Sault's opioid death rate proves need for HART Hub: Shoemaker

Mayor Matthew Shoemaker says he has tried just about everything to raise the alarm about the Sault's need for additional services to combat the opioid crisis.

As Sault Ste. Marie has once again topped the list of municipalities with the worst death rate in the province, he says that is proof positive that a Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub should be built in the city.

Statistics released Monday by the Office of the Chief Coroner show Sault Ste. Marie tops the list for worst opioid toxicity death rate for the first two quarters of 2024, a dramatic increase from its ranking as sixth-worst in the province for Q3 2023.

While the five worst-ranked municipalities for Q3 2023 improved their death rates in the first two quarters of 2024, Sault Ste. Marie's death rate worsened, causing it to leapfrog them and take the top spot.

Those municipalities were Thunder Bay, North Bay, Timmins, Peterborough, and Greater Sudbury.

In an interview on Monday, Shoemaker said there was something in common for the communities that improved, and that is they had access to services that are not available in Sault Ste. Marie, including some with supervised consumption sites.

"Timmins was perennially higher than us and when they got a supervised consumption site, things seemed to stabilize and improve for them," said Shoemaker.

"Thunder Bay has a supervised consumption, which of course is being closed down by the province's edict to close them all down.

"Our stats have not improved," he continued. "We were in the process of preparing for a supervised consumption site, we didn't ever get one -- that's in my view why our stats didn't improve."

The provincial government pulled the rug from underneath that plan when it announced earlier this year that it would not approve any additional supervised consumption sites and 19 HART Hubs would be put in place at the cost of $378 million. Ten will be new hubs, while the other nine will be former safe consumption sites converted to the HART Hub model.

The program will add as many as 375 highly supportive housing units across the province, as well as addiction recovery and treatment beds.

Shoemaker said the city ranking worst in the province for opioid toxicity death rate proves that the Sault should be among the 10 new hubs constructed.

"For half the year, we've been the worst in the province in terms of hospitalizations and deaths -- so if anybody needs it, it's us," Shoemaker said.

"Unfortunately, I think the stats help us in this regard."

He said the city has complied with the province's edict and discontinued pursuing a supervised consumption site in the Sault. The city is instead putting all of its efforts behind the HART Hub application.

Shoemaker plans to appeal to Sault Ste. Marie residents to write letters in support of the city's application for a HART Hub to the province's Ministry of Health. The information for the letter-writing campaign and a template for the letters will be posted to his website on Tuesday.

"It will go directly, we hope, to the health minister to advocate for Sault Ste. Marie to be the first one approved for a HART Hub," said Shoemaker.

"The belief is that they are going to be picking HART Hubs by the end of this year."

— with files from David Helwig.