We intervened in this critical legal challenge to uphold the health and human rights of those who are all too often pushed aside.
For immediate release
The following can be attributed to the HIV Legal Network and the HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario (HALCO), co-intervenors in the court challenge to Ontario’s Community Care and Recovery Act, which will close at least 13 supervised consumption sites in Ontario, leaving people who use drugs without the life-saving care and services they require.
March 25, 2025 – Toronto – Joining other intervenors, the HIV Legal Network and HALCO made our submissions in the court challenge to Ontario’s so-called Community Care and Recovery Act (CCRA). This deadly law, introduced and passed without debate or discussion in late 2024 — and despite the legal advice of Ontario’s own lawyers — would see the closure of at least 13 supervised consumption sites in the province by March 31. These sites provide a safe and supervised space, free from the threat of criminalization and violence, including gender-based violence, wherein people can also access HIV and hepatitis C prevention and testing, referrals to housing and income supports, psycho-social assistance, and other healthcare. Amidst a toxic drug crisis that has needlessly claimed tens of thousands of lives across Canada, no one should be questioning the basic need for supervised consumption sites, nor hostile towards the committed staff and organizations who run them.
It is disheartening to be forced to fight in court for the health and human rights of society’s most marginalized; people who use drugs often experience intersecting and insidious forms of discrimination, including on the basis of HIV status, gender, and homelessness. Supervised consumption services are an unparalleled health service that meets the needs of people who use drugs by meeting people where they are, including in community health centres where they have already established and trusted relationships and are co-located with services that help link people to health and social services.
We have fought for harm reduction, in courts of law and elsewhere, for decades. In this case, our intervention focuses on the specific and disproportionate impacts these closures and new legal barriers to would-be future sites will have on women who use drugs, who are nearly three times more likely than men to acquire HIV through injection drug use, and also on homeless people, who are the most frequent users of supervised consumption sites and have no other indoor setting in which they can safely use. Thus, the closure of these sites will force them to use drugs in public spaces, often alone and without the support of staff who can reverse the effects of an overdose.
We believe that justice will prevail in this case because the evidence is clear: supervised consumption sites save lives, promote health, provide safety, and do not result in increased crime, discarded drug consumption equipment, or public drug use in the areas where they are located, contrary to the Government of Ontario’s claims, which the deeply wrongheaded Community Care and Recovery Act purports to address. The legislation is indefensible, and we hope the Court concludes it must be struck down.
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Download: Protecting Safe Consumption in Ontario – HIV Legal Network
Media Contact:
Dylan DeMarsh, HIV Legal Network
Email: d.dmarsh@hivlegalnetwork.ca