Community residents launch class action lawsuit against drug injection site

Lawsuit claims government agencies and site's operator failed to address public safety concerns and keep neighbourhood residents safe

"Drug addict in a laneway. (Dreamstime)

By: Alexandra Keeler

Following a wave of drug-related incidents, including the fatal shooting of a mother last summer, a group of Torontonians has launched a class action lawsuit against the operator of a supervised injection site in the city’s family-friendly Riverdale neighbourhood.

The lawsuit was filed in March by local resident Jacqueline Court and restaurant Eastside Social against South Riverdale Community Health Centre. The centre has operated the “keepSIX” drug consumption site since November 2017.

The lawsuit alleges the centre exposed the community to unacceptable danger by failing to follow its own rules. It is demanding that the defendants, which also include the City of Toronto, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Health Canada, address public safety issues and compensate residents. 

The plaintiffs are not requesting that keepSIX be closed.

“We all feel helpless in the face of the opioid epidemic,” said Andrea Sanche, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs. “But to feel from the government, ‘Oh, well, we don’t know, we’re just going to ignore it,’ is really distressing.”

Physical assaults and discarded needles

The lawsuit details the challenges that Ms. Court and Eastside Social have faced since keepSIX began operating. 

Court has reported multiple physical assaults by intoxicated individuals and been threatened by a woman who said she would burn down Court’s house with her daughter inside, the statement of claim says. 

She claims to regularly encounter discarded drug paraphernalia around her property, and see individuals fornicating and defecating on her parking pad and laneway. She and her family now feel unsafe walking in their neighbourhood at night and prefer to travel by car, the claim says. 

Eastside Social's employees have encountered similar issues, the claim says. Employees cannot use the back lane and must regularly seek police and emergency assistance to assist drug users. 

These allegations have not yet been tested in court.

Anne Marie Aikins, a public affairs executive consultant at the marketing consultancy AMA Communications, responded on behalf of the centre to questions about the lawsuit’s allegations.

"The safety of our staff, clients and neighbours is critically important to all of us at SRCHC," 

Aikins said in an emailed statement.

"We have listened to the concerns of our neighbours and we are doing everything we can to ensure our internal policies, procedures and practices provide important life-saving health services and protect the health and safety of our neighbours."

Neighbours express concern

The experiences detailed by Court and Eastside Social in the statement of claim were echoed by other neighbourhood residents interviewed for this story.

“We’ve noticed a real change from 2021 onwards,” said Andrea Nickel, a resident who has lived around the corner from the centre for 17 years. “At the beginning of last year it just escalated out of control.”

Stephen Tattle, a senior citizen and registered nurse, lives 100 metres from the centre with his husband. After being harassed by two men outside the centre while recovering from cancer, Tattle says he is questioning whether he will stay in the neighbourhood.

“I’m going to have to reconsider whether I’m going to be retiring in the home that I’ve lived in for 23 years because it’s not safe to go for a walk,” he said.

Tattle believes the problem with the supervised injection site lies in poor management, rather than the nature of the program itself. 

“The health centre ends their obligation as soon as someone walks out the door,” he said.

Aikins, speaking on behalf of the centre, noted the centre’s role in providing referrals to its clientele. 

“In 2023, staff at SRCHC reversed 74 overdoses and in 2022, 124 overdoses,” she said. “Last year we also referred almost a thousand people using our services to mental health and treatment services.”

But residents are concerned that the centre — which has three schools, five child-care centres and five parks in close proximity — attracts drug dealers to the area.

Resident and mother of two Ashley McPherson says she found a baggie of fentanyl near her house in May 2023. 

“My little guy went for it,” she said. “They’re curious like, ‘What is it? It’s pretty.’” 

Days later, she and her children encountered an unconscious man in the street. 

“My kids are in tears. This guy looks dead,” McPherson said. “And I mean he’s not just laying there. He’s contorted, with needles on the ground.” A short time later, her son discovered a used needle in their driveway.

A 2020 University of Lethbridge study on supervised consumption sites found that while cities benefit from localising social issues into a single neighbourhood, the areas around the sites disproportionately bear the burden of the improvements seen elsewhere in the city.

Government inaction

An appendix to the plaintiffs’ statement of claim draws from a Google Form that lists incidents reported by Riverdale residents. Incidents include trespassing, vandalism, assaults, racial slurs, children encountering needles and fentanyl, nudity on daycare property, sexually suggestive behaviour and public defecation.

Nickel, who created the form, said that when she presented this information to the centre in June 2023, they vowed to address their concerns. 

“They said, ‘We’re going to talk to our community safety team, and we’ll come back in two weeks,’” Nickel said. “That was in June. They came back a week later and said, ‘Sorry, we have nothing to tell you right now. We haven’t been able to get in touch with the security team.’ That was July fourth. We all know what happened three days later when, unfortunately, a mother of two got shot.”

On July 7, 2023, Karolina Huebner-Makurat, a 44-year-old mother and local resident, was fatally struck by a stray bullet during a gunfight between three men outside the centre. At a Feb. 7, 2024 news conference, Homicide Detective Sergeant Henri Marsman said the men involved were engaged in the drug trade, and the altercation was likely a robbery involving drugs, money, or both.

Despite assurances by the Toronto Board of Health of a zero-tolerance policy for drug trafficking in the initial proposal for the site, the centre had ongoing issues of drug-related activity and violence, the statement of claim alleges. It also questions whether the Ontario Ministry of Health properly evaluated the site. 

In 2021, the ministry established new standards for drug consumption sites, which include mandatory annual inspections. But the Toronto Board of Health did not inspect keepSIX until May 2023, the statement of claim alleges.

In response to requests for comment, the City of Toronto said they are currently reviewing the statement of claim and indicated that, because “the case is now before the courts, the City cannot provide any further comment.” Ontario’s Ministry of Health did not respond to requests for comment.

Health Canada spokesperson Charlaine Sleiman said in an emailed statement that, "Health Canada is in regular communication with the site and worked with them to improve community engagement, reduce loitering, and improve security around the centre.” 

Sleiman also said Health Canada is working closely with the Ministry of Health and centre to “address ongoing community concerns” regarding the site’s operations.

“It's not about punching down on people”

Class action lawsuits must receive court certification before they can proceed to a hearing on the merits. Sanche, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, anticipates that reaching the certification hearing could take up to two years.

“The class action suit is really born from a lack of faith in our politicians and our bureaucrats to give us some semblance of accountability for the mismanagement of this place,” said Derek Finkle, a journalist who has covered the Riverdale community's struggle with the centre. 

“It's not about punching down on people. It's not that we don't believe in harm reduction as being part of a continuum of addressing the opioid crisis,” said Finkle, who also resides across the street from the centre.

McPherson agrees. “Addiction is a disease … I think there's a lot of steps, and I think that harm reduction is a good first step. But I also feel that our government is making it the only step,” she said.

“That’s really where this [lawsuit] came from — the doing nothing,” said Sanche. “It’s kind of like the government is abdicating responsibility.”