Ontario is dispatching its Emergency Medical Assistance Team to set up a tent in Moss Park to provide a heated and insulated space for safe injections.

“This is an overdose crisis. People are dying and, today, Minister Eric Hoskins and the Ontario government have stepped up,” Councillor Joe Cressy said Wednesday night. The tent will be set up Thursday and replace a temporary site run by the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society (TOPS). The ministry will work with TOPS staff, Cressy said.

Earlier in the day, harm-reduction workers had gathered for a press conference in Moss Park to draw attention to the need for warm and safe space for the people they serve and how red tape in a time of crisis is endangering lives.

“We are in a public health emergency,” harm-reduction worker Zoe Dodd said. “We are asking the province and the federal government and the city to ignore legal exemptions and let rooms open to save lives across the province.”

The tent opened in August and was set up and taken down each day by TOPS members. Staffed by off-the-clock nurses and volunteers, the tent supervised 1,976 injections and stopped or reversed 85 drug overdoses, according to staff.

The organizers had been speaking with the city and multi-service agency Fred Victor about moving their services into the agency’s basement while they waited for an exemption from the federal government that would allow them to operate legally.

That move will not be possible, they have been told, without federal approval. With winter approaching, the tent is not sufficient shelter for them to provide lifesaving work, they said. In the interim, they want city support to open a trailer in Moss Park and the province to declare a state of emergency.

Fred Victor’s executive director, Mark Aston, said the agency is deeply supportive of the work being done in the park, but after lengthy in-house discussions, they determined they need the exemption before they can provide a space for this service.

“This issue has hit everyone,” and the systems preventing swift care for people in crisis, or preventing TOPS from expanding, must be examined and fixed, he said. They are in the final stages of finishing the application for the exemption, he said.

Mayor John Tory and Ontario Minister of Health and Long-Term Care Eric Hoskins wrote a joint letter to Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor on Tuesday requesting the application be approved immediately.

“Under the circumstances and the urgency of this local situation, we ask that you provide a short-term or conditional exemption to enable the service to open as soon as possible,” they wrote.

“Many people are using the overdose prevention site, and many lives have been saved by overdose reversals. However, operating this type of health service in a park is not sustainable, not least because winter is approaching.”

Petitpas Taylor told the Star Wednesday that once the application arrives she has instructed her staff to move as quickly as possible, but could not provide a timeline. “We do know it is time-sensitive. We recognize that winter is fast approaching,” and want to make sure people are getting the help they need, she said.

Meanwhile, at the tent, organizers say an exemption isn’t the solution to a worsening and deadly crisis.

“We are in an emergency situation and in an emergency what you need is to be fast and dynamic and responsive to changing needs,” said Sarah Ovens, a social worker and organizer with TOPS. “The exemption process is the opposite of that.”

The city has opened an interim safe injection site, with more planned for Toronto and across Ontario.

On Monday, the city’s public health committee heard that 70 people have died as a result of homelessness in Toronto this year. Most died in the emergency shelter system or inner city hospitals. Four died outdoors.

That next day the city’s emergency shelter system was at 95 per cent capacity and Wednesday marked the start of the city’s Out of the Cold programs, a volunteer-led cold relief endeavour operating out of faith-based organizations across the city.

Leigh Chapman, a registered nurse and TOPS organizer said people will be seeking warm places to use drugs including Out of the Cold sites.

“The city is acting as if we have time to wait. The province is acting as if we had time. We buried a volunteer on Monday,” said Chapman, speaking about a 22-year-old who had been supporting the tent since it opened.

Leon “Pops” Alward, 46, told the Star he overdosed at a friend’s place in October and was revived using Naloxone, a medication that blocks or reverses opioid overdoses. People are relying on each other for harm reduction and without low-barrier sites like the tent, he said, deaths are guaranteed to rise.

“People are dying, consistently,” he said.

City staff said workers at the Out of the Cold programs and the city’s five cold-respite centres are expected to have Naloxone kits and training on how to use them.

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Councillor Cressy said the city has an “ethical obligation” to address the needs of a vulnerable population.

“If the federal government is not willing to expedite the exemption or willing to change the law I believe the city and the province should ignore them,” he said.

With files from David Rider