WELLINGTON COUNTY – Both county and city councillors want more information on how local ambulance services will be impacted when Guelph's safe consumption site closes in seven months.
Broaching the question during a Joint Social Services and Land Ambulance Committee meeting Wednesday afternoon, county Coun. Matthew Bulmer said he believes data on how many ambulance trips were prevented by Guelph's Consumption and Treatment Services (CTS) will help the committee better understand what and how the Guelph Wellington Paramedic Services capacity might change post-closure.
This follows a provincial announcement last month that Guelph Community Health Centre's CTS at 175 Wyndham St. is one of 10 in Ontario that will have to stop providing services like supervised safe consumption, safe supply and need exchange by the end of March 2025
According to deputy CAO for the City of Guelph Colleen Clack-Bush, despite the local CTS attending to "a number of overdoses" that didn't require transport to a hospital, no service changes are anticipated and staff expects paramedic services "still have the capacity to respond" post-closure.
A report will come to the committee in October with exact numbers and more details from the Guelph Community Health Centre.
"Our paramedics are trained and equipped to respond to drug-related incidents including poisonings and will always continue to provide the service to the community regardless," said Clack-Bush. "And so we continue to adapt our service as need to address any changes that might exist and so we certainly don't want to leave the community with the feeling that this is going to impact our provision of service because that is our job is to be there regardless."
In the same vein, Coun. Dominique O'Rourke questioned whether the proposed Hart Hub would be ready in time for the CTS closure and how the needs being treated at the existing site would be addressed during the transition.
"I think we will see more first responders having to attend at multiple locations so...what's the mechanism for any interim plan there because I don't have a lot of confidence that those Hart Hubs are going to align time-wise with the closure," said O'Rourke.
County social services administrator Luisa Artuso said staff are working on how they will phase out the current CTS and ramp up the Hart Hub.
Going forward, Artuso said the intent is to build on the services that already exist at the Guelph Community Health Centre while they start to decrease the safe injection aspects of the site.
"I think we're fairly confident that we'll have a good Hart Hub to open but with more expansion plans as time goes on," said Artuso.
Guelph mayor Cam Guthrie was absent from the meeting.
Isabel Buckmaster is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program
