Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow calls drug-decriminalization debate a diversion

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Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says the debate over her city’s application to decriminalize small amounts of hard drugs has distracted from the urgent need for provincial and federal governments to address the overdose crisis and spend more on supportive housing and addiction treatment programs.

Her city has a two-year-old application before Health Canada for an exemption from federal drug laws on what is known as simple possession – possessing drugs for trafficking or production would remain illegal – similar to the one Ottawa granted B.C. last year. But B.C.’s provincial government, just 15 months into a three-year pilot project, asked Ottawa to partly roll back its exemption in the face of concerns from mayors, hospitals and opposition critics about drug use in public places and growing disorder.

In a Friday phone interview with The Globe and Mail, Ms. Chow said the provincial and federal governments should “stop debating” the decriminalization issue. She called it a “diversion” from the need to increase funding for what is known as supportive housing – special units for homeless people with drug and mental health treatment available – and for vastly expanded addiction-treatment programs, both of which currently have long waitlists.

“You can politicize it and have a big fight over it, but at the end of the day, people continue to die,” Ms. Chow said, noting the 500 overdose deaths Toronto recorded in 2022.

The backtrack for B.C. immediately put a spotlight on Toronto’s request for an even broader exemption that would apply even to teenagers. And it turned the issue into a national political battle.

Late last month, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was tossed out of the Commons for calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “wacko” for allowing the B.C. exemption. Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared he would fight Toronto’s application “tooth and nail.” And last week, Ontario’s Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Michael Tibollo, called the concept a “made-in-Toronto disaster waiting to happen.”

Speaking to The Globe, Ms. Chow put some distance between her and her city’s application, pointing out that it predates her term as mayor, which began last summer. The 153-page request, first filed in 2022 and updated in March, 2023, was supported by Toronto Public Health, an array of harm-reduction experts and Toronto Police.

While she said she supports the idea of doctors prescribing hard drugs as part of a treatment program, she said the blanket decriminalization of small amounts of drugs wouldn’t make a real difference without more supportive housing and expanded access to drug treatment.

“Until you set up the support system, it’s not going to work,” Ms. Chow said. But she would not call the idea of decriminalization “wacko,” as Mr. Poilievre did.

“You know what’s wacko?” Ms Chow said. “Not having the treatment programs and not having the housing. That’s what’s tragic about it.”

In an interview with The Globe, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health, Eileen de Villa, said she stands by her recommendation that formal decriminalization for simple possession would reduce the stigma that surrounds drug use and encouraging people to either get help or to avoid using drugs alone – a common factor in overdose deaths.

The city’s exemption request to Health Canada also outlines a number of other measures required to accompany decriminalization as part of a “Toronto model,” including expanded rapid treatment programs and an all-hours health centre downtown offering an alternative to hospital emergency rooms.

These services “clearly need scaling up,” Dr. de Villa said. She added that it was up to politicians to decide what to do, but since governments all seem to agree on expanding addictions treatment, she would be happy to start with this part of the plan.

She said Toronto hoped to learn from B.C.’s experience. Among the issues the city would need to work out with the federal government before any decriminalization was implemented, she said, would be how to update current laws to ensure drug use in public areas would still be prohibited, just as drinking alcohol or smoking are currently regulated.

The federal government has clearly tried to distance itself from Toronto’s application in recent days. Asked about it on May 3, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made it sound like the proposal did not exist: “The City of Toronto has no active application right now, so there’s nothing to consider.” Just days earlier, his government had issued a statement saying the request was “under review” by Health Canada.

Mr. Trudeau later told the House of Commons that Ottawa would only work with jurisdictions seeking this kind of exemption with provincial approval, which would rule out Toronto’s request, given the Ontario Premier’s recent comments.

Last week, Mr. Trudeau’s Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Ya’ara Saks, called Toronto’s application “dormant.” Her office also issued a statement saying federal officials had asked a number of questions about the proposal and that Toronto had not responded to them.

But Dr. de Villa told The Globe that her office has been in “regular contact” with Health Canada officials, and that all the federal government’s questions had been answered “to the best of our abilities.”

Asked for clarification, Yuval Daniel, a spokesperson for Ms. Saks’s office, said in an e-mail on Friday that Toronto’s request remains “not workable” and repeated the assertion that Health Canada had not received any responses from Toronto Public Health.