Mayoral candidates discuss how to turn the tide of opioid crisis

Sault Ste. Marie’s five mayoral candidates were each asked what they could do as mayor to help turn the city’s addiction issue around.

Ozzie Grandinetti

Former councilman Grandinetti says the issue of the opioid crisis is high on the agenda and has touched many.

“I will urge provincial and federal governments to invest in addiction treatments and to review the resources available to the community to invest in this important issue,” Grandinetti said. “All levels of government must provide affordable housing and monitored points of consumption so that we can save lives.”

It will take significant investment in mental health and addiction treatment, as well as more police action to get drugs off the streets, he said.

“I will be working closely with the Police Services Board, which has responsibility for managing our local services, to continue to come up with innovative ideas to keep the drugs out of the city,” Grandinetti said. “We need to have more eyes and ears on the street; Foot patrols, social workers, police officers, law enforcement officers, security guards who can proactively help those in need and arrest those who break the law.

“I am committed to spending municipal dollars on those parts of the system that the city is responsible for funding, and I am committed to working to ensure that the province and federal government properly fund those elements of this system that they are responsible for.” . ” he added.

Donna Hilsinger

Councilor Hilsinger says Sault Ste. Marie needs adequate and additional services to fight addiction.

“While our withdrawal management facility is under construction, our concurrent day program has been discontinued and we have no treatment center and only limited transitional or supportive housing,” Hilsinger said. “We have no safe place of consumption, no treatment center, and limited transitional or supportive housing.”

She notes that the local social services administration is working to address housing and homelessness issues with the former Sacred Heart rehabilitation and supportive housing development recommendations.

Hilsinger supports the recommendations recently submitted by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario to the Ontario Department of Health.

“They include service planning and policy development with communities as key partners to inform the delivery of mental health and addiction services,” Hilsinger said. “To develop and adequately fund a comprehensive public health approach across government to all forms of addiction and to provide mental health and addiction services in underserved communities and to ensure that there is a consistent and equitable basket of people in all parts of the province services is available.”

Tobin Kern

Kern said the current mayor and city councilman has done a good job in politely lobbying for more resources from the province, but promises to go further.

“If the province won’t be willing to save their children when asked politely, then maybe they need alarm bells ringing in their ears to wake them from their slumber of complacency,” Kern said.

“I would advocate that we take the conversation to the press and, if necessary, to the streets to put additional pressure on the province. If attention needs to be drawn to the fact that this provincial government can get creative enough to streamline the use of millions of dollars to bulldoze down windmills, they can certainly be creative enough to allocate the resources needed to do that To turn the tide on the addiction epidemic that is so evident in so many Ontario communities.

Kern says he deals with people struggling with addiction on a daily basis.

“In my view, in addition to prevention, the city must also address the needs of people who are currently struggling with addiction problems,” said Kern. “There must be programs for kids who drop out of school, even if it means a free pass to the gym with some life skills programs from positive role models.”

To do that, Kern says, he would ensure there are spaces for prevention actors to create synergies, more jobs for youth, communication with addiction experts, frontline workers and the mayor’s office, and the establishment of a town hall for the community, to discuss addiction epidemic.

He also wants discussions about safe care, where addicts are prescribed drugs that are less harmful than the toxic supply on the street.

“It looks like it has the power to decouple drug abuse from tainted sources and organized crime,” Kern said. “It also looks like it could relieve drug users of having to spend all of their money, time and energy tracking substances and the means to get them.”

Robert Peace

Peace said the opioid crisis is linked to the mental health crisis, linked to the homelessness crisis, linked to the poverty crisis, and it all repeats itself with intergenerational trauma.

“I’ve toured twenty houses downtown in the last few months. At least half have dysfunctional parents raising young children who are exposed to harmful behavior on a daily basis,” Peace said. “They, too, are now stealing from convenience stores to feed themselves, stealing for their parents, robbing other children and becoming a burden to the police. It keeps getting out of control.”

Peace said the first thing he would do as mayor is in Sault Ste. Marie.

“This will prioritize the crisis in many departments across the city and I plan to get the message across, preferably through discussions with our member Ross Romano or directly with the Prime Minister,” Peace said.

Although the provincial government is responsible for many health and welfare responsibilities, as a city we can no longer wait for the province to act, Peace said.

“It has taken a lot of public pressure to promise a replacement for the detox management facility that burned down a few years ago – and that is only part of the treatment required. Without the other components like rehabilitation, abstinence, reintegration into a community and growth, it will be almost useless,” Peace said.

He added: “You can’t start the process like rehab and then wait a person on treatment for nine months and expect not to relapse. We do not do this with any other form of illness. We do. You shouldn’t open a cardiac patient up for surgery and send them out before the surgery is complete – the results would be obvious.

Peace said the problem of mental health and addiction cannot be solved with a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. mindset.

“We cannot expect homeless people and people with mental health problems to follow the complicated and convoluted schedules and appointments when they do not have a cell phone or often do not have a fixed address. We didn’t design systems for the customers to serve them.” he said. “We are administratively heavy and the clerks are overloaded.”

Peace said a wealth of indigenous knowledge is not tapped.

“Batchewana First Nation has an infrastructure and practices that are traditional and spiritual in nature and that work,” Peace said. “I would like to invite the Batchewana First Nation to join us at the community table and look at ways we can integrate Indigenous healing practices and work with Indigenous businesses that could offer a Sault Ste Marie First solution.”

Peace said he approached Chief Dean Sayers about these ideas.

Addressing the issues the city is facing will require a fundamental shift in thinking, Peace said.

“It will bring everyone together, from community groups to police to mental health specialists, and design a local solution that will move us in the right direction,” Peace said.

Matthew Schuhmacher

Councilor Shoemaker says he has identified three priorities to help tackle the opioid crisis in Sault Ste. Marie.

The first is the establishment of a monitored consumption facility in Sault Ste. Marie, similar to those recently opened in Sudbury and Timmins.

“From what I’ve read, it reduces ER calls, reduces the spread of infectious diseases, and reduces overdoses,” Shoemaker said. “From what I’ve read it helps keep people alive. I think it’s part of something the community should be putting money into.”

Shoemaker said the opening of a supervised consumption facility must be in accordance with provincial and federal government guidance.

“I think the community should put money into the capital expenditures for the facility to have the services available in Sault Ste. Marie so that the people of Sault Ste. Marie is suffering no greater damage than our neighboring communities,” Shoemaker said.

For the second priority, Shoemaker is planning a community day of action on opioids and addiction.

“This would essentially be a public information event and education on the harms associated with opioid use,” Shoemaker said. “All schools would be invited and the public would be welcome. The hope would be that there would be free transit available that day for people to reach what I envision at the GFL Memorial Gardens.”

“I think an important part of that is naloxone training so that if you see someone overdose, a greater percentage of people in the community know what to do,” he added.

Eventually, Shoemaker said he would establish a line of communication between the mayor’s office and MPP Ross Romano’s office.

“I think the province is an important partner in solving this problem because they are the ones who have the health funding funds,” Shoemaker said.

Resuming the recently canceled intensive day care program for comorbidities at Sault Area Hospital would be high on his list under that priority.

“I think the elimination of the intensive day treatment program is a huge loss,” Shoemaker said.

“If anything else is needed more urgently or urgently, I am committed to having these lobbying discussions with Ross to get our fair share of provincial funding because we need these services just as badly as our neighboring communities, and quite frankly, we probably need them.” worse than many of our neighbors,” he added.