Ontario’s associate minister for Mental Health and Addictions is defending the Ford government’s decision to pause new applications for supervised consumption sites in the province, even as one northern Ontario mayor alleges an imbalance in funding for services versus those offered in the rest of the province.
Michael Tibollo was in Sault Ste. Marie on Monday for the opening of the Algoma Youth Wellness Hub, which will offer a safe space for vulnerable and at-risk youth and is funded, in part, through Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario.
In an interview, Tibollo told SooToday the review of supervised consumption sites is expected to be complete within the next two months. It was put in place in the summer as a result of safety concerns after a shooting death outside one such site in the Leslieville neighbourhood of Toronto.
“That incident that happened in Leslieville was really unfortunate because it highlighted some problems at that particular location,” said Tibollo. “But again we don’t know how things are working in all of the other ones that are existing, plus the ones that are on stream that want to come on board.”
As part of the review, the ministry put in place a pause on accepting applications for new supervised consumption sites in the province.
Even before the pause, Sault Ste. Marie was considering putting municipal tax dollars into the startup and operation of a supervised consumption site, as was done in Timmins and Sudbury. A report to city council presented last month by outgoing CAO Malcolm White recommended the municipality proceed by supporting an application for a federal exemption as it awaits new direction from the province.
While much of Ontario has experienced a reduction in the rate of death by opioid overdose, many northern Ontario municipalities have a death rate virtually unchanged in the past two years and are among the worst hit in the province.
Sault Ste. Marie’s mayor Matthew Shoemaker has said the lack of funded supervised consumption sites in the north reveals a lack of balance in funding for services between northern and southern Ontario, while White has suggested the review and freeze is a continuation of a process that was already stalled.
“I think it can be argued that the province, while it has officially paused the process, had really paused the process for quite some time,” White said at the Dec. 18 meeting of city council. “There were a number of applications in the queue that had been going back and forth for one or two years and had no approvals.”
“My view has been that we ought to have a supervised consumption site and that it should be funded by the province because they are constitutionally mandated to fund health care and what they are funding in one place should be funded across the province,” Shoemaker said at the same meeting.
Asked about those comments on Monday, Tibollo said the Ford government is laser-focused on improving the number of services available in the north.
He highlighted other investments opened within the past year in the Sault, including the youth wellness hub, a $22-million withdrawal management site and a Community Resource Centre built into a 22-bed men’s shelter, with an additional 22 transitional housing units in the same facility.
“People want to score points politically and suggest we are not doing anything, I challenge them to tell me clinically how what we are doing is not creating a continuum of care to help the people of the north, because I will argue all day long — not based on fiction, but based on knowledge and fact and studies that are peer reviewed — that the investments that are being made are targeted to ensure that we build a treatment and recovery continuum to make sure people are getting the supports and services they need,” said Tibollo.
In 2019, the Ford government created the associate ministry of Mental Health and Addictions and at the same time Tibollo was assigned the role of associate minister.
“Can we fix this problem in one year or two years or three years? No. But we are building towards that and I challenge anyone that wants to challenge me for what I have done, tell me what previous governments have done over 15 years because they have done absolutely nothing,” he continued.
“A lot of the problems we have, a lot of the homelessness issues, are a result of a lack of services in northern Ontario,” said Tibollo. “You want to address the issues of homelessness, you want to address the issue of not having sufficient supports for people with mental health or even health issues? You need to make the investments where the people live, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Supervised consumption sites, which the ministry refers to as consumption and treatment sites, are part of the provincial government's Roadmap to Wellness, a plan to combat the mental health and addiction crisis. That plan also includes youth wellness hubs and improving access to core services, among other strategies.
“We are a government that believes in a continuum of care and providing supports and services for treatment and recovery,” said Tibollo. “The consumption and treatment sites, they are low-barrier access. Our focus is on building a continuum of care to help as many people as possible get treatment and recover from their addiction.”
Asked if he understands the frustrations of Sault Ste. Marie’s mayor and CAO in the face of a continuously higher-than-average death rate in that city, Tibollo said he shares that frustration.
“But to suggest that we are not addressing the issue is really, to me, counter intuitive to what we are doing,” he said. “What I would like to hear from them is suggestions as to how we improve treatment and recovery and continue to grow and develop the systems that we have in place.”
Tibollo said it takes time to address the kinds of mental health and addictions problems affecting people in Ontario.
“It requires investments in the short term but also investments in the future, that’s one of the reasons these youth wellness hubs, especially here in northern Ontario, are so important,” said Tibollo. “Our government are never going to be able to invest its way out of addictions, but what we can do is reduce the need for the type of treatments we are putting in place now by making sure we are building more resilient youth and by making sure we have early interventions and building them in a way they are able to cope without looking to substances.”