The Quebec government has presented a bill that would prevent supervised drug use sites from establishing within 150 meters of a school or nursery.
The bill 103, presented by the Minister of Social Services, Lionel Carmant, would also allow the Ministry of Health to establish conditions in supervised consumption sites around cleaning and security, which, if it was not satisfied, could see its revoked authorization.
“The spirit behind this bill,” he said, “is that people do not consume and sell drugs outside the site. That is the problem I hear when I go [these sites]”
The bill follows a violent reaction to supervised drug use sites On the other side of CanadaIncluding the Maison Benoît-Labre, a supervised drug use site and a homeless people in South-Outast County of Montreal, which is less than 100 meters from a primary and nursery school.
Parents and nearby residents have marked concerns about the area, and police statistics have shown that the crime shot around the Maison Benoît-Llabre After the center opened Its supervised drug use site and its day center in Notre-Dame Street West.
The bill 103 Barría The Sites for the Use of Supervised Drugs to Operate within 150 meters of a School or Nursery. If approved, the bill will require that two of these sites move, including the Maison Benoît-Labre in Montreal.
The new bill will require these sites to be re -authorized by Santé Quebec every four years.
There are 14 supervised consumption sites in Quebec. Two of them, the Maison Benoît-Labre and Braz in the Outaouais region, are within the 150-meter radius of a school or duty center and not, if the bill is approved, it will receive re-authorization after four years.
But Carmant said the four -year period should allow those centers to move.
He said that Quebec will probably need more supervised drug use sites, since it faces the scourge of the toxic drug crisis.
There were 645 drug overdose deaths in Quebec in 2024.
“We believe in the use of these sites and I think we have made a great effort to have a balanced bill,” said Carmant.
Michael Mackenzie, professor of Social Work and Pediatrics at the University of McGill who also lives near the Maison Benoît-Labre, said that community problems do not come from the safe consumption site or transition housing services.
Rather, it is daytime services and people who congregate around the center that have caused problems.
Mackenzie, who points out that he is in favor of the safe supply, said there is nothing in the bill that improves the situation in the center.
“I am not seeing anything in the new legislation in which the minister seeks to use his authority to hold organizations that tell their impacts on the community,” he said.
Carmant has said that the services of the day in the center will move.
