Kensington Market split over drug consumption site's future

Patrick Chisholm has visited the drop-in centre at St. Stephen's Community House in Kensington Market for the past 10 years.

Every few weeks, he sits in a blue chair at the same desk inside its supervised consumption site to inject illicit drugs. 

Soon, he'll have to find another place to use, where there may not be anyone present to revive him if he overdoses.

"If they close these sites down, they're gonna have piles of bodies all over the place," Chisholm said. 

The Ontario government is planning legislation that will shutter at least five Toronto supervised drug consumption sites by March 2025 because they are located within 200 metres of schools or daycares. That legislation would also prohibit new ones from opening, as the Ford government shifts its approach to the drug overdose crisis toward a model it says focuses on treatment, recovery and community safety.

The plan has set off fierce debate between those who see the sites as life-saving spaces and others who say they have made their neighbourhoods unsafe.

In the middle of Kensington Market — an eclectic downtown Toronto neighbourhood that's popular with residents and tourists alike — the debate plays out on the streets. 

The Neighbourhood Group uses community donations to run the Kensington site, which operates six days a week, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Around 700 people are registered to use the service.

People inject drugs there under the supervision of staff trained to treat them with oxygen or naloxone if they overdose. Staff also distribute clean syringes and other harm reduction supplies. It doesn't offer a safe supply program.

People who use the site and staff who work there tell CBC Toronto that it keeps them alive — offering people a pathway to treatment and preventing disease transmission. 

But some who live and work in Kensington Market say it has increased public drug use and discarded needles in their community, as well as the number of people in distress in close proximity to children.

On a recent September afternoon, Stefan Baranski dropped his four-year-old son off at a private school that runs one of the two daycares within a 200-metre radius of the Kensington supervised consumption site.

Baranski said he's seen people using drugs while students are walking to school in the morning, and he's concerned by multiple incidents in which people have walked by the school without clothing.

"It's pretty sad that it ever got to the stage where we had open drug use within literally eyesight of schools," Baranski said. "The province is absolutely on the right track."