TORONTO — Dozens of supporters packed a Toronto courtroom – and two overflow rooms – on Monday as a supervised consumption site challenged the legality of a new provincial law that will soon shut down 10 such sites and prevent new ones from opening.
The province passed legislation last year that banned consumption sites deemed too close to schools or daycares. The Neighbourhood Group, which runs the Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site in downtown Toronto, launched a lawsuit in December along with two people who use the space.
"Does Ontario's actions increase risk of death and harm?" said the group's lawyer, Carlo Di Carlo.
"The answer is yes."
Outside court, Bill Sinclair, CEO of The Neighbourhood Group, said he was confident in his team's case.
"We are challenging the law because it's discriminating against the people who use our services, and it's going to reduce health services in the middle of a terrible health crisis," he said.
The group says supervised consumption sites are part of the solution to the ongoing drug crisis that claims thousands of Ontarians' lives every year.
"It's something that will minimize deaths and the spread of infectious disease and that will allow people to continue their fight to recover," Di Carlo said in an interview before the hearing.
"And so that's what's at stake for not only our individual applicants, but anybody else throughout Ontario who's in that position."
The group points to evidence that the 10 sites have never had a death and have reversed several thousand overdoses.
The province is moving to an abstinence-based treatment model. Ten consumption sites will cease operations by April 1, when new rules take effect banning them within 200 metres of schools and daycares under the Community Care and Recovery Act.
Nine of those consumption sites will be converted to homelessness and addiction recovery treatment hubs, or HART hubs as the province refers to them. Ontario has also approved 18 new hubs across the province.
The province is investing $529 million into the plan that includes 540 highly supportive housing units.
Public health officials and harm reduction workers have warned that overdoses, deaths and calls to emergency services will increase after the supervised consumption sites close. However, Health Minister Sylvia Jones said last summer that no one will die as a result of the policy shift.
The legal challenge being heard this week argues the new law violates both the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution, including the right to life, liberty and security of the person.
Closing supervised consumption sites violates that right by forcing people who use them to resort to unhealthy and unsafe drug consumption, which carries a higher risk of death from overdose and increases the risk of criminal prosecution, the challenge argues.
It also argues the legislation goes against the division of powers between Ottawa and provinces, in that only the federal government can make criminal law and try to suppress what it considers a "socially undesirable practice."
The government ordered reviews of 17 consumption sites across the province following the killing of a Toronto woman who was hit by a stray bullet in a shooting near one of the sites. Karolina Huebner-Makurat was walking through her southeast Toronto neighbourhood of Leslieville on July 7, 2023, when she was shot as a fight broke out between three alleged drug dealers outside the South Riverdale Community Health Centre.
The province argues in a document filed in court that there is increased crime and disorder in the immediate vicinity of supervised consumption sites and that the sites themselves attract drug dealers. It points to eyewitness accounts from people who live and work near the sites as proof of the chaos.
"These eyewitnesses testified about the instances of drug trafficking, public drug use, public intoxication, aggression and violence, and discarded needles and other drug paraphernalia either immediately adjacent to or within one or two blocks of a (supervised consumption site)," lawyers for the province wrote.
They cite examples of an elementary school near one consumption site that went into lockdown one day while someone injected drugs in the schoolyard, as well as a child who accidentally pricked herself with a discarded needle and had to be monitored and tested for communicable diseases.
The applicants are seeking an injunction that would put off the April 1 site closures until court can decide the case. Ultimately, they want the law struck down.
The province said the application should be dismissed.
The case has attracted several interveners the court will hear from. That includes neighbours of some of the consumption sites, the Leslieville Neighbours For Community Safety and the Niagara Neighbours for Community Safety.
They say there is much fear in the community.
"Children living near the (supervised consumption site) at the Riverdale Community Health Centre have found baggies of fentanyl and discarded needles," the groups said.
"They have witnessed drug deals, which have triggered panic attacks because they are afraid of getting shot, like Ms. Huebner-Makurat."
The groups say the law should be upheld.
The City of Toronto's board of health has also intervened, as has the HIV Legal Network, Aboriginal Legal Services and the Black Legal Action Centre, among others.
"The Board anticipates the effect of reducing access to harm reduction services in Toronto in the middle of a drug toxicity crisis will be severe: more people will overdose and die," the board of health wrote in court documents.
"This is a very high cost for achieving the legislative objective of the (law.)"
Opioid deaths began increasing in Ontario in 2015 when illicit fentanyl first hit the province's streets. Deaths spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic and in 2023, the last full year of available coroner's data, more than 2,600 Ontarians died from opioids.
The deaths hit all demographics, but opioid fatalities are disproportionately affecting the province's increasing homeless population.
The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has estimated that more than 80,000 people in the province were homeless last year and that $11 billion over 10 years would be required to end chronic homelessness.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 24, 2025.
Liam Casey, The Canadian Press
