Parkdale’s safe consumption site could have stayed open for at least another year after being defunded by the Ontario government in November 2025, The Grind has learned. But Prime Minister Mark Carney’s federal government prevented that from happening.
One person has since died of a preventable overdose after losing access to the site at the corner of Queen Street West and Dufferin Street, according to Angela Robertson, the executive director of the health centre that ran the Toronto site.
In an interview with The Grind, Robertson says the organization inquired with federal agency Health Canada about continuing to operate without provincial funding, after the province decided to defund it in October 2025. At the time, the site held a federal exemption that allowed people to use drugs like fentanyl inside its building. The exemption was valid until 2028.
Health Canada’s new requirements
But on Nov. 7, just two weeks before the site’s provincial funding was to run out, Health Canada said it would require the centre to meet two new conditions.
The first was that the site secure its own funding, which Robertson says was possible to do for one year.
Health Canada’s second condition was that the site create a “community safety plan” that was approved by local police. The site had only eight days to comply, according to Robertson.
Robertson says that the government’s language indicated the site was expected to take responsibility for vandalism, theft and disorder — not just on its property but across the entire neighbourhood.
“That one was a threshold we couldn’t meet,” Robertson tells The Grind. “We felt that was a significant tall order to ask a [consumption and treatment service] to be responsible for public safety in Parkdale.”
She says that police, not health-care providers, should be responsible for public safety.
Overall, she adds, even if the centre had permission from Health Canada to continue operating, doing so against the province’s wishes would’ve come with “significant risks.”
Still, Health Canada’s meddling is significant. Under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, the feds expanded harm reduction policies, including safe consumption sites, where at least 58,000 potentially fatal overdoses have been reversed nationwide, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. The Parkdale closure could be the first indication that Carney is changing course.
The federal government declined to clarify whether its policy was changing when contacted by The Grind. A spokesperson for Health Minister Marjorie Michel said the minister wasn’t available for an interview.
Robertson says Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre met with representatives from Toronto police’s 14 Division after receiving the notice from Health Canada. She says she left the meeting with the assessment “that it would be futile to pursue asking for collaboration from local law enforcement on a community safety plan to facilitate keeping the site open,” she tells The Grind.
On Nov. 21, one day before the site was scheduled to shut down because of the province’s defunding, the federal government revoked the site’s exemption, according to a November 2025 letter sent by Robertson.
Police had “no decision-making role in this process,” spokesperson Stephanie Sayer told The Grind by email. “TPS does not take a position on whether sites should operate. While the site was operating, officers worked with on-site management, clients, and the surrounding community on day-to-day safety issues. That is the scope of police involvement.”
Most crime measures in Parkdale lower than previous years
Matt Johnson, a former employee of Parkdale Queen West who was the original co-ordinator of its overdose prevention site, said Health Canada’s request is part of a trend.
“One of the shifts is that the sites are being blamed for anything that happens in the neighbourhood, and that’s just ridiculous,” says Johnson.
They pointed out that police data doesn’t indicate any extraordinary problem with crime in Parkdale. Toronto police data for 2024, the most recent available, shows that some crime indicators are declining while others are rising.
The number of assaults, break and enters, and robberies reported in South Parkdale decreased from 2023 to 2024. The number of auto thefts, bike thefts, homicides and shootings increased in the same period.
For all crimes except auto thefts, however, reports in 2024 were lower than previous record highs.
Other studies of crime rates in Toronto have found that safe consumption sites are actually associated with stable or declining levels of crime.
“So, how do you address safety concerns?” Johnson asks. “Because the police data shows that there is no safety issue.”
One thing that did change, however, was that an influx of new people flocked to the area after Ford’s government closed other safe consumption sites. “Almost overnight,” Robertson says, 25 to 30 new people moved to encampments near the centre in June 2025.
Centre took criticism for unrelated, off-property incidents
While Robertson said that only about 70 people complained about the site over its eight years in operation, she believes Health Canada was influenced by those complaints.
Two months before the closure, the National Post reported that a group called “Residents for a Safe Parkdale” complained about the site in a letter sent to all levels of government.
The newspaper linked to a public Google Drive folder, which contained a video of a fight outside the centre, as well as photos of people using drugs outside the centre and elsewhere in Parkdale. Some of the photos show unrelated, regular occurrences in that neighbourhood, such as graffiti, a broken mailbox, and a broken bus shelter.
Fifty-nine per cent of the incidents documented did not happen on the centre’s grounds, an analysis by The Grind found.
In an email, Residents for a Safe Parkdale declined to identify who was behind the group. They say they’re “concerned neighbours living in close vicinity of PQWHC.”
“Our photographic and video evidence taken over the past several years speak for themselves,” the group says. “The Centre in our view has taken no responsibility for the negative impacts on the neighbourhood. It allows open drug intoxication on its property. This creates a hazard for neighbours as children and others are harassed and threatened when intoxicated users trespass onto neighbouring properties.”
Johnson said that the government shouldn’t have let a small number of vocal neighbours have an outsized impact on the site.
“If the government isn’t basing these decisions on facts like police data, then they’re basing it on the whims of a couple of individuals who just bother them a lot,” they said. “And that is not a good way to make health-care policy decisions.”
The Parkdale site was the last SCS still operating in Toronto’s west end. There are now five sites remaining in the city, all in the downtown core.