Many of you have connected with my office in recent weeks about the concerns surrounding the Northwood Clinic on Somerset West and the uptick in public drug use and diversion nearby.
On April 15, I spoke at the Ottawa Board of Health meeting, describing how Chinatown has been impacted by the closure of the supervised consumption site by the Ford government and the opening of the Northwood Clinic nearby. You can watch that presentation here.
Last week, my office convened a meeting with the Chinatown BIA, the OPS, and city staff, to discuss the ongoing challenges in the neighbourhood and the resources available to help. Many businesses will be participating in the CAMSafe program, which allows them to share security camera footage with the OPS when requested.
We also received a new update from the OPS: the CORE hotspot policing program will extend into Centretown and Chinatown, starting as early as June. Two new patrols will be dedicated to our neighbourhoods in Somerset Ward. This is in response to advocacy from our office about the blowback effect of increased policing in the Byward Market chasing more troubled people into Centretown.
In addition to this, two new Community Engagement workers were added to Centretown/Chinatown this fall, and a proactive paramedic van is now doing rounds in the area to help people struggling with addictions. The city has also received new federal and provincial money to significantly scale-up proactive urban outreach. More on that from me in the coming weeks.
On Friday, MPP Catherine McKenney and I met with the Mayor’s Office, Rob Boyd from Inner City Health, and MPP Robin Lennox, the newly elected representative for Hamilton Centre and Official Opposition’s Health Critic. Robin is also a practicing physician, specializing in addiction medicine. She has worked with the Shelter Health Network and was medical director for the supervised consumption service at the YWCA, as well as co-head of the substance use service at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton.
Our conclusion is that Dr. Koka’s practice is extremely unusual. It seems that there are serious concerns about the drugs he is prescribing, and the lack of patient care he provides, given that he is the sole doctor affiliated with 15 clinics. The assessment within the addiction medicine community is that Northwood Clinic is not operating like a typical safe supply program and really is an outlier.
We discussed potential avenues for advocacy. One is for community members to file complaints with the College of Physicians and Surgeons, though these complaints are typically taken more seriously if they are filed by another physician or by patients.
The other area that we believe would have traction and lead to a more systemic solution, is advocating for the provincial government to add injectable, longer-lasting opioid agonist treatment to the provincial formulary. Medications of this nature have already been approved by Health Canada and are being used in some parts of BC. If patients had to ability to consume prescribed alternatives on site and not carry large quantities of drugs with them, it would eliminate the diversion of safe supply that we are currently seeing near Northwood.
MPP McKenney and I will continue to keep you updated as our advocacy continues. In the meantime, please call 911 if you feel there is a risk to public safety and 211 for the ANCHOR team to assist anyone you may encounter who might be experiencing a mental health or substance use crisis.
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Sometimes the solutions we need are right in front of us. That is what I was thinking about when we hosted the amazing team from Operation Come Home two weeks ago.
The best part of my job is that I get to learn about so many things all at once. It is also the most challenging. On any given day, I may need to shift gears 10 times, focusing on issues from the seemingly mundane (potholes and garbage collection) to the more profound (how to end homelessness and tackle addiction).