Public health will begin a deep dive into the numbers behind a steep rise in local overdose deaths after regional councillor Doug Craig tabled a motion this week asking for an update to the region's 2018 feasibility study on the opioid crisis.
In a motion that received the near unanimous support of council, he called for an update to the study in the wake of a reported 720 overdose deaths since 2018.
He recommended quick turnaround given the severity of the problem, asking it be completed by the summer to help increase council's understanding of the scope of the issue facing the region.
He also wants to see an overview of the local response to the crisis, details about what and where people are using drugs, and an overview of federal, provincial and local initiatives to address the substance abuse problem.
The region's 2018 study found there were an estimated 4,000 drug users in the region with about 2,000 users injecting drugs daily.
Close to 80 per cent of people surveyed for that report said injecting drugs alone increased the risk of fatal overdoses while about half of those without stable housing preferred inhalation, suspected to be responsible for about half the drug related deaths in the province.
He said there were 19 overdose deaths in the first two months of the year, with the region now on track to a 20 per cent increase.
He wants to know if efforts like Naloxone distribution have helped, the impact on the local healthcare system and how it might have led to an increase in rates of hepatitis and HIV.
"I think it's important we do this, and start moving on it because we're losing on average 100 people a year."
"It's a terrible situation and it can't continue."
Craig said the motion isn't about strategy, it's about starting the discussion "about how we can resolve, or mitigate to a great extent the issue we are seeing within the Region of Waterloo."
But getting Wednesday's motion to the vote proved difficult.
An amendment from Coun. Rob Deutschmann, which was defeated in a tie, called for the immediate reopening of the process to secure more Consumption and Treatment Services (CTS) sites.
The amendment also called on the province to eliminate its cap on the number of places where users can safely consume drugs in Ontario, eliminate the ban at those sites on drug inhallation, and revise the CTS process to reduce the bureaucracy managers of those sites have to go through.
"We don't really need information to know that...CTS sites are successful," Deutschmann said, adding that Kitchener's CTS site has saved nearly 1,000 people from accidental overdose since 2019.
"We really need to urge the provincial government to get moving on this critical issue and I think this is an excellent opportunity to voice our concern as a region and to ask the province to do the right thing with respect to safe consumption sites," Deutschmann said.
Coun. Pam Wolf seconded the amendment, saying she wasn't going to support Craig's motion alone.
"Time for discussion is over," she said. "There isn't anyone on council who doesn't understand the severity of the drug problem."
Cambridge remains without a CTS even though one was endorsed for 150 Main St. by city council in 2021.
It entered the province's approval process in 2022, but has yet to gain any traction.
"We need an action plan now. We need timelines, we need goals, we don't need more discussion," Wolf said.
Coun. Chantal Huinink agreed, calling the move to ask regional staff to study it again "a make work project."
Coun. Colleen James wanted to know if getting the information Craig is asking for is even a realistic goal.
The region's chief medical officer Dr. Hsiu Li Wang said pulling together the best available data is feasible, but going into the field to interview drug users would take considerably more time and wouldn't necessarily provide a complete picture.
James then asked to remove the "when, where and what" from the motion.
"If we understand the epidemic we have here, they're being used everywhere," she said.
Cambridge Mayor Jan Liggett believes Craig's motion to provide a comprehensive understanding is "what we need" and said praise heaped on the Kitchener CTS is misleading.
"The people are dying when they leave the site."
"I look at BC. There's a province that just keeps adding more CTSs and yet their rates of overdose deaths just keeps climbing."
"We know what the problem is, we just don't know the depths and I think that's what's important," she said.
Liggett added she's all in on putting "millions and billions of dollars" into detox, recovery beds and mental health facilities, but she doesn't want to see a CTS in Cambridge.
Coun. Jim Erb called Craig's motion a "disappointing" effort to find more reasons not to move ahead with a CTS site in Cambridge, adding it's a public health issue the province is failing to recognize and fund appropriately.
Worried the discussion could make residents think nothing is being done by the region to tackle the issue, Regional Chair Karen Redman praised the ongoing work involved in the region's drug strategy, adding she supports the CTS and knows it's a valuable tool.
She agrees, however, data collection is critical, pointing to the pit count of the region's unhoused population as a "gamechanger" for how the region was looking at homelessness and understanding the magnitude of the problem.
Before the vote, Craig said he was "stunned" to hear opposition to an effort that seeks a way forward. He called the claim that Kitchener's CTS has saved 1,000 people "complete nonsense."
Those people would simply have been other places, with partners, at the hospital, while using, he said.
He went on to call Deutschmann's amendment "a feel good motion" with no substance, knowing the province isn't going to budge and it'll just end up "in the waste paper basket."
Nothing will be gained in terms of moving forward, he said.
"All I'm trying to do is get the information so we can work outside safe injection sites."
CTS sees less than two per cent of the people using drugs, he said. The people using outside of that are the people who are dying.
