COALITION OF RESIDENTS FEARS 'NO MAN'S LAND' OF INJECTION SITES

Group Set to Confront Borough, Health Board

A coalition of residents' associations is poised to take its
opposition to a proposal to introduce supervised-injection sites
(SIS) downtown to its borough council and the board of directors of
the local health board, a coalition spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Gaeetan Paquet, president of the Coalition des associations de
residents de Ville-Marie, which represents about 45,000 of the 80,000
residents of the downtown borough, said that the coalition's member
associations would meet this month with Jocelyn Ann Campbell,
Montreal executive committee member responsible for social and
community development, as well as local police, in an effort to gauge
the resulting fallout should supervisedinjection sites be established
in the area.

"We residents want to know how we'll have to deal with it," he said.

"Will it be a no man's land?"

Paquet said his group intended to make its presence felt at a meeting
of the Ville Marie borough council scheduled for Feb. 7, as well as a
health board meeting scheduled for Feb. 14.

The group's members also intend to try and raise the issue with
Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc.

Several downtown residents' associations formed the coalition after a
proposal made public last month by Montreal's public health
department that supervised-injection sites be established in Montreal.

The proposed sites, which health officials contend reduce the spread
of HIV and hepatitis C and lower the number of overdose deaths, would
be staffed by medical personnel and set up at fixed locations in
three of four health department districts identified as possible
candidates for the sites.

One district covers Verdun and the neighbouring area, another the
west end of Montreal, the third covers much of downtown and the last
covers the city's east end, including Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.

The report also called for the creation of a mobile
supervisedinjection site able to reach areas not served by the other sites.

The number of intravenous-drug users in Montreal has been estimated
at 15,000 to 25,000.

Paquet has said the city's downtown residents are already trying to
deal with homelessness and crime in their neighbourhood.

He added that if supervised-injection sites are established in
Montreal, they should be part of a province-wide network able to
reach those struggling with addiction in other regions of Quebec.

"Right now, social workers (off the island of Montreal) are giving
their cases a bus ticket to Montreal because that's where the
resources are," he said.

While the health board report recommends that sites be located in
medical establishments and community centres, a spokesperson for the
public health office said last month that community centres already
offering needle exchange programs would probably form the majority of sites.

That approach is at odds with the position taken by the city of
Montreal, which favours the creation of more than one site but would
prefer those sites be located in hospitals or CLSCs.

City officials also have called upon the province to make
supervised-injection sites part of a larger health-care strategy that
includes dealing with homelessness and a lack of psychiatric beds in the city.

Last October, Bolduc announced the province would work with community
groups in Montreal and Quebec City to establish services for drug
abusers. That announcement followed a Supreme Court decision in
September that the federal government's attempt to shut down
Vancouver's Insite clinic - North America's only nurse-supervised
injection site - violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.