Statement on the Defunding of Supervised Consumption Sites

March 20, 2026 | Open Letter

On March 13th, the Government of Ontario announced its decision to defund Supervised Consumption Sites, including the 2 remaining sites in Ottawa, effective June 13, 2026. A decision Kind Space strongly condemns.

Supervised Consumption Sites (SCS) are evidence-based, effective healthcare. They are healthcare sites that offer people dignity, connection, and rest. These sites prevent overdose deaths, reduce transmission of infectious diseases, and provide wound care and basic hygiene supplies. Most importantly, these sites are places where people can be reminded of their humanity, that they are not disposable, that they matter. 

Cutting healthcare is a failed strategy for housing, a dangerous one for public safety, and a bankrupt one for the economy. It solves nothing while costing everything.

A common public response to the crises of homelessness and toxic drug supply is one of dismissal and dehumanization. The current enthusiasm for punitive measures like apprehensions, incarceration, and coerced treatment, reflects a desire to sanitize public spaces rather than address human need. This vilification is a familiar political tool to 2SLGBTQ+ communities, especially for trans and gender-diverse people. It reframes what is a collective policy failure as an individual moral defect, allowing society to punish the symptoms of inequality while ignoring the structural decisions that created them.

Most of us are only a few paycheques away from housing precarity, constantly forced to make impossible decisions as to which basic needs (food, medication, hydro) can be sacrificed to stay housed. The fragile strategies we rely on unravel quickly: when hours are cut, when chronic illness makes work impossible, or when government defunding eliminates entire sectors and the jobs within them. What happens then? How do you manage pain when your bed is the ground, a bench, or the backseat of a car without benefits for care, without the means to fix a broken tooth, without safety enough to sleep?

A Supervised Consumption Site is human-centred, dignified, evidence-based healthcare. Attempting to punish behaviour we don’t like by denying care doesn’t make the city more livable, businesses more profitable, or housing more affordable. While the impact is felt most by service users and workers, the shockwave will impact every frontline organization, with no clear path for additional funding to increase capacity. 

Kind Space adds its voice to the coalition of healthcare organizations calling for the reversal of these cuts and the restoration of funding for programs that are quite literally a matter of life and death. And we say clearly - no one is disposable and every life deserves dignity.

In rage and solidarity,

The Kind Space Team

Resources