For Immediate Release
March 17, 2026
Harm Reduction Nurses Denounce Ontario Decision to End Supervised Consumption Sites
The decision announced on Friday, March 13th by the Government of Ontario to end provincial funding for Consumption and Treatment Services (CTS), also known as Supervised Consumption Sites, is devastating and unconscionable. This is not a new direction, but the latest escalation in the Ford Government’s sustained attacks on harm reduction since 2018. This decision is not grounded in evidence. It offers no real solutions. Instead, it fuels moral panic and spreads dangerous disinformation about addiction and people who use drugs (PWUD).
The Harm Reduction Nurses Association stands in firm opposition to this decision. We stand in solidarity with people who use drugs, harm reduction workers, peers, nurses, and communities who refuse to accept policies that abandon people to preventable death.
Every single day in 2025, five Ontarians died from opioid toxicity. Every day, families are shattered. Every day, communities are forced to grieve the losses that should never happen. These deaths are not inevitable. They are the result of a poisoned drug supply and policy choices that ignore reality.
Nurses witness this crisis firsthand. We work alongside people every day to prevent and treat infections, reverse overdoses, and build relationships rooted in dignity and trust. Supervised Consumption Sites are not optional. They are life-saving spaces of care, connection, and resistance. Their removal in June 2026 will cost lives.
As nurses, we refuse to be silent. We demand that the Ontario Government take responsibility for the lives of all Ontarians and immediately reverse this decision.
The government claims to be “focused on treatment, recovery, and safer communities.” This decision proves the opposite. It further excludes people who use drugs from the very services and communities they have a right to access. It prioritizes punishment over care, policing over public health, and ideology over evidence. This is a deliberate dismantling of public systems, justified through stigma and misinformation. These are necropolitical decisions that determine who is allowed to live and who is left to die.
We reject this path.
We choose community. We choose evidence. We choose life.
In the coming days and weeks, we will mobilize. We will connect with members across Ontario and the country to organize, advocate, and take action. We will stand with those on the frontlines and fight to keep our communities alive.
We will not stop.
Media Contact:
Harm Reduction Nurses Association | Corey Ranger, President | hrna.aiirm@gmail.com
