Applications for Sudbury injection site rejected

All five community applications for a supervised consumption site in Greater Sudbury have been turned down by a review committee.

Public Health Sudbury and Districts had been evaluating the five expressions of interest that were submitted this fall.

Jose Joliat, community drug strategy coordinator for PHSD, said the review committee visited the potential sites to determine how well they would function, but none met the specific requirements under the federal and provincial criteria guidelines.

"There are a few other locations or landlords that have approached us, after the expression of interest process was completed," Joliat said.

"Currently we're meeting with those landlords and visting those locations to see if those new sites would be able to offer the requirements that we need for these services."

Until a location is chosen, Joliat said the health unit can't move forward to the next step in the government approval process.

Joliat did not elaborate on what criteria the proposed locations failed in, but suggested there is a bit of compromise involved among all parties government, health unit and the landlord.

"Some things like accessibility definitely must be something that is incorporated in these services," she said. "But for example proximity to schools and parks - there is a little bit of wiggle room with that."

"But of course we want to make sure we're not creating barriers in putting up these services."

There are currently 19 supervised consumption sites operating in Ontario, according tothe federal government. Those include locations in Toronto, Ottawa, St. Catharines, London, Guelph and Thunder Bay.