For Immediate Release – March 16, 2026
This statement can be attributed to the HIV Legal Network and the HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario (HALCO).
Toronto, ON – We unequivocally denounce the Government of Ontario’s decision to end provincial funding for Consumption and Treatment Services (also known as supervised consumption services, or SCS) and order site operators across Ontario to draft wind-down plans to close by June 13, 2026. We understand that the affected sites are located in Kingston, London, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Ottawa, and Toronto.
This decision to inform sites of their defunding and closure late on a Friday afternoon when the Government of Ontario thought no one was watching underscores how indefensible it is. There is near-unanimous consensus about the negative effects of SCS closures. In Toronto alone, overdose rates in Toronto increased by 50% in January 2026 compared to January 2025 — a shocking rise that followed the closure of the majority of sites in Toronto in 2025 by the Ontario government, despite warnings from the government’s own experts that overdoses would increase.
SCS are hubs of community care and support that reduce the risk of overdose and HIV infection, backed by decades of empirical evidence proving their effectiveness. Despite this, the Government of Ontario has tried to systematically dismantle these services since it came into power. In 2018, it arbitrarily limited the number of sites that Ontario would fund. In the years that followed, Ontario continued to defund sites or refused to fund new ones. And in 2024, this government introduced the so-called Community Care and Recovery Act mandating that sites could not be located within 200 metres of schools and childcare centres while requiring municipalities to abandon the sites they supported. This forced the closure of most SCS in 2025 by starving them of funding and pressuring them to convert to an abstinence-only model that is not grounded in evidence nor has even been fully operationalized after one year.
This most recent move is a deadly one on the part of the Province of Ontario.
We are in touch with Consumption and Treatment Services operators to determine next steps. What we know right now is that more people will die without access to the lifesaving care they receive at supervised consumption sites. These sites exist within our communities and make them better and safer for everyone. We will continue to support the fight to keep them open and keep our community members alive and well.
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Media contact
Dylan DeMarsh – Digital and Strategic Communications Officer
d.dmarsh@hivlegalnetwork.ca