The standing-room-only crowd packed a community centre in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood Wednesday night to discuss safety issues in the wake of a tragic shooting of a mom outside an injection site two weeks ago.
But the meeting was quickly hijacked by the drug enablers and assorted activists, evolving into a nearly two-hour lecture on the benefits of harm reduction and the human rights of addicts.
The legitimate concerns of parents about the prevalence of open illegal drug use and shady characters who hang out outside and in the laneways around the South Riverdale Community Health Centre (SRCHC) – located in close proximity to a school – were glossed over as the drug activists and politicians pushed their drug enabling agenda.
The Town Hall was organized following the tragic July 7 shooting of a 44-year-old mother of two, Karolina Huebner-Makurat, while she walked along Queen St. E. in front of the SRCHC.
A 32-year-old man with a criminal record has been arrested and charged with second degree murder in the slaying. But police are still hunting for two other men.
The trio were likely involved in a turf battle over a drug deal gone wrong.
Jason Altenburg, CEO of the SRCHC, said all of his staff are “trying to make sense of the horrible loss” and that they’re trying to create “safer spaces” outside the centre by hiring One Community Solutions security, the contractor of choice for the poverty industry. This outfit is the same inept bunch that worked outside the Novotel shelter on Toronto’s Esplanade and did little to protect the surrounding community.
But Altenberg also played the harm reduction guilt card by claiming that the drug supply has become increasingly toxic and poisonous.
“We have to get the illegal drug supply completely removed,” he said to great applause.
Altenberg and the rest of the cast of enablers on the panel refused to concede, or at least mention, the drug dealers who prey on the addicts outside the site and are likely peddling this toxic supply.
Another drug enabler, Angela Robertson, executive director of an injection site in Parkdale, had the audacity to suggest that people have to be mindful not to “vilify” outsiders who come into their community (namely drug dealers) and look like her (she’s black.)
“It results in increased scrutiny of people like me,” she said.
It is astounding to think that a woman like this thinks drug dealers should be handled with kid gloves based on the colour of their skin.
No wonder the city is in such a mess.
One woman, who introduced herself as a public health researcher, insisted the injection sites save people’s lives.
Before the sites, addicts numbering in the 300s were dying each year in Canada, she claimed. Now, she said, there are 3,000 people dying per year or about six people every day.
Of course, the activists would contend that proves there are more sites needed.
But this only showed to many in the room Wednesday night that the sites are merely enabling more drug use.
Probably the most egregious comments came from the Ford government’s deputy minister of health, Dr. Catherine Zahn, who appeared to completely ignore the shooting and what is occurring around the centre every day, indicating repeatedly people with “mental disorders and drug addiction have a right to care.”
“Let’s lift up the conversation (and focus on) how we can best serve people with substance abuse,” said Zahn, who made $650,000 as executive director of Centre for Addiction and Mental Health before coming to the health ministry in 2022.
She earned $477,360 last year as deputy minister of health.
“People should educate themselves as to what it will take to make the community safe and accessible.”
She was equally dismissive when two moms went up to her after the town hall and spoke of open drug use in front of their children and their very real fears of crime.
Zahn responded: “Where else are they supposed to go?”
Perhaps to her neighbourhood but I would bet she lives nowhere near any injection site.
When the Town Hall wrapped up – after a mere 20 minutes of questions from the public (many of those people activists) – the community was no further ahead.
Their security concerns had not been addressed in the slightest and the panelists did their darndest to disassociate the injection site and the drug dealers who hang out there from the tragic shooting.
Councillor Paula Fletcher, who said very little of value throughout the meeting, promised to hold another session soon to follow up on concerns.
Yet it’s an exercise in futility.
It was abundantly clear that the community’s genuine concerns were and are being drowned out by the activists, who have a vested interest in keeping the drug industry thriving.
The death of Huebner-Makurat is not the only tragedy here.
It is also tragic how injection sites like the one at South Riverdale Community Health Centre are holding the neighbourhood ransom.
