Mayor Jim Watson says a pop-up supervised injection site should move from a Lowertown Park.
“I don’t think it’s fair to the neighbours and to the kids who are going to the community centre and using the park to have their park taken over,” Watson said on Tuesday after a ceremony in the ByWard Market, blocks away from the pop-up site. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate use of a park.”
Overdose Prevention Ottawa, the group that has set up the tent in Raphael Brunet Park at St. Patrick and Cumberland, said Monday they have served more than 65 people in the four days the tent has been open.
Watson said the tent should move next to the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre, which has secured an exemption from the federal government to operate a supervised injection site.
They are working to get the site ready, but the new group says the opioid crisis is so severe that a supervised site can’t wait.
The mayor stopped short of saying whether the city would evict the pop-up tent from the site.
“We’re going to work for an amicable solution. That’s the first priority,” he said. “But the reality is that I think it does not do a lot of good to the movement when you have a group that has a legitimate right to a federal licence, and then a group that just comes up and says we’re going to operate a pop-up site.”
Watson said he understands the overdose prevention group is “well-meaning…they want to help people, which is noble,” but added that “everyone in the country has to follow the rule of law.
“My hope is that they work collaboratively and not be situated in a park which is used by kids and is right next to a community centre that has summer camp programs.”
