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The Thomas Donaghy Overdose Prevention Site is being relocated by the province, despite objection from the City of Vancouver.
Photo by Jason Payne /PostmediaArticle contentThe B.C.
NDP wants to reopen an infamously mismanaged Vancouver-based supervised consumption site despite opposition from the local mayor and city council.
Not only is the province acting undemocratically, such sites have been shown to fuel crime and do not actually save lives.Sign In or Create an Accountor View more offersArticle contentThis controversy began earlier this month, when Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), a provincial health authority, announced that it had acquired a new permanent downtown location for its Thomas Donaghy Overdose Prevention Site (TDOPS), which is expected to resume operations within the coming weeks.Article contentRecommended VideosWe apologize, but this video has failed to load.Try refreshing your browser, ortap here to see other videos from our team.We apologize, but this video has failed to load.Try refreshing your browser, ortap here to see other videos from our team.Article contentArticle contentThe TDOPS was originally located in Vancouver’s Yaletown neighbourhood, but local residents sued the site’s operators, alleging that their “ham-fisted” management had fuelled drug trafficking, public disorder, assaults and vandalism.
The lawsuit ultimately ended in an out-of-court settlement wherein the province committed to better respecting its minimum public safety standards.Article contentPlatformedThis newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about.
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Browse here.Article contentThe city declined to renew TDOPS’s lease in 2024, while the lawsuit was ongoing, citing public safety issues.
Shortly afterwards, the consumption site relocated to another building slightly outside of Yaletown, where it continued to attract neighbourhood complaints.
The new building owner then asked it to vacate this January, after less than two years of tenancy — perhaps the province’s commitments to guaranteeing minimum standards were just hot air.Article contentThat brings us to the current reopening: new location; same operator; no clear argument for why things will be different this time.Article contentIn response to TDOPS’s announced second revival, Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim forwarded an “urgent” motion directing city staff to “use all tools available to the city” to block the opening of all new supervised consumption sites — not just this one — unless they provide detailed proposals that include “meaningful consultation, a clear public safety strategy, defined recovery pathways, and transparent accountability measures.”Article contentArticle content“We have seen the disastrous impact when OPS sites are introduced without the right planning, oversight, and accountability,” wrote Sim in an associated news release.Article contentRead More Adam Zivo: Carney’s public health officer refuses to say injecting fentanyl is unsafe Derek Finkle: Health Canada ignored police, parents and provinces to renew injection sites Advertisement 1Story continues belowThis advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Article contentThe motion passed with unanimous support from Sim’s ruling ABC Party, but was rejected by all opposition councillors.
Yet, the province has made it clear that it intends to reopen TDOPS regardless of municipal opposition, as it sees consumption sites as a form of evidence-based health care.Article contentUnfortunately for the B.C.
NDP, though, there is compelling data showing that these sites do not save lives and actually fuel crime.Article contentNotably, a recent peer-reviewed study published in Addiction, an academic journal, examined the impacts of closing a supervised consumption site in Red Deer, Alberta, by comparing municipal health outcomes with Lethbridge, a demographically-similar Albertan city whose consumption site remained open.Article contentThe study found that former clients of the Red Deer consumption site saw no statistically significant increase in deaths, emergency department visits or “opioid-related emergency medical services (EMS) events” compared to the clients of the Lethbridge site.
In fact, uptake of opioid agonist therapy (i.e.
evidence-based addiction treatments such as methadone) markedly increased after the closure of the Red Deer site was announced.Advertisement 1This advertisement has not loaded yet.Trending Israeli group sues Canadian human rights museum over ‘Nakba’ exhibit Canada B.C.
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Article contentThe only apparent negative effect, according to the study, was an increase in overnight, non-emergency hospitalizations — which could suggest that former Red Deer clients used hospitals to access health services that had previously been provided by the consumption site.Article contentThe closure of several of Ontario’s supervised consumption sites last year has also been illuminating.
Although harm reduction activists predicted that their loss would cause mass deaths, fatal opioid overdoses and drug-related mortality have not risen and remain far below levels seen in previous years.Article contentWhat about crime, though?Article contentA preliminary study published by medRxiv in late 2024, which used publicly available online crime data from the Toronto Police Service, found that crime increased within 100 metres of the city’s supervised consumption sites — assaults and robberies increased by 61 and 62 per cent, respectively, for example.
These impacts were less dramatic within a 200 and 500 radius, though, suggesting that crime increases were limited to the immediate vicinity of the sites and that including farther areas in the study’s measurements diluted these effects.Article contentArticle contentUnfortunately, the study authors, who are harm reduction advocates, more or less republished their results in JAMA in late 2025 using only a 400-radius measure, in what some might perceive as an attempt to omit unfavourable results.
They then used their reformulated data to claim that supervised consumption sites do not cause crime, and were rewarded with a shower of media coverage from credulous journalists.Article contentToronto’s experience is consistent with crime data compiled by the Montreal police, which examined the impacts of a supervised consumption site that opened in the St.
Henri neighbourhood in early 2024.
Within a 250-metre radius around the site, mischief calls and crimes against people increased by 800 per cent and 93 per cent respectively.Article contentSome studies claim that supervised consumption sites work, but many of them are authored by harm reduction activist-scholars who use misleading methodologies.Article contentA classic example would be the original evaluations of InSite, Canada’s first supervised injection site.
Published in the mid-2000s, the study claimed that InSite created thousands of referrals to recovery and caused no increase in crime.Article contentArticle contentYet, a third party assessor hired by the RCMP in 2006 found that these evaluations had misrepresented reality — first, by defining a “referral” as simply handing someone a brochure (even if a recipient immediately discarded the brochure, they were “referred”), and, second, by discounting how the Vancouver police redeployed enormous amounts of officers and resources around InSite to keep crime under control.Article contentVancouver’s municipal leaders know that supervised consumption sites are generally ruinous.
It’s too bad that the B.C.
NDP wants to crush their democratic voice and double-down on failed experiments.Article contentNational PostArticle content Get the latest from Adam Zivo straight to your inbox Latest from Shopping Essentials “I’m speechless”: What fans are saying about Drake’s surprise three-album drop The people have opinions 1 day ago Music Tim Hortons just quietly rolled out new menu items in Canada – and it’s hopping on a viral trend Tim Hortons is hopping on the dirty soda trend 1 day ago Food & Drinks These are the 3 best beauty products we tried this week.
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Thomas Donaghy Overdose Prevention Site, TDOPS, Ken Sim, Vancouver Coastal Health, supervised consumption sites, overdose prevention, municipal opposition