Overdose in the delivery centers in Toronto have increased considerably since the provincial government closed four supervised consumption sites in April, according to a coalition of community agencies.
Before the supervised consumer sites were closed, there were less than 10 overdose per month in delivery sites, including churches, food banks and neighborhood centers, said Melanie Joy, manager of the Toronto Network.
Now, these sites report overdose in the thirties every month, he said.
Joy said that this increase is happening throughout the city, not only in the center of the city.
“It has been a dramatic increase, without an increase in resources or support,” he told CBC Radio Metro tomorrow on Friday.
This occurs when Toronto Public Health data (TPH) shows that the so -called fatal and non -fatal opioid overdose to paramedics have fallen in 2025 compared to the previous two years.
But Joy says that TPH does not track the overdose that are happening in the delivery centers, in the community or in the remaining supervised consumption sites that are still open.
The center church has become a ‘injection site’
More than 50 community agencies are part of the Drop-In Toronto network, including the United Metropolitan Church, located in Queen Street E. and Church Street.
Between 30 and 50 people use drugs in the property of the Church over the course of a day, said Property Manager Frank Cormier.
He said he carries Naloxone on him at all times. Last summer, he said he used it once a month, but now he is using it two or more times a week.
After passing a law that closed numerous supervised consumption sites, the province opened nine of its Hart Centers on Tuesday. But critics say that the new Ontario approach has had a start of potholes. Shawn Jeffords explains.
After the supervised consumer sites closed, Cormier said that people who use drugs lack spaces to support.
“At this time, the front grass of the United Metropolitan Church has become the injection site,” he said Metro of Metro.
On April 1, the province closed nine supervised consumer sites in Ontario, including four in Toronto, which were located 200 meters from schools or nurseries. Currently, the legislation is being challenged in the Court by the Kensington market overdose prevention site, a tenth place that was scheduled to close, but that is currently still open due to a legal court order and fundraising.
The nine sites that closed agreed to become Hubs (HART) Hubs (HART), a abstinence -based model that provides access to recovery and treatment systems for people fighting with addictions and mental health problems, but does not provide any drug use service.
The province says that 9 of the 28 Hart centers opened in April
While Hart’s centers were destined to be completely operational on April 1, Joy said that “we are not really seeing.”
From last month, several of Hart’s centers still do not seem to have complete service boards in operation. In Hart Hub of Toronto Public Health, which is now temporarily executed in the esplanade, only a program of 10 is operational, and the rest plans to start this summer or beyond.
The province said in a statement that the nine Hart centers that replace the supervised consumption sites “opened, as planned on April 1, including those of Toronto, ensuring that there are no gaps in the provision of mental health support services.”
The Government is spending $ 550 million to build a total of 28 centers throughout the province that will provide people with support for 24 hours, 7 days a week, read in the statement.
He continues to work with the remaining 19 centers “to finish the operational budgets,” said the statement.
Joy said that Hart Hubs offers services that both people who work in the sector and those who use drugs have long requested as additions to the supervised consumer site model, such as more detoxification beds, cases of cases one by one to one improved and advice.
But she said that the centers do not include key services typically provided by supervised consumption sites, such as access to clean needles, which help reduce the spread of infectious diseases.
“It is frustrating that there is no forecast to include all these services together in one place,” said Joy.
Meanwhile, Cormier said the Government could not properly plan the transition from consumer sites supervised to Hart Centers.
“The system suddenly changed, drastically, and it didn’t seem that nobody thought about what the gap between a model and the next model will be,” he said.
“I think it’s simply bad planning and really bad change management.”
