The Canadian Press
Paola Loriggio
Doug Ford says he is “dead against” safe injection sites and believes the focus should be on drug rehabilitation instead.
And if elected premier of Ontario in June, the Progressive Conservative leader said he will do everything he can to fight the ongoing opioid crisis and get people struggling with addiction the help they need.
“If your son, daughter, loved one ever had an addiction, would you want them to go in a little area and do more drugs? I am dead against that,” Ford said Friday.
“We have to help these people,” he stressed. “We can’t just keep feeding them and feeding them.”
When pressed for details, his campaign said Ford would release his plan to address mental health and the opioid crisis in the coming weeks.
Ford, whose late brother, Rob, struggled with substance abuse and admitted to using crack cocaine, made the comments in Sarnia, Ont. after announcing a Tory government would create 30,000 long-term care beds over the next 10 years to ease the burden on hospitals and cut wait times.
He did not say how much the plan would cost nor how it would be funded.
The governing Liberals also have promised to add 30,000 new long-term care beds in the next decade while the New Democrats have said they would create 40,000 in that time.
Liberal campaign co-chair Deb Matthews said in a statement that Ford needs to explain how he plans to pay for the new beds considering he has vowed to reduce government spending.
“Doug Ford needs to come clean with a fully-costed, honest campaign,” Matthews said in a statement.
“A promise to build new beds when he’s also shutting down hospitals and firing nurses doesn’t add up, and Ontarians deserve better.”
NDP leader Andrea Horwath, meanwhile, said Ford’s stance on supervised injection sites would “drag Ontario backwards and deny people the care they need.”
“The opioid overdose epidemic has touched every community in Ontario and devastated families,” she noted.
“New Democrats will listen to front-line care workers, declare a public health emergency, and take urgent action to save lives.”
The province said earlier this year it had approved funding for seven supervised injection sites, five of which already had opened.
Late last year, Ontario also received an exemption from the federal government allowing it to approve and fund temporary overdose prevention sites.
The first such site opened in London, Ont. in February.