelter in Montreal’s working-class Saint-Henri district.
It was a politically savvy move. The community drop-in centre for homeless people and transitional-housing project has been in the local news a lot lately, and none of the coverage has been flattering: open drug use, violence and encampments, all in close proximity to a playground and elementary school.
During the news conference, Mr. Poilievre was, naturally enough, asked about his party’s policy on “safe injection sites” more broadly.
“We will close safe injection sites next to schools, playgrounds, anywhere else that they endanger the public and take lives,” he said.
But then the Conservative Leader paused and corrected himself. “By the way, they’re not safe injection sites. I’m sorry I used your dishonest language,” he replied to a reporter, before launching into a tirade about the “radical Liberal-NDP activists, lobbyists and bureaucracy” who have created the “drug dens” that his government will defund.
“There will not be a single taxpayer dollar from the Poilievre government going to drug dens. Every single penny will go to treatment and recovery services to bring our loved ones home drug-free.”
Mr. Poilievre makes some good points. The public is indeed fed up with the chaos and disorder that the toxic drug crisis has wrought on cities and neighbourhoods.
He is also correct that while the Supreme Court of Canada rebuffed an attempt by Stephen Harper’s government to close supervised (not “safe”) consumption sites, the court said restrictions on their locations are allowed. The activities around these facilities are not meant to be a free-for-all. People defecating, having sex, or injecting drugs in schoolyards or playgrounds or other public spaces is not acceptable.
But Mr. Poilievre is not served well by his inflammatory language and over-the-top rhetoric.
Supervised consumption sites like the one at Maison Benôit Labre are facilities where drug users can consume drugs (that they bring themselves) under the supervision of health professionals such as nurses. These sites offer clean needles (to reduce the risk of disease transmission) and overdose prevention and treatment (to reduce the burden on first responders), and they are a key conduit to getting users into detox and treatment.
To call health centres that practice harm reduction “drug dens” is insulting to those who do great work there. There are 39 supervised consumption sites across Canada and they have overseen 4.6 million visits and treated 55,693 overdoses to date (and counting).
(There is another common form of supervised consumption site called bars, where people consume the drug alcohol. Should we, for consistency’s sake, call them “gin mills” and shut them down?)
To say, as Mr. Poilievre did, that safe consumption sites are “drug dens and they’ve made everything worse” is patently untrue.
The promise (or threat) to cut federal funding is also a hollow one, as the federal government does not provide core funding to supervised consumption sites. What it does is provide exemptions from drug laws that allow them to operate.
“Bringing our loved ones home drug-free” is an admirable goal, but we need to keep people alive if they’re going to have any hope of treatment and recovery, and that’s the goal of harm-reduction services.
It’s disingenuous to suggest that closing supervised consumption sites, stopping decriminalization pilot projects, ending safer supply programs or any other singular measure will magically clean up the streets, or that we can solve this complex problem with more addiction treatment alone.
The encampments that have mushroomed in North American cities in recent years have a multitude of causes that include a profound lack of affordable housing, a lack of mental-health services and an ever-worsening toxic drug crisis.
More than ever, we need to embrace the “four pillars” strategy: Prevention, harm reduction, enforcement and treatment.
In recent years, we have probably focused too much on the harm-reduction part of the puzzle, and not enough on enforcement and treatment.
No one benefits from city streets that are a combination of open-air drug markets, encampments and garbage dumps. We need to recognize that these problems are sometimes more acute where services such as supervised consumption sites operate.
But we also have to recognize that if supervised consumption sites are closed, drug use won’t end. It will simply move, to an even greater extent, into more streets, alleyways, parks and other public spaces.
Ultimately, we need to tackle public disorder and the toxic drug crisis simultaneously. And these complex problems require sophisticated solutions, not just colourful catchphrases.