'We’re eager to get going': WECHU set to ask city hall for approval of two safe consumption sites

A injection kit is seen inside the newly opened Fraser Health supervised consumption site is pictured in Surrey, B.C. Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward)

Windsor, Ont. -

Windsor city council will be asked to approve two new, downtown supervised consumption locations at their meeting on Jan. 17.

“We do require approval or a support letter from the municipality,”says WECHU CEO Nicole Dupuis.

As part of the Windsor-Essex Community Opioid and Substance Strategy (WECOSS), WEHCU has been working on opening a site for Consumption and Treatment Services (CTS) since September 2019, to address the opioid crisis in the community.

“We had hoped to be further along at this point,” says Dupuis.

In June 2021, WECHU announced it has ear-marked two locations in downtown Windsor for CTS:

• 101 Wyandotte Street East
• 628 Goyeau Street

“Once we have their (Windsor City Council) approval, we’ll be able to finalize the application and submit it, both for the medical exemption to Health Canada as well as to the Province of Ontario,” says Dupuis.

According to WECHU, here is what CTS would provide:

• Supervised consumption and overdose prevention services,
• Onsite or defined pathways to addictions treatment services,
• Onsite or defined pathways to wrap-around services, and
• Harm reduction services.

Dupuis cannot provide a timeline for when the approvals would come in from the upper levels of government.

“It could take you know, several months, and then several months from there to get the site ready, so you know we’re eager to get going,” says Dupuis.

“The opioid crisis continues notwithstanding the pandemic we’re trying to address,” says Dr. Shanker Nesathurai, Medical Officer of Health for WECHU.

He says they need to get moving on CTS because the risk to the broader community is great, not to mention the death toll from drug overdoses.

“There were 2,500 people who died of opioid overdose in the province in the last 12 month period,” says Dr. Nesathurai. “That’s many times more than the number of people who die in car crashes. I think the number of people that die in car crashes in the province every year is around 600.”

In August 2021, WECHU held a series of town hall virtual meetings, with members of WECOSS, to answer any questions the community might have about CTS.