The Ripple Effects of a Supervised Drug Consumption Site

The Leslieville neighbourhood of Toronto is coping with a “Safe Injection Site” (also called Supervised Consumption sites). Journalist Derek Finkle of the National Post lives in the community. He says the site, which opened in 2017, has drastically changed the neighbourhood, attracting drug dealers and leading to increased crime and drug use.

The situation escalated in summer 2021 when a stray bullet from a gunfight between drug dealers killed a local mother.

Despite residents' repeated warnings and pleas for action, the city and province only began to listen after the tragic incident. Finkle criticizes the management of the site for failing to acknowledge their role in the neighbourhood's problems and for not taking adequate measures to ensure safety.

The provincial government has since appointed a supervisor to oversee the site, and there are discussions about relocating it. Leslieville is one of 17 similar facilities across Ontario.

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Guest: Derek Finkle
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Recorded in Sep 2023

Transcript

Desmond Brown (00:01):

You may have heard about this sad and terrible story last summer. It happened in the Leslieville neighbourhood. In Toronto's East end, a 44-year-old mother killed an innocent victim of a shooting. A shooting that the police say was a gunfight between two drug dealers and a stray bullet hitting and killing Karolina Huebner-Makurat. This shooting happened in broad daylight during the lunch hour on a Friday on Queen Street East at Carla Avenue in Leslieville, Carolina was walking along Queen Street on her way to get a smoothie. She was killed across the street from the South Riverdale Community Health centre, which also just happened to be a so-called Safe Drug Injection Site, a site where not just addicted drug users hang out, but also drug dealers. The Safe injection site first opened back in 2017 and it drastically changed the neighbourhood. The residents have been telling the city and the province for years about the problems that came with it, but got nowhere. But now that an innocent person was killed, our government officials finally listening. I'm Desmond Brown, and today on Sold in the sixth, I speak to a Leslie VO resident who has been quite vocal and had even warned the city and province that something tragic could happen.

(01:47):

Derek Finkle is an award-winning journalist. He's been living in Leslieville for 14 years, and he joins me today on Sold in the 6ix. Derek, welcome.

Derek Finkle (01:55):

Hey, thanks for having me, Des.

Desmond Brown (01:57):

Oh, I'm so glad that you had the time to come on to talk about this. So, Derek, this is a real estate podcast, but before we get into what led to this heartbreaking tragedy, tell us a little bit about your neighbourhood and why you bought there.

Derek Finkle (02:11):

Oh, sure. Well, I've actually been living in the neighbourhood for a really long time. In fact, I probably moved to, I lived on Degrassi Street, the famous Degrassi Street in Leslieville when I met my now wife. She was living there, moved in with her. I think that was in 1997 or 98, and then I moved onto Heward Avenue across the street from the South Riverdale Community Health Centre in early 2010. So I've been there for, like you say, in that location of Leslieville for about 14 years.

Desmond Brown (02:51):

Okay. And what was it that you like about the neighbourhood? What do you like about the neighbourhood? You're still there. Yeah.

Derek Finkle (02:58):

No, I really liked the neighbourhood. My wife and I also run a business at the corner of Eastern, and Carla, my wife, runs a brand strategy company called Parcel Big White Building that's well known on the corner. A spin studio is on the ground floor called Torque Indoor Cycling Studio. So we've been in the neighbourhood a long time. I mean, when I think back to the late nineties, the Queen Street, the strip in and of itself, if you just want to talk about that, I mean, at the time there were really only one or two restaurants that were of the quality that you would see that was kind of ubiquitous on Queen Street. Now in Leslieville, there was a restaurant called Verve, which was on the south side of Queen, just a little bit east of Pap. The same owners opened a little place called Barrio, which was on the north side and the other direction.

(04:00):

But to be honest, there a lot of, there were some diners, most of which like Tom's Diner, most of which have disappeared. I mean, when I moved onto Heward Avenue for most of the time I've been here up until the pandemic, there was a place called the Tasty Chicken at the corner of Boston and Queen Street, and the owner of that place did not serve chicken. He did not make chicken, really. He tried to sell cheap beer to his friends and neighbours and somehow, and then eventually gave up the ghost on that. But I think one of the things in talking about Leslieville back in the nineties and its progression through to today in the light of what's going on with the health centre at South Riverdale and the shooting and the supervised injection site and so forth, is that there's been some of the harm reduction activists have kind of accused those who've expressed safety concerns around the site of essentially wanting to gentrified the neighbourhood or make it pure, or that they just don't want to be around or see, we're just uncomfortable being around vulnerable people or people with addiction issues or people who use drugs.

(05:40):

And as somebody who's lived in Leslieville for 25 years, I mean, most of the people who live on J Avenue who've lived there for more than 10 years, and some of them have lived there since the eighties. And the truth is, you don't live in a place if you're uncomfortable with seeing all walks of life and seeing everything that a downtown neighbourhood has to offer. I mean, my wife and I, when we moved to here Avenue, we could have gone, I mean, Leslieville that cheap at that point, we paid almost a million dollars for our house back in 2009 or whatever it was, and a detached home there. We could have lived in Leaside, we could have lived in the beach, we could have lived, but I decided our son was two when we moved to Hewitt Avenue. And I decided consciously that I wanted to raise him there. And I didn't want him to grow up in a more, to use other people's language, pure or gentrified neighbourhood. I wanted him to be in Leslieville. But so when the problems with the supervised injection site started, I actually found that to be beyond what is reasonable to expect in a downtown neighbourhood.

Desmond Brown (07:04):

And I get that for sure. So it was 2017 when the South Riverdale Community Health centre opened, and it opened right across the street from your place on Heward. And like you said, you're open to what comes with neighbourhoods that are not completely gentrified obviously, but the things that have happened as a result of this health centre or this safe injection site are beyond what people should really have to live with. So tell us a little bit about that.

Derek Finkle (07:37):

Yeah, so the word about the supervised injection site or that talk about it, it eventually coming to South Riverdale really began around 2016. And at that time, my wife opened an indoor cycling studio across the street from South Riverdale on Queen called Torque. And so at that time when Torque was opening up, I was constantly going back and forth between my house and across the street from the health centre. I walked between that church on the corner of Queen and Carlaw and the Health centre probably like four times a day back in 2016. And my wife and I both kind of agree that back in those days, if you saw a needle in 2016, it was kind of like cause for alarm, it was something that you were not used to. Right, definitely. But then all of a sudden, as you mentioned, the supervised injection site opened in late 2017. Well, by the beginning of 2019, needles were already becoming way, way more common than they ever were before. They weren't even common before. They were rare. They were very rare. And now they were just commonplace. We started seeing a lot more drug use, a lot more by the start of the pandemic. We had whole hoards of people outside the building, injecting drugs, loitering, threatening children beating up themselves. Our neighbourhood was undergoing a real rampant increase in theft.

(09:19):

But the main thing was drug dealers. I think that the, it's kind of naive in retrospect, but those activists who wanted to see harm reduction at South Riverdale, the one thing that I don't think any of them ever foresaw was the way that it would inevitably attract drug dealers. Because if you have all the clients there who are using, they're using street drugs in the supervised injection site, they're not supplying them with drugs. So it makes absolute sense that eventually the drug dealers would congregate around the centre. And it was made even worse by the fact that in 2019, the centre started to adopt what they called the non-enforcement boundary policy, where they didn't really want the police, a

Desmond Brown (10:05):

Police intimidating those clients.

Derek Finkle (10:07):

Right, right. So that just made it worse. So it basically became kind of known as a safe place to use and sell drugs. Now, the problem is, as easily easy to predict is that there's a hundred children, just Heward Avenue alone, there's 90 something children on our street now. And so they all walk up through that past that walk between a health centre and a church, and it became like a war zone, and the children on our street could not walk through it because of what was going on there just to go to school. That's beyond reasonable.

Desmond Brown (10:39):

Yeah. Oh, it definitely is. Now, just to paint a picture for people who don't live in the urban parts of Toronto, we rely a lot on our laneways. And our laneways are where our children would go out and play hockey, they'd go out and play basketball, whatever, learn to ride the bike for the first time as well. And you had written in the National Post about the things that you were finding out in the laneways, like all the needles for starters, and the children were out there and the needles are on the hockey nets and things like that. That was a start. So I mean, dealing with that must be, oh God, it's just horrendous alone.

Derek Finkle (11:13):

So even before the pandemic, it was bad. I mean, I think when I wrote about the needle in my hockey, my son's hockey net, that was well before the pandemic, and they claim to be doing sweeps for needles. To be honest with you, I haven't seen somebody do a sweep for a needle from the centre in our lanes until a couple of months ago. So they claimed they were doing this and doing that. But to be honest, I never saw it. And we were all finding so many needles that I think it to some doubt on that claim. But when the pandemic started, it really came into focus because as we all know, schools closed down and so the children weren't going to school. And the splash pads closed down, the parts were closed down, everything was, all the public spaces were. So the only place where the 90 years, and that's just on heward, forget you have to add the children on car law who also share the lane and the people on paper who also share the lane. So we're talking about probably a couple hundred children easily who are using these lanes. And so that was their play space. That was their defacto play space. During the pandemic, they would learn how to ride bikes. They were shooting basketballs, playing hockey, they were hopscotch, everything. And what was happening is that the drug use and the loitering and the dealing was flooding south into the lane. So I literally saw children weaving their bites around unconscious people. I saw a child come out and see needles on their hopscotch, what do you call it? Their hopscotch?

Desmond Brown (12:52):

Yeah. Well, yeah, they make it out by chalk on

Derek Finkle (12:54):

The pavement. Yes, the chalk and the pavement. And even the parent told me there was another time the hopscotch, there was somebody defecated on the hopscotch thing. So boy. So it just became really, really problematic. So that by the time, and we were all reaching out to the, I myself spent a couple hours on the phone with the director of the supervised injection site begging her for some kind of action or security or something. And she just said, oh, that's not in the budget. And the general feeling at the centre was very condescending, and it was like, you need to use these as teachable moments for your children. I mean, it was astounding. Yeah.

Desmond Brown (13:32):

Here's how you use a needle. Oh my God. But anyway, let's just go back here where you talked about it was a safe zone for the drug dealers and the users. Now, just so people understand how the safe injection site works, the drugs are not sold in the injection site. The addicts are to bring in their own drugs and then use them safely. So that led to the drug dealers coming to the neighbourhood and dealing to their clients outside of your homes.

Derek Finkle (14:07):

Exactly. And I don't want to suggest that there were no drugs or no drug dealers in South Riverdale before the supervised injection site. There undoubtedly were. But what happened, the safe for the activist promised that these sites are supposed to do certain things. One is that they allegedly lower crime and they allegedly lower the number of overdoses. Well, in this neighbourhood, neither is true. So in a way, the supervised injection site became a self-fulfilling prophecy for our immediate neighbourhood because while there might've been drug dealers spread out all over South Riverdale at one point, all of a sudden by having a safe zone as you call it, all of a sudden everybody congregated down to basically the Queen and Carlisle area right by the centre. And that's something that they really should have foreseen, but nobody, either they didn't or they didn't care. That wasn't their priority or their concern.

(15:09):

But that's what happened. And since then, one thing, the last thing I'll say about this is that since then, I mean a lot of research has done about harm reduction and what works and what doesn't work, and how can we get more sites into these neighbourhoods and what does the ambivalence certain neighbourhoods have about these sites? But what nobody's really done a lot of research about is what are the effects that these sites have on the immediate neighbourhoods around them? And it took a really long time for me to find such a study, but there was one done in Lethbridge, Alberta, and it was published in 2020. And I'll just summarize it by the findings, by saying that what it found was that those who live in closest proximity, and it did like 100 metres around the site, 200 metres around the site, 400 metres around the site, and the closer that the people lived to the site, the more burden that was carried by those people in order for those who live farther away to feel good about themselves because they're allegedly doing something about the community for the opioid crisis and the community and so forth.

(16:16):

So there's a lot of virtue signaling that goes on from afar in places like South Riverdale by those who have ideological beliefs. Yeah, exactly. But they're not the ones actually paying the price for those beliefs.

Desmond Brown (16:31):

Yeah, part of that too. Okay, so you talked about one person completely passed out, but you also wrote about a woman who, I guess one of your neighbours started to film with her camera, and then this woman started screaming while walking down the street and then threatened to burn down their house with their children in it.

Derek Finkle (16:52):

Yeah, well, that's another thing. So the supervised injection services, that's one part of what is offered at South Riverdale. But the other thing that's offered at South Riverdale that is for our neighbourhood almost or close to is problematic, is the fact that there's harm reduction services. And part of that is to the distribution of clean needles. Now there's, there's a legitimate public health reason for which involves HIV and the spread of HIV and why they give out needles to drug users. But what happens is they give out needles to users in the morning typically, and then they use, they don't go very far. That's why you had all the use in the lanes. They don't want to travel a kilometre to use their needle. They want to use it right there. And so that woman you're referring to, yeah, she got her needle from the health centre.

(17:46):

She injected her drugs and she walked down her street high as a kite and angry. And she was the summertime, people were on their porches. Some woman was filming her with her phone, I guess. And then the woman threatened to come back to burn her house down while her children were in it. And frankly, there are a lot of stories like that. On Monday night, I was in a Unity Health Community consultation session. That's part of the review, one of the reviews that's going on by the province, the provinces commissioned on this site. And there was a woman who lives not far from where I live, who I don't actually really know very well. I kind of know her a little bit. And she talked about how, and a lot of these things happen in the warmer months, and when it's really cold right now, it's not so bad, but when it gets warmer, it's bad.

(18:35):

And so there was a gentleman walking down Boston Avenue, I believe it was, and he was carrying his drug paraphernalia and his needles and his tinfoil with his drugs in it. And she had sunglasses on, and she was with her two young children. And I guess the guy thought he was looking at her or judging him or something along those lines. So he said to her, what's your problem? At least I'm not raping your children. And he said this in front of the children. And I would like to say that these are these two examples we just gave. I'd like to say that those are extreme examples of what it's like for the people who live in close proximity to the centre, but they're actually not extreme examples. They're commonplace occurrences for us

Desmond Brown (19:24):

And a cause for alarm. Oh my goodness. For that to happen to your family. So you've been warning for years that something terrible could happen. And then we had the shooting July 7th, and the shooting happened like 130 metres away from two schools. There were also six daycare facilities close by as well. And I guess, did you ever think that it would've gotten to this point where there would've been a gunfight in your neighbourhood over who's controlling the drugs to feed these people?

Derek Finkle (20:03):

Well, I think it's fair to say that most of us certainly didn't foresee that back in 2017 when the site was opening or about to open. I don't think there was a guide that that was put together by the city that contained a bunch of rules that this place was supposed to abide by. And one of those rules was that there was supposed to be a zero tolerance drug dealing policy around the building. And clearly they so much for that. Yeah, they completely failed at that. And then part of it's because it's a healthcare facility, they don't have security, and they also had an antagonistic relationship with the police. And the police right now with decriminalization looming and small quantity possession, not even being worthy of arrest, this isn't, the police aren't going to be a private security service for a health centre with a supervised injection site.

(20:52):

It's just not happening in Toronto. And so we didn't see it back then. But what happened was by the time, I'd say by 20 19, 20 20, we were doing everything we could to tell them both through official channels, their community liaison committee or through just calling up and speaking to the director of the supervised injection site. There were many, many meetings, many, many people voice concerns, and they did nothing. And so finally what happened was, and I wrote about this, is that in May, may of last year, we decided to start putting together our own data. So we started actually a Google form sheet, a community Google form sheet. And every time you saw a needle or somebody using or somebody unconscious or somebody overdosed or drug dealers or violence or all the things we've talked about, it was documented. So within a month or so, I believe it was, we had hundreds of these incidences documented just over a month.

(21:51):

And so we actually made a presentation to the CEO of the health centre, and this was in late June. This was about maybe three weeks before the shooting. And we had one more meeting, which happened to be three days before the shooting. And one of the residents whose child, five-year-old child, found a bag of fentanyl, huge chunk of fentanyl in a baggie, like a sandwich baggie in the lane behind their house and brought in, thankfully, that child never opened that baggy or touched that bag or touched the fentanyl or put it in his mouth because that child would've almost certainly died.

(22:33):

And so the mother said in that meeting, I don't know what it's going to take for you to do something about this. Is it going to take a child to die or to get seriously injured for you to actually act? Because they were just going along, doing nothing, hoping we would go away. And then three days later, Carolina was shot. And then when she was shot, everything changed. And all of a sudden the police were in our meetings, board members from the centre were in our meetings, politicians, hilariously were in our meetings. And so we had city Toronto Public Health was in our meetings for a short while. So all of a sudden, and I think the last thing I'll say here is just they're listening finally. Yeah, they're listening finally. And what's hilarious is that in the aftermath of the shooting, some higher reduction, very prominent drug policy, people who work at Unity Health who are, and they're all kind of borderline activists, this isn't like liver disease.

(23:33):

This is harm reduction is a form of social activism is what it is. And so after the shooting, one of the people at Unity Health wrote an op-ed in the Star basically saying that there's no correlation between gun crimes and supervised injection sites. But what he left out was all of the other things that we were dealing with prior to the shooting. He never even looked into the key crime indicator stats for our neighbourhood, which clearly show the crime went up, even overdoses more than doubled in South Riverdale between 20 and 21. And so all I'm saying is that there's a lot of gaslighting going on here. People, it wasn't guns that we were worried about, it's guns that finally got people to listen to what we actually were worried about.

Desmond Brown (24:31):

Yeah, exactly. And you mentioned all the people who attended those meetings, but you also had community activists attending those meetings who were accusing you and your neighbours of Nimbyism and that you're going too far to try to stop what was going on there. But anyway, I want to just move on to the complicity of some of the employees in the health centre. We have one employee who has been charged as an accessory after the fact of the murder, but there was also an article that was written by Tara Riley, I guess you helped her write that article that appeared in the National Post. And she was a harm reduction worker at the centre for six years, and she finally came out after this and explained what was going on inside, and I could not believe what I was reading.

Derek Finkle (25:26):

Yeah, well, sadly, we couldn't believe it because I think what's interesting about Tara's story is that she sort of lifted the veil off what most of us had sort of caught glimpses of, but weren't there right inside the building to really witness it for ourselves, which is that we saw the drug dealers all around the building. And then what she revealed was that the drug dealers weren't just around the building. They were in the building and they were dealing drugs in the supervised injection site. And not only that, there was the rampant death that we were experiencing. Yeah,

Desmond Brown (26:00):

Porch pirates for part of it that affect a lot of people.

Derek Finkle (26:04):

And even worse than porch pirating actually breaking into halls, breaking into garages, breaking into, and the kind of stuff, there were incidents where residents were actually seeing the people who broke it in on their security cameras at the centre, and they'd call the cops to come in and try to deal with it there. There's a store that just a week ago today, experienced a break in at the corner of Queen and Carla, that store, it's called Culture Athletics. It used to be just a few blocks to the east at Jones. It was there for years. It experienced two little snatch and grab type things. It was like 50 bucks or something. They move in 2021, I think, or maybe early 2022 to Queen and Car Lot. They have experienced now four break-ins in excess of $45,000 in losses in damages. And one of the gentleman who was convicted for two of those break-ins was a client of the CTS site across the street. And so Tara Riley also lifted the veil on the fact that rampant theft, it was basically like a stolen goods market. It was like a fence.

Desmond Brown (27:20):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, go on a little bit of that because they'd bring the stolen goods into the lobby or into the health centre and sell them to the employees

Derek Finkle (27:30):

In, and in fact, part of her story is that a gentleman who worked there was actually hiring one of the clients to go and steal booze for him or obtain booze, steal booze from the local LCBO that he would then go and pay a fraction of the dollar to this poor person who apparently, I'm told, I think Tara told me that that person eventually got arrested for doing that, trying to make some money from one of these staff members. So yeah, the culture and even the person Rappy who was seen, I guess as sort of the godfather of these supervised injection, he eventually died of an overdose himself. And I think that my sense, to be honest with you, having spent a lot of time talking to the people who manage this place or were in charge of the health centre, is that there was an ideological push to take this on.

(28:34):

And I think they took it on, they got the funding for it, they opened up the space for it, but they weren't really that interested in getting their hands dirty, if you know what I'm saying. They kind of set it up. They kind of put some people in charge. A lot of the people who worked there have lived what's called lived experience. So they're people who either are living with addiction issues or have lived with addiction or have struggled in the past, and they kind of left it and they didn't really, so when Tara Riley, I think the parallel between Tara Riley's story and our story as a neighbourhood is that we were both trying to make management aware of very serious problems, and we were ignored. She was ignored and we were ignored. So it's a common story that way. She was trying to tell them there's stuff going on. I mean, they weren't really that interested in that

Desmond Brown (29:29):

They, they had never connect the dots.

Derek Finkle (29:31):

No. They also,

Desmond Brown (29:32):

Like you said,

Derek Finkle (29:33):

And part of the problem is that what I've learned is that these places in the future, if they continue to exist, the people who receive the funding have to be segregated from the people who are actually managing these sites. Because there is no incentive to report on problems, whether it's with safe or supply or supervised injection. There's no reason to go up the ladder with real problems like drug dealers in your supervised injection site violence, people getting shot because what is it going to mean? It's going to mean it's going to put a dent in the ideology and it's going to set things backwards according to them. And it's also could have an impact on the funding. And so I just don't feel like we were getting true responsible management that we were promised as neighbours for a whole bunch of reasons, including that.

Desmond Brown (30:28):

Okay. So that leads me to this week about responsible management. So they've held some town halls or open houses there, and I'm sure you attended them, but they say they're going to increase the lighting, increase security, more surveillance cameras. What do you think? Are these all band-aids? I know. I can see you scratching your head here and rolling your eyes.

Derek Finkle (30:53):

To be honest with you, for me personally, I can't take any of it in a genuine light because ever since the shooting, the management of the centre has never once acknowledged that they had anything to do with the deaths of Carolina. They have never once acknowledged that they failed to listen to our concerns as a community leading up to the shooting. And I think they, before a problem can be fixed, it has to be acknowledged. And part of what I tried to document in my series of articles is instead of genuine engagement, both before and after the shooting, what we've actually witnessed is a very, very calculated damage control campaign, which we don't have time to get into today, but these open houses, I actually was contacted by a Toronto Star reporter whose piece came out today, and of course I wasn't mentioned in it, but the South Riverdale comms team reached out to that reporter because they see the star as a friendly vehicle for them or a friendly ally. And I asked the reporter what the purpose of the story was, and she said, well, the purpose, these open houses, the purpose is to show all the things they've done since the shooting. Now what have they done? They built a fence.

(32:39):

They built a fence, and actually it was the church next door that built the fence. We were begging them for a fence before, well, well before the shooting, if that fence had been there before that day, Carolina would still be raising her children. So I don't really have a lot of, I'm not going to be clapping my hands for the fact that they built a fence after the fact. We also were begging them for security to have security around the building. As it turns out, the security actually is very limited in what it can do. But we were begging them nonetheless for that. I was told in May of 2021 by the woman who ran the supervised injection site, Leah Palmer, that they didn't have any money for security to hire security. It's not part of the budget, so therefore it's not coming. What happens the afternoon of the shooting, literally within two hours of that woman,

Desmond Brown (33:33):

They found the money.

Derek Finkle (33:34):

Yes, they had security out front. And the other piece that they now want to boast about is that they installed security cameras around the building to increase in lighting what you just mentioned, lighting and cameras. Well, you know what? They had cameras around that building for years. They have signs that say, this property is CCTV is here to protect our community, or something like that. After the shooting, we asked them what kind of footage they had of the drug den around their building and of the incident itself, what did they capture? Any footage. And that was the other thing I meant to say earlier, the centre has never once acknowledged that a drug den existed and drug dealers existed on the perimetre of their ability for years. They've never once acknowledged it, but now we're supposed to clap our hands because they're having an open house. And anyway, the security camera that they had prior to the shooting, if I recall correctly, they told us that nobody proactively monitored the security cameras or the footage. They only looked at it if the police arrived at the door with a court order over something. So I said, what about the drug den? They told us that the camera was focused on a shed that's in their backyard where the staff store their bikes during the day.

Desmond Brown (35:01):

Oh my goodness. Yeah. So yeah, you're not going to get anywhere with that with management at that place.

Derek Finkle (35:08):

No, it's done. And I will say that I've spoken to all the people who participated in the Unity Health community engagement sessions over the last month. One of the sessions was for business owners. I just want to clarify, and I think three of them were for residents who were randomly selected by Unity Health. And I've spoken to people in all of those sessions and in all of them, each person unanimously, one of the things that was agreed upon is that the trust between our neighbourhood and the health centre is irrevocably broken. Many people called for the board and the management to be completely replaced. So yeah, it's a big problem.

Desmond Brown (35:50):

Okay. So Derek, as we get ready to wrap up here, the provincial government has taken a couple of steps here. I mean, it seems like you have to go above the actual management of the health centre and get some action from either Toronto Public Health or from the Ministry of Health. So I have heard, and I think you've even written about this as well, that the provincial ministry has appointed a supervisor to provide executive oversight of the site. I mean, do you think that is going to go anywhere?

Derek Finkle (36:23):

Actually, if I have one very faint hope, I think that the supervisor you're referring to, her name is Jill Campbell. I've met with her several times. I've had some pretty good conversations with her. And I will say that I think she knows what is really going on here. Whether she actually report on what she has learned and seen

Desmond Brown (36:55):

honestly reports,

Derek Finkle (36:56):

Honestly, that remains to be seen. I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt. So I think she's there until April. It's not a permanent appointment. My sense is that a lot of things that were not working before, like the community liaison committee, which reported to the board of the centre, which is just completely inappropriate. She's changed things like that. They refuse to release the minutes of the community liaison committee just recently, the historical minutes, which we demanded after the shooting, and then they said they agreed not to, which is scandalous, in my opinion, incredible. As a journalist, I actually obtained them separately on my own. So I will report on what those minutes actually contain at some future date. But once again, I just want to say I do think I will say that I think Jill is doing a conscientious job, and I think she's managed to actually witness and observe what some of the real problems are.

Desmond Brown (38:08):

Yeah. Okay. And then one last thing here. You did mention that, I mean, you have a number of lawyers who live in Leslieville, and you mentioned to me that there was going to be a class action lawsuit. You mentioned there were going to be a class action lawsuit.

Derek Finkle (38:24):

Yeah, there was a group of lawyers, as you mentioned, that formed in Leslieville. I mean, they formed before, after the shooting. I actually didn't find out about them until after they had formed. But I think I've read the class action suit. And I think the way I would summarize it is even though I don't have anything to do that, I didn't write it, I believe there's going to be one residential plaintiff and one business plaintiff. And I think the best way to summarize the claim is that it basically takes, we talked a little bit about this before, what was promised to us about how this place would be run, and it very analytically disassembles all the failed promises or critically analyzes the failed promises. And so I suspect that claim will be filed. I think it was held up. They decided not to do it until this year, but I suspect it's going to be submitted or filed in the not so distant future.

Desmond Brown (39:36):

Okay. And do you know who's named in the seat?

Derek Finkle (39:41):

Well, the centre of course. I would imagine. I would imagine given who was responsible for the site that, because that's the one thing that's very difficult about trying to figure out who's responsible for what. And so the city's involved, the province is involved and the federal government's involved. So I don't really see how you could, I would assume that all three are, they're all

Desmond Brown (40:08):

Going to be named. Correct. Okay. And yeah, Derek, I could talk to you about this forever, but we have to wrap up now. What would you like to see in your neighbourhood now this, did you see coexisting with the health centre, or do you want it completely shut down?

Derek Finkle (40:25):

Well, it's important to distinguish between the Community Health centre itself and

Desmond Brown (40:31):

Or part of the safe injection side

Derek Finkle (40:32):

Of that part of the health centre. Sorry, I don't think anybody wants to see the Health centre go anywhere. I think that the health centre has a lot to offer the community and it has for Ute, but I think there's also a general consensus that a lot of people don't use the Health centre anymore because of the supervised injection site and what's going on. And they used to have a lot of classes for mothers lactation classes, things like that. They don't have those anymore because a lot of people are too intimidated to even go in and get the services that are on offer there. And it's a real problem. And what would I like to see? I mean, I have suggested a number of, well, one was a mobile service where, because I do believe that these bricks and mortar sites inevitably are going to just be magnets for drug dealers, which just causes all kinds of problems, including occasionally gunfire. And so I believe that a mobile service, most of the who use that site live at a Woodgreen Community housing centre a few blocks away. That's what the CEO of the centre says. And so it would make a lot more sense to me if you could bring the needles and the supervision to them instead of having everybody congregate around one brick and mortar site. And I will also say that Joe Campbell, I mean they are looking at relocating the site like Eastern Avenue's been thrown around Lake

Desmond Brown (42:05):

Shore. Yeah, I heard about that too. Yeah.

Derek Finkle (42:07):

Having a place that's got some sort of public transit, maybe Dow Leslie or somewhere like that. But the problem is, is that back in 2016, we didn't know what a supervised injection site meant. We were naive. And the problem is now this is front page news. And now even the people who live, say around Eastern or the people who live, they now are live to what these places bring. And so of course, most neighbourhoods, and that's why they're not in places like Lee Side and the beach, because they knew back in 2012 that those neighbourhoods would not support them. What they didn't know back in 2012, the way Leslieville over the next decade would undergo a demographic explosion. That's what they didn't know. Incredible. That's why it's in Leslieville. But if they were thinking about Leslieville now, they would never put it there because of what Leslieville is now.

Desmond Brown (43:03):

Yeah. So true. Derek, I want to thank you very much for coming on the podcast to talk about this, and we're going to definitely keep an eye on this and hopefully have you come back and give us an update on how things are going.

Derek Finkle (43:17):

Yes, you're very welcome. Thanks for your interest in our neighbourhood, and it's nice to see you again.

Desmond Brown (43:24):

And that's our latest episode of Sold in the Six. I'd like to end this podcast by sending my sincerest condolences to Carolina Hubner Mara's family. She leaves behind her husband, Adrian Mara and two young daughters, ages seven and four in a release. Shortly after her death, her husband Adrian, said that Carolina was a beacon of light and that the focus now is on providing care and support for their daughters. He also thanked all those present who tried to save his wife's life before the paramedics arrived.

(44:03):

I'd like to thank my producer, Doug Downs of Stories and Strategies for this podcast. And if you enjoyed it, please subscribe, leave a rating, and please send it to a friend. To get in touch with me, you can email me at desmondbrown.ca and please follow me on all of the social media platforms. And my handle is Desmond the six, and it's the six spelled with the number 6 ix. And if you're a realtor outside of Toronto, you need someone to look after your clients who are either moving to or from the GTA. Please keep me in mind. I promise that your clients will be well looked after. Next time. I'm Desmond Brown.