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SOYA protests lack of action, transparency on Residential Withdrawal Management site (4 photos)

Sault MPP Ross Romano says the Ministry of Health is close to announcing final funding for the project. But protesters say shovels need to go in the ground now as people die from substance use on a weekly basis

Members of Save Our Young Adults (SOYA) gathered outside of the future home of Sault Ste. Marie’s Residential Withdrawal Management site on Old Garden River Road to protest what they say is a lack of transparency and action from the provincial government.

Although $343,000 in operational funding for the project was announced in May of last year, the capital funding that will cover construction costs for the 20-bed facility has yet to be finalized nearly a year later. 

“We’re still making trips to Elliot Lake. We don’t have enough beds,” said SOYA founder Connie Raynor-Elliott. “This facility isn’t going to be big enough, but you know what? Let’s get it open. 

“We have no safe beds, no transition beds. You go to withdrawal management, you’re there for seven days, then you get put back out on the streets.”

Sault Ste. Marie MPP Ross Romano told SooToday earlier this week the Ministry of Health is close to making an announcement for final funding for the project. Sault Area Hospital has confirmed that the public tender process for the project concluded on March 25, but details have been embargoed by the Ministry of Health. 

For Paula Kehoe, a SOYA board member who successfully beat her own years-long drug addiction with the help of Ontario Addiction Treatment Centres (OATC), shovels should have been in the ground “yesterday” for the withdrawal management facility at 145 Old Garden River Road.      

“We were promised this, and the shovels were supposed to be in the ground. It was supposed to be started already,” she told SooToday. “It’s impeding people from starting rehab. This is the first step, and this is an important first step. We need people to want to come and start detox and to go into rehab.”

Kehoe said people have been “dying every week” in the Sault due to substance use over the past year. 

“It’s so sad that these things are happening, and without the services here in Sault Ste. Marie to support anybody, these people don’t even have a fighting chance,” she said.

Raynor-Elliott said SOYA will continue to push for the project to get underway, even if that means picketing outside of Romano’s office. 

“I’m frustrated, I’m sick and tired,” she said. “You know what? I’m going to keep doing this and SOYA is going to keep doing this, and we’re not going to stop until this building gets up and running.” 

Sault Area Hospital moved the Residential Withdrawal Management program to its Great Northern Road site in March of 2020 after an appliance fire forced the closure of the detox centre on Queen Street East.

- with files from Kenneth Armstrong


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James Hopkin

About the Author: James Hopkin

James Hopkin is a reporter for SooToday in Sault Ste. Marie
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