Supervised consumption sites closing as Ford government shifts approach

Ontario's supervised consumption sites will close next month after the provincial government ended funding for all eight remaining publicly funded locations, replacing them with Homeless and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) hubs focused on abstinence-based recovery.

Advocates gathered at Metropolitan United Church on Saturday to warn that the closures will cost lives. Community workers say the sites serve people at different stages of their journey, and that not everyone's path to recovery begins with abstinence.

Data shows the stakes are high. In April, Toronto paramedics responded to 485 non-fatal opioid overdose calls—more than double the same month last year. Across Ontario, suspected drug toxicities treated by emergency services jumped from 604 in the first quarter of 2025 to 1,024 in the third quarter, according to the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network.

Since Ontario's first consumption site opened in 2017, they've recorded over 1.4 million visits and reversed more than 26,000 overdoses. Jason Miles, who spoke at Saturday's rally, credited the sites with saving his life repeatedly before he achieved two-and-a-half years of sobriety. "We're not meeting people where they are anymore," he said. The closures mark a sharp reversal from harm-reduction policy that had operated across the city for nearly a decade.