Article content continued

“We have the application in to the municipal planning department at the City of London,” he said.

“This is a brand new type of application, so we need to clarify that process a bit, but we hope to be moving forward within the next two to three months for sure and then the building phase which we will execute as quickly as we can.”

The facilities had much support from politicians during London’s recent municipal election campaign. Mackie said he’s looking forward to working with the incoming city council on securing zoning for the permanent sites.

The health unit filed the applications for the permanent supervised drug-use sites with Health Canada in March. The federal government nod has been a long time coming, Regional HIV/AIDS Connection executive director Brian Lester said.

“We want to help people to live their healthiest outcome in their life,” he said. “Anchoring into permanent, ongoing facilities means that we can stabilize the staffing, we can make longer-term commitments, we can retain employees, they can count on their jobs, but most importantly, the people we serve can count on the service being there.”

That hasn’t always been a given.

During the provincial election campaign, Premier Doug Ford was openly critical of the sites. The temporary overdose prevention site – designed as an emergency response to a rash of deadly opioid overdoses in the city – was approved on an interim basis by the previous Liberal government.