Meet the people fighting for a safe consumption site in the Sault

A report to city council with a possible way forward for a safe consumption site is expected later this week from CAO Malcolm White, and a group that's been advocating behind the scenes for years is eagerly anticipating its findings.

Willow Addiction Support Services has spent the past several years laying the groundwork for such a site in the Sault — and even came relatively close to opening one itself.

With the CAO’s report expected to be made public this Thursday in advance of Monday’s meeting of city council, Willow’s leadership and board are left wondering how the project could move ahead when the province is not currently taking new applications for supervised consumption sites.

Executive director Desiree Beck told SooToday the possibility of a supervised consumption site opening its doors in the Sault in the near future is probably less likely than it was when Willow was close to acquiring a building for that purpose in 2021 because the province has halted taking applications for new ones.

“We’re probably in a worse spot if not for any reason than the province has added additional requirements and restrictions, they have capped the number of sites and altogether halted it,” said Beck. “This is almost worse because the government is saying we are not doing this right now, it’s all on hold. So we are in gridlock, undeniably.”

Willow’s board represents a cross-section of medical and legal professionals in the Sault. It includes:

• The Honourable Larry Whalen, Superior Court Judge (retired)
• Bill Johnson, Crown Attorney (retired)
• Dr. Bob Maloney, clinical lead for addictions at Sault Area Hospital
• Terri Nicholson, registered psychotherapist, concurrent disorders counsellor
• Gretchen Delguidice, RP registered psychotherapist
• Erin Kucher, addiction nurse
• Paul Skeggs, lawyer
• Jeff Broadbent, lawyer

Jeff Broadbent told SooToday the board’s mission is to establish a supervised consumption site in the Sault that would provide a safe and supervised alternative for people who are currently using drugs in library and mall washrooms, commercial and residential alcoves, alleyways and other unsafe spaces. 

”We provide a safe place with supervision for those in the grip of dependency so they are not forced to use in inappropriate places, can have testing and supervision, and be provided resources to get help onto the path of recovery,” said Broadbent.

He said the members of the board represent people of all political stripes.

"This isn’t a political issue, it isn’t left versus right. Addiction strikes everyone and there isn’t a family in this community that isn’t affected by addiction," said Broadbent.

According to statistics released last month by the Office of the Chief Coroner, the Algoma Public Health unit is tied with Thunder Bay with the second-highest rate of opioid toxicity mortality, a rate virtually unchanged from the previous year — and more than double the provincial average.

Most of those people die alone. Looking at the overall statistics, there was a bystander confirmed present in only one out of every eight deaths recorded provincially in Q2 of 2023.

Willow does not encourage the use of drugs, but instead advocates for a supervised consumption site to provide a safe space to help curb the death rate by opioid poisoning that has remained relatively stagnant in the Algoma Public Health unit.

“It would be a gateway to treatment, that’s the hope,” Broadbent said of the proposed site. “It’s not like a bar that encourages the consumption of the drug of alcohol, but it is a safe place and we would hope to provide support and guidance and help these people find their path to treatment.”

Dr. Bob Maloney has spent the past 12-plus years working in the field of addiction as a physician in Sault Ste. Marie. Like the rest of the board members, he brings his own experience to the table and does not represent his employer.

He told SooToday he recently joined the Willow board to have some say in how a community plan was put together and to make sure it works alongside the other work being done in the community to address mental health and addictions.

“I have been quite reassured in talking to Desiree and the quality of all of the board members of Willow that their intentions — I think there is an absolute recognition this is a very important part of a network of solutions for all of this,” he said.

Maloney said the target population for a supervised consumption site is largely intravenous opioid users.

“They are using, they may have comorbid medical conditions, they are homeless and usually either have either primary mental health issues or incredibly anxious or depressed about their social situation and living in survival mode day to day,” he said. “From a treatment point of view, it’s very difficult to engage that population in treatment.”

Maloney said that population needs a street-level intervention.

“This population is so desperate and nobody wants to be like that, but they are in this cycle of desperation where it’ survival every day,” he said. “It’s getting your hit or finding the money or doing the services that get you your hit and then it’s Groundhog Day over and over again.”

“It’s a pitiful existence and this is the population a supervised consumption site would serve. Their needs cannot be met any other way aside from they are so desperate they end up in the hospital quite sick,” he added.

That population, Maloney said, end up needing more acute medical care and account for a high number of 911 calls to emergency medical services and police.  

“There are segments of the population that would say arrest them all, put them in jail or let them die. Well, it can’t be a solution because there are consequences to all of those decisions.”

Broadbent said the money spent on setting up and operating a supervised consumption space will be offset in part by cost savings to those services.

“If we had a facility it would save so much in resources and free up these professionals to be able to handle other important matters,” he said.

In 2021, Beck led the public consultation work required before a supervised consumption site could be opened. Backed by the Willow board, she was seeking out a suitable site that summer but it ultimately fell through.

“We had the building, we had everything going, we just needed to find someone to either donate funds for us to purchase the building, buy the building in kind or, at that time, for the city to buy the building for us,” she said.

Site selection was key, said Beck, because the provincial and federal applications for a supervised consumption site cannot go ahead without it.

Beck said Willow participated in the consultations done by the CAO’s office, but she does not know if the non-profit will be part of any solution brought forward in White’s report.

“At the end of the day I don’t care if we, as Willow, partner with the city to do it, if the city decides to do it themselves or if some other miracle worker comes in and gets it done in 24 hours or less — I don’t care who does it, the end goal is still the same. Let’s get a consumption site and save as many lives as we can,” she said.

Broadbent agrees the most important thing is for a site to open, not who is selected to operate it.

“Nobody on the board views Willow as having a monopoly on this, all we want is a safe consumption facility," he said. "The fact of the matter is we are all volunteers. We are doing this freely of our time, without compensation, it’s not costing the community a nickel. All of the work that Desiree has done and others in the organization, that is free work the community could benefit from. If they hand this over to another agency there might be benefits to that but one of the costs is going to be they are going to be reinventing the wheel and at the expense of tax dollars." 

No matter what location is eventually identified for a site, Maloney said he expects to see some people come out in opposition from the so-called "not in my backyard" camp.

“The NIMBYs out there we anticipate are going to resist, they don’t recognize that it’s already in their backyards, in their front yards, in the mall, in the library and it’s everywhere,” said Maloney. “It’s in everybody’s backyards right now and that’s the point.”