Health officials in Peterborough, Ont., are applauding a new report from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario targeting the opioid crisis.
“The Opioid Crisis: A Municipal Perspective,” released last week, focuses on the social and economic impacts the crisis has had on municipalities, including budget pressures on services such as emergency responses, affordable housing and public health.
The AMO’s extensive report calls for an integrated approach to mental health and addictions, citing “decades of provincial failure” to adequately invest in social systems.
“The path forward on the opioid crisis cannot be a debate between public safety and public health – it must be a balanced approach,” the report states. “There is no healthy community that isn’t also safe. And there is no safe community where people aren’t also healthy. ”
The AMO argues the data speaks for itself with more than 2,500 opioid-related deaths in 2023 in Ontario, after reaching a peak of more than 2,800 in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The data has prompted the AMO to make a call for action, says Bryan Paterson, mayor of Kingston and an AMO board director.
“There are so many communities across the province — not just in large cities but in towns and rural communities across the province. We are seeing enormous pressures on municipal services,” he said. “We are really on the front lines.”
A 2021 report notes 60 per cent of those who died from an opioid overdose were employed; one-third of them worked in the construction industry.
Between 2013 and 2021 the rate of opioid-related deaths among Ontario youth increased by 360 per cent. The rate of youth seeking opioid agonist therapy decreased by more than 50 per cent.
“First and foremost the lives being affected and the families — it really speaks to the health of our communities as a whole when this crisis is hitting such critical levels,” Patterson said.
The AMO is calling on better access to evidence-based treatment, and improved wait times for bed-based treatment, counselling and withdrawal management.
“A complex challenge like the opioid crisis cannot be solved by simple, short-term, stand-alone solutions,” the report states. “To meaningfully address this crisis, action is needed across a whole continuum of interventions, including investments in prevention, treatment, and enforcement/justice systems, and harm reduction.”
Peterborough Public Health’s medical officer of health Dr. Thomas Piggott echoes the AMO’s push. The health unit’s opioid harms portal reports 36 suspected drug-related deaths so far in 2024. Data released this week for June reports five deaths and 27 visits to the emergency department.
In the last year (July 2023 to June 2024) there have been 74 drug poisoning deaths in the health unit’s jurisdiction — an average of one person dying every five days.
“Really what is key is we need to do more to come together and respond,” Piggott said. “Lots is happening but there is more that the community can do, more that the province can do, and more that the federal government can do as well.”
Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith says progress by the province continues to help the region, noting the city’s supervised consumption site in the downtown. Work also continues to launch a 12-bed detox and addiction treatment centre in the city’s north end. Over $1.1 million in provincial funding for the project was announced in 2023. The facility was expected to open in the fall of 2023.
“Of course through administrative challenges, some of the challenges with the city ands some of the timelines on it, has caused some delays,” Smith said. “And of course we’ve had a little bit of a challenge getting a contractor and having that all lined up.”
Piggott says projects such as the detox centre and a local clinic’s safe supply program are important services, however, more investment is required.
“If we were thinking about opioid use as any other health condition — think heart attacks — there are multiple strategies and approaches and there are millions and millions of dollars invested,” he said. “With the scale of the problem and it being the number one killer of young people now, we know need greater investment and we need to do more.”
Paterson says AMO’s conference in August will give municipal leaders a chance to discuss the crisis further with provincial leaders.
The AMO report says municipalities “urgently” need provincial leadership and meaningful action.
“Municipalities have been on the front lines of responding to the opioid crisis but need the province to come to the table, move past divisive political rhetoric, and take concrete action to support Ontario’s residents and communities,” the report states.