Words were not minced during a protest Tuesday regarding the upcoming closure of safe consumption sites: people will die.
“The transition to HART Hubs in place of CTS sites is a Band-Aid on a bullet hole,” said organizer 26-year-old Mars Russell during the protest. “It’s far from a solution. Forget fixing something that isn’t broken, this is uprooting something that has foundations of life saving care. This is cutting a lifeline. This decision is going to come with a body count.”
The protest saw a few dozen community members gather outside city hall before marching to St. George’s Square for a moment of silence, shouting chants along the way like ‘safe sites save lives,’ ‘close the sites and people die,’ and ‘no more dead friends.’
Members from the Guelph Community Health Centre, Welcoming Streets and the Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy were in attendance.
Outside city hall, Russell likened safe consumption sites to liquor stores, which remained open during the pandemic because hospitals couldn’t handle the surge in patients dependent on alcohol losing access to it.
“According to Health Canada there have been zero reported overdose deaths at CTS across the country. This finding alone shows their effectiveness in providing safety for some of the most vulnerable members of our community.”
Russell added we don’t have the resources, beds or budget to handle the crisis that will follow the closure of the CTS.
“Of course we want those who are struggling to receive treatment, but you cannot put a dead person into rehab,” they said.
Guelph’s safe consumption site, located inside the GCHC, is one of several sites across Ontario set to close on March 31, with HART Hubs opening in their place. What those hubs will look like is not entirely clear yet, but they will prioritize treatment and will not include safe supply or safe consumption services.
Andrew MacNeil from GCHC said they have seen a “massive uptick” in requests for overdose response training recently, “because the community knows what’s coming.
“We are going to lose lives that we wouldn’t otherwise lose,” he said, emphasizing that building a sense of connection and community is crucial moving forward.
MacNeil said the health centre has been in a bit of a “holding pattern” with what to expect going forward given the snap election, but that they plan to expand their outreach programming to mitigate risk and continue to work on proactive prevention.
Still, “nothing that we do replaces what we lose in the CTS (closure),” he said.
“But all is not lost, because we’re here together. We’re expressing the care that we have for people who use drugs,” he said.
“If we maintain the importance of these services, that they are irreplaceable, then I suspect wisdom will prevail,” he said.
MacNeil said the health centre has been in a bit of a “holding pattern” with what to expect going forward given the snap election, but that they plan to expand their outreach programming to mitigate risk and continue to work on proactive prevention.
Still, “nothing that we do replaces what we lose in the CTS (closure),” he said.
“But all is not lost, because we’re here together. We’re expressing the care that we have for people who use drugs,” he said.
“If we maintain the importance of these services, that they are irreplaceable, then I suspect wisdom will prevail,” he said.
Attendees shared stories of losing loved ones and long-lost friends to drug poisonings, including Jennifer Augustus and Myles Cikvar, who both died in St. George’s Square in late 2024.
Kennedy Pecore is a former youth worker who worked with Cikvar, the “sweetest soul” she’s ever met.
Pecore quoted addiction expert and physician Dr. Gabor Maté: “There is no war on drugs, because you can’t war on inanimate objects. There’s only a war on drug addicts, which means we are warring on the most vulnerable members of society.
She urged community members to be someone who stands up for others and to choose kindness above all.
“There is a saying that reads, honour the dead, fight like hell for the living. And I assure you, this is exactly what we are going to do,” Pecore said.