Detox hub funding ‘imminent,’ Bailey says

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Long-sought funding to build a residential hub for treatment and care for people suffering drug and alcohol withdrawal is “imminent,” Sarnia-Lambton’s MPP says.

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“It’s gone through the bureaucracy… they’ve met all the guidelines and checked off all the boxes and everything, and it’s in (Health Minister Christine Elliott’s) own office now,” Bob Bailey said Friday.

It’s been four years since seven interim withdrawal management beds were opened in Sarnia’s hospital as a precursor to the decades-in-the-making 24-bed hub that’s intended to help not only with managing immediate withdrawal symptoms, but co-ordinate with longer term rehabilitation services and other supports to help keep people from relapsing as soon as they leave care.

A year ago, another 30-day facility known as Ryan’s House with 12 stabilization beds opened to help meet surging demand for addictions care amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those beds will stay in the community in addition to the new $ 8.8-million facility whenever it’s announced, Bailey said.

“As I understand it, the funding has been approved,” he said. “It’s just a matter of the minister making the public announcement.”

He couldn’t say if that will happen before Ontario’s June 2 provincial election, he said.

“We’re almost to the finish line. I don’t want to make it political, ”he said.

Similar “any day now” language has been used by other health and political officials in the intervening months and years.

The effort to bring a facility to Sarnia has now been two decades in the making, Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley said.

A group of community members, including Bradley, pushed for the stabilization beds a year ago as an interim measure and stop-gap to the eventual full facility.

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“I do believe that it’s really important that we go back to the government before the election,” he said.

It’s understandable the COVID-19 pandemic response has complicated the facility’s funding approval, Bradley said, but noted the studies have been completed, the sites have been considered and the build should be ready to go.

The group may need to mobilize again in February and March to push for funding if it hasn’t already been approved by then, he added.

“It just needs to be done,” the mayor said.

AT petition started by the Community Law School (Sarnia-Lambton) Inc. Social Justice Advocacy group in the fall had grown Friday to just shy of 1,600 signatures, said the group’s Margaret Capes.

The group selected the cause as a social justice project and approached Bailey, who encouraged them to start the petition that he, Elliott and Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Michael Tibollo receive alerts from every time a new signature is added, she said.

“This has been promised for 20 years and the need is very, very acute right now, and it really can’t wait any longer,” she said.

Tracy Ramsay is one in the group.

The 59-year-old Sarnia grandmother of three said two of her six children have died from fentanyl overdoses while others are drug-dependent after growing up with her selling drugs to feed her own opioid and cocaine addiction. Ramsay’s own addiction was brought on, she said, after being prescribed narcotic painkillers for injuries sustained while younger and in an abusive relationship.

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“I have contacted everywhere to try and get my son the help that he needs and, once again, we’re stuck with a seven-bed facility that is continuously full for five days, and then back on the street because there’s nowhere for them to go, ”she said, noting she cares for her son’s boy.

“It’s a repeat cycle,” said Ramsay, stressing that won’t change without intervention. “Everything seems to be just hang on and wait, hang on and wait. These kids can’t wait any longer. ”

Ramsay said she’s been clean and sober for 13 years after detoxifying in jail.

“It was you either make it or break it, and I made it through, thank goodness,” she said.

Bluewater Health’s Julia Oosterman said the hospital group continues waiting with hope for the full-facility funding announcement.

“We are keen and hopeful to get going on this important next step as our community is clearly in need,” she wrote in an email.

In a September report to the hospital group’s board, Bluewater Health CEO and president Mike Lapaine wrote the Ministry of Health recognizes construction inflation on the project, but remains committed to seeing it built.

“We expect our project is part of the overall provincial budget deliberations which typically occur in the cabinet in October,” he wrote at the time.

“We know the need for this service has been accentuated by the pandemic and are eager to begin construction.”

Among locations considered for the hub, one previously identified is the former Sarnia General Hospital site that’s been cleared for new development.

Regardless of cost increases, the government is committed, Bailey said.

“The ministry knows the importance of this and then we’ll have to fund it,” he said. “The dollars will be what the dollars will be.”

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