More join call for Ford government to roll out coordinated approach to addiction crisis

The Ford government is facing another call to create a centralized, cross-ministry strategy to respond to the province’s opioid crisis, as an unusual group of stakeholders come together behind a fresh bid.

A new group, featuring health workers, first responders, labour figures and a pharmaceutical company, is behind the latest request to the province to work on an opioid treatment plan, which they hope would see a multi-ministry taskforce convened to coordinate a plan.

The group, which calls itself an Alliance for Advancing Recovery, has produced a brief report asking the government to make four changes to help with opioid addiction.

The request is: to create an emergency government task force; to connect people to opioid recovery programs; to overhaul the funding structure for opioid addiction treatment; and to give pharmacists a greater role in opioid addiction treatments.

“The crisis of substance abuse, opioid overdoses, and a growing epidemic of addiction is considered by many to be the single largest public health threat of our time,” the report said, focusing its ideas not on the overdose crisis but instead on opioid addiction more generally.

“Just as we would with any other disease, Ontario should work to ensure that every person living with OUD should have access to evidence-based effective treatment, starting with an interim goal of seeing 25 per cent more people receiving opioid agonist treatment for (opioid addiction) within the next three years, along with an increase in other services along the treatment continuum,” the report added.

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At the heart of the group’s request is an echo of a demand the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and Big City Mayors’ caucus have both made.

The groups have asked the province to create a coordinated plan to deal with the opioid crisis, and homelessness more generally. During the summer, the Big City Mayors suggested that creating a provincial ministry in charge of the file would help to ensure a comprehensive approach to tackling a complicated problem.

3:49 Ontario municipalities renew calls for long-term, comprehensive approach to homeless encampments 

Jason Grier, whose firm Delphic Research is behind the Alliance’s report, said it was a sign of how important coordination is that so many groups are asking for it.

“Why so many have pushed for the same thing is it sets a very clear signal across government that this is a priority,” he said. “And it brings in a sort of built-in accountability. If deputy ministers, for example, are having to meet monthly or quarterly and report on all these things and what they’re doing, it gives a certain momentum for the issue.”

The group has secured a disparate collection of members, including the Big City Mayors, the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario and Cochrane Paramedic Services. The latter said the existing approach to opioids is “costing people their lives” and is urging more planning, integration and coordination.

“We’ve got to get rid of all the stigmas that’s associated with it,” Seamus Murphy, Deputy Chief of Cochrane Paramedic Services, said. “It’s going to be a continuous approach to each individual because it takes a while for people to realize that they actually need help. We want to help them in their time of need but if they’re refusing that help, there’s not much we can do. But we give them that option.”

Cochrane, Ont., is one of 80-plus groups in Ontario that has expressed interest in hosting one of the Ford government’s planned addiction recovery hubs, a key pillar of the province’s current approach to addiction and homelessness.

The government is currently set to introduce 19 new Hart Hubs across Ontario sometime during the winter, with the $378-million project announced to replace 10 supervised drug consumption sites that will have to close by the end of March.

The $378 million should result in 375 “highly supportive” housing units as part of the hub model, a government spokesperson previously Global News, with an opening date planned for the winter — between December 2024 and March 2025.

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