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Protesters fighting to reopen Windsor’s SafePoint held a rally and vigil Thursday outside the shuttered drug consumption and treatment service site after the Ontario government denied it interim funding pending an indefinite review.
“We’re urging the province to approve and fund life-saving health care in the community,” said Rev. George Bozanich, a member of the Windsor CTS Advocacy Coalition.
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“SafePoint just started to provide that service. It’s much-needed. The toxic drug-poisoning crisis is an emergency. We’re asking the province to act like it.”
Thursday’s protest was the second one that members and supporters of the Windsor CTS Advocacy Coalition have organized. They also held a protest March 8 outside the local constituency office of MPP Andrew Dowie (PC — Windsor-Tecumseh).
SafePoint was forced to close January 1 after the Ontario government refused to provide funding until it completes a province-wide review of all drug consumption and treatment centres.
Dowie told the Windsor Star this week that SafePoint is not eligible for interim funding.
SafePoint can’t claim short-term funding until it secures provincial approval, he said. That approval, if it comes at all, can only be secured following a critical incident review prompted by a fatal shooting outside a Toronto CTS site last summer.
There is no deadline for the review.
“They’ve been delaying approval for sites in Windsor, Sudbury, Timmins, and Barrie,” said Bozanich.
“Windsor’s application has been in for almost 20 months. Sudbury’s application has been in for more than 30 months. They’re just sitting on applications.”
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SafePoint opened last April, without provincial approvals, under a federal exemption from Health Canada. It stayed open eight months. The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit began funding the site with the expectation that provincial dollars would start flowing by the summer.
But the Ontario government suspended all new funding approvals — including those for sites in Windsor, Timmins, and Sudbury — pending the conclusion of the critical incident review.
In November, the local health unit’s board of directors voted unanimously to put SafePoint on hold starting January 1, pending sustainable funding from the province.
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