Supporters of harm reduction gathered on the street in front of the office of Ontario’s top doctor Wednesday afternoon to call out the names of their friends and colleagues who have died from overdoses.
Some lay down on the sidewalk and their bodies were traced in chalk, leaving outlines in front of the building along University Avenue, where Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health is based, as they demanded the province cease its plan to close supervised consumption sites.
“Why is the chief medical officer of health winding down essential services that save people’s lives?” asked harm reduction advocate Zoe Dodd, before turning to address Dr. Kieran Moore directly. “The truth is, your legacy is going to be the death of people in this city.”
The rally was timed to be about a year after the closure of some 14 supervised consumption sites across Ontario, many thanks to a law that required their closure if they were next to a school or a daycare centre.
About three weeks ago, the province notified seven more, including two in Toronto, that it was pulling their funding by June 13. That would leave three operating in downtown Toronto, with independent funding.
Last week researchers revealed numbers they said showed opioid-related paramedic calls and ER visits were rising, with numbers also indicating that deaths could be rising as well.
Those numbers were cited by six former Toronto mayors in a letter requesting the province reverse course, though Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones said they would continue to put money into an abstinence-based model known as homelessness and addiction recovery treatment, or HART, hubs.
The Ministry of Health didn’t make Dr. Moore available Wednesday but said in a statement, “Instead of giving people tools to use harmful, illegal drugs, our government is helping people break the tragic cycle of drug addiction by making record investments in more mental health and wrap-around supports.”
The statement said opioid-related deaths are down 45 per cent between 2024 and 2025.
Emily McMillan, a street nurse who spoke at the rally, said the HART model doesn’t have the decades of medical research backing up its effectiveness.
She said in her role she was seeing the impacts of turning away from evidence-based treatment already.
“People are dying. People have died in our communities, on sidewalks, we are responding in wild locations,” she said, to cries of “shame.”
HART hubs not very accessible: street nurse
In an interview after the rally, she said she knew of “a handful” of people directly who had died.
“I believe they’d still be here if our sites were still open,” McMillan said. “It’s actually quite heartbreaking to know that supervised consumption sites do save lives and they connect people to care. And removing those services is leading to more barriers for people to get the care they need.”
She said the HART hubs aren’t as accessible for drug users and nurses aren’t able to give out basic medical care the way they can in supervised consumption sites.
The philosophy of harm reduction is to try to lower the negative consequences of drug use in order to prevent an overdose death and let a drug user survive to the point where they can be ready to seek other treatment.
This can include offering clean needles to stop the spread of diseases like hepatitis or HIV, or can include the presence of nurses with the opioid antidote naloxone to reverse overdoses.
The supervised consumption sites in Ontario do not offer the drugs themselves.
In 2023, a drug dealer was found guilty of murder in a shootout next to a supervised consumption site in Leslieville. His stray bullet killed a mother of two.
Another speaker at the rally, Kevin Wilson, spoke of people he knew who died recently.
“I want you to think of Fabio, and I want you to think of my friend Ryan, who is one of my colleagues and who died alone on Thanksgiving weekend. So much potential, such wonderful people lost forever, and so many more we know we are going to lose,” he said.
