Consultations continue regarding Winnipeg’s first supervised consumption site planned for 200 Disraeli Freeway, as the government meets with Point Douglas residents Thursday evening to hear their thoughts.
Community activist Sel Burrows says the progress on the site is a welcome step.
“There’s no perfect site, but this is as good as we can get,” says Burrows. “There are very few homes nearby, and with the increased police patrols that are guaranteed, the businesses nearby are actually going to have fewer problems.”
Still being reviewed by the federal government, the site would have staff to respond to overdoses and help people seeking treatment.
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Burrows says he hears residents are concerned about safety around the site, but it’s a necessary tool to save people’s lives.
“We don’t have any guaranteed way of keeping them all alive, but we should be trying every method we possibly can to keep these folks alive. And safe consumption sites are one of the tools we need.”
The province says the site will only move ahead when they have a comprehensive safety plan for the site and for the neighbourhood.
The only current overdose prevention site in the city is a mobile one, operated by Sunshine House. Executive director Levi Foy says the need for support on the street reached critical mass this weekend.
“On Sunday, we experienced probably the most catastrophic day that we’ve ever had. We had attended to or assisted on 10 overdoses within a 45-minute period,” says Foy.
He says the overdoses may have been linked to a substance called Brown Down, staff tested and found it contained a high concentration of opioids.
Foy says as far as he knows, no one required transportation to a hospital. But while that many overdoses that quickly is abnormal, he says it illustrates that their teams need help.
“We’re way over capacity, so if we were able to get people to connect with a permanent site with a lot more wraparound supports built right into the facility, it would really alleviate some of the challenges that our team faces.”
