9 Ontario supervised consumption sites to close despite injunction, minister says

The Ontario provincial government says nine supervised consumption sites will close Tuesday as planned, despite a recent court injunction allowing them to remain open temporarily.

The office of Health Minister Sylvia Jones says nine sites that applied for funding to transition into government-approved service hubs will proceed with those plans.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice granted an injunction Friday to allow consumption sites to remain open while a judge reviews a constitutional challenge of a provincial law that bans sites from operating within 200 metres of schools or daycares.

A tenth site in downtown Toronto that had been slated to close when the law takes effect on Tuesday said it will remain open because of the injunction.

The nine sites that agreed to become new homelessness and addiction recovery treatment hubs, or HART hubs as the province calls them, will receive about four times as much money as they did under a previous funding model — but they will not be allowed to offer supervised drug consumption services.

The province is investing $529 million to fund a total of 27 such hubs across Ontario, along with 540 new, highly supportive housing units.