EDMONTON—At its final stop in Edmonton, the government’s supervised consumption site review committee was met with overwhelming support for the city’s three supervised consumption sites, including from the adoptive mother of a baby born with opioid dependency, who said the harm reduction services offered there had saved her son’s life twice.

At the first of two hearings in Edmonton, around a hundred people showed up to a northwest hotel ballroom Wednesday evening to voice their opinion on Edmonton’s sites, which are all located close to one another near Chinatown on 97th St. The first site opened in March 2018 at Boyle Street Community Services.

Vanessa Moerike spoke to the panel through tears, holding her seven-month-old adopted son, William. Moerike said her son was born to a mother with an opioid addiction. She said the mother was able to access methadone through Edmonton’s supervised consumption sites, which helped guide her through her pregnancy.

As a result, she said William was born with an opioid dependency, and the sites helped her access postnatal treatment for him as well.

“Harm reduction saved William’s life twice,” Moerike told the panel.

The review committee, chaired by former Edmonton Police chief Rod Knecht, was formed by the United Conservative government “to evaluate the social and economic impacts of current and proposed supervised consumption sites,” according to the government’s website. Critics, however, have slammed its mandate as narrow in scope and say it does not focus enough on the benefits the sites have had on drug users in Alberta. Prior to their Edmonton stop, the panel visited Calgary, Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, Grand Prairie and Red Deer to hear from community members in those cities.

Many speakers in Edmonton asked the government panel why the conversation around the viability of supervised consumption sites is still being had. Trent Daley, who works as a support worker at George Spady Society, which houses one of the consumption sites, went as far as to bring a naloxone kit to members of the panel so “they learn how to use it.”

“I’m very concerned about the direction this government has taken,” Daley told the panel. “I have clients who are going to die based on the decisions you will make here.”

Like Daley, many people who turned up at the Edmonton panel in support of the sites said they worked in social services themselves. They spoke of loved ones who had died of overdoses, recalled how they had reversed overdoses themselves, and generally shared the ways in which they said supervised consumption sites have helped them and their loved ones better navigate drug addiction.

During the last hour of the panel’s Wednesday hearing, more people spoke in opposition to the sites, expressing concern over what they say is a rising crime rate and an increase in needle debris in the area surrounding the city’s sites. Most expressed their frustration about how Edmonton’s three sites are located so close to one another, and their belief that they should have been more spread out.

“I’m looking at it from a perspective of criminality that it brings to our neighbourhoods,” Lori Czoba told the panel. She said she hears a lot about property crime, and said the neighbourhood is made up of people who cannot afford to repair or replace property broken or stolen as a result of the crime surrounding the sites.

Similar concerns were raised last year by Edmonton’s Chinatown Business Association, which launched a federal court case against Health Canada, asking them to close two of the three sites, claiming they’ve hurt businesses in the area and that they weren’t properly consulted prior to the decision to open the sites.

Elaine Hyshka, a professor of public health at the University of Alberta, told the panel that supervised consumption sites are being used as a “lightning-rod” for societal issues that already existed in the community.

No one, Hyshka said, is pleased with an increase in homelessness, disorder or needle debris. “Those problems are symptoms of much broader structural issues in our society,” Hyshka said, adding and it’s not fair to blame the sites for those issues.

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“I wanted to make the point tonight that in general, the sites had positive impacts on the communities they’re in,” Hyshka said. She spoke of data that shows hundreds of lives have been saved as a result of the sites, and thousands of referrals that have been made to external social services for users of the sites.

Hyshka said that overall, she was heartened by the turnout of people in Edmonton who fiercely supported the sites in their city.

“It can be pretty lonely sometimes, being on the front lines ... Everyone is feeling pretty demoralized,” Hyshka said. “We’ve just seen so many people die, and it’s very difficult work. I’m glad to see so much public support.”

The panel will host its final meeting Thursday in Edmonton from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Edmonton Inn and Conference Centre. It will be the public’s last chance to speak face to face with the panel.

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