Belleville Mayor Neil Ellis is leaving the AMO conference in Ottawa with more questions than answers when it comes to addressing the issue of addictions and homelessness in the city.
Ellis was on the Wednesday edition of The Lorne Brooker Show on 800 CJBQ to give a recap of his time at the conference.
During the conference, it was announced that the province was set to ban consumption and treatment services sites within 200 metres of schools and child care centres, affecting 10 cities across the province but not Belleville.
The province would also introduce legislation in the fall that would prohibit municipalities or organizations from launching new consumption sites or participating in the federal government’s safer supply program that sees prescription medication given to people instead of drugs bought off the street.
Instead, the province intends to create 19 new “homelessness and addiction recovery treatment hubs” or HART hubs, plus 375 highly supportive housing units at a cost of $378 million.
Ten of those HART hubs would be in cities that would no longer have the safe consumption sites, with the other nine being up to other municipalities.
The City of Belleville does not have a safe consumption site in the area but Mayor Ellis says the concept of the HART hub was something similar to what the city had been pushing for.
“The good news with this is they’re building more than one (in the province),” Ellis tells The Lorne Brooker Show.
“Originally, Minister Tibollo (Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions) said that, you know, we were on the radar and we would be a test case, basically, and they would move from there. The issue with that was, would it create more people coming that are unhoused to Belleville. Every community needs this with the way the situation is with drug addiction and homelessness.”
Ellis says he was under the impression that the nine other HART hubs planned would be strategically placed across the province and that there would be an application process to get that hub but it remains unclear.
“That’s something that was as clear as smoke,” Ellis said,
“The announcement happened. It was at the speech with the health minister and then was online and there’s not a lot of information. The nuts and bolts were how it was going to work and who was going to be positioned, basically, how they were going to be run.”
During the AMO conference, Ellis took part in multiple meetings with Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Michael Tibolo, one with representatives of the City of Belleville and the other with mayors of Eastern Ontario.
He says each meeting emphasized having at least one of the HART hubs in Eastern Ontario.
Ellis says these hubs would not be funded by the municipality, the funding would come from the province and they would be run by an outside organization.
“We have a great organization in the city that is willing to run it. We have had real estate people in that have … I believe they’ve tied up some land to build one, and that process is all ready to go,” Ellis said.
“So it’s a matter of our next step, and that next step is a little foggy whether they’re going to say, you know, you’ve done everything we’ve asked for, and you’re in the lineup, and you don’t have to apply, or our organization actually apply, and that’ll come out in the future.”
Ellis admitted that he was not leaving the AMO conference “positively.”
“It’s a lot of talk, but we all have to have a plan,” Ellis told The Lorne Brooker Show.
“We’re building on a plan and, again, it’s funding and there’s only one taxpayer.”
The full interview with Neil Ellis can be heard here:
With files from the Canadian Press
