A year after HART Hubs opened, advocates say addiction services still MIA

After the Ford government declared supervised consumption sites (SCS) were causing more harm than good, researchers and community workers say the province’s new model for treating addiction isn’t offering a clear path for people to actually get help, with advocates urging changes to the abstinence-based plan.

Responding to community backlash, the province introduced legislation banning the operation of supervised consumption sites near schools and playgrounds, while cutting funding to others. Many locations forced to closed shifted their operations to the province’s Homeless and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs.

However, many community workers said a year after those locations opened their doors, there isn’t a clear indication of what has changed other than outlawing drug use within the areas and ending harm reduction programs like needle exchanges.

“They don’t even seem to be providing what they’re supposed to be providing, which is recovery,” said community worker Diana Chan McNally, noting the HART Hubs aren’t expediting people into recovery programming. She said many people finishing detox programs are being set up for failure after being told they need to remain drug-free while waiting months on wait-lists for recovery beds.

The Ministry of Health said since opening, HART Hubs have delivered over 100,000 client interactions and provided hundreds of people with supportive housing and addiction recovery beds. Chan McNally disputes this, saying most of the hubs operating in the city are only offering drop-in programs where people can seek counselling, do laundry, and get food.

A ministry spokesperson told Global News that the province is adding close to 900 supportive housing units and nearly 350 addiction and recovery treatment beds through the HART Hub model. But they couldn’t clarify how many of those treatment beds are being put into service in Toronto, since each location determines what services it will have based on local need.

Public health researcher Gillian Kolla, from Memorial University, said outreach interviews were done in each of the communities where supervised consumption sites were closed in favour of HART Hubs. Those interviews, Kolla said, saw many respondents unclear about what services were available.

“Overwhelmingly we’re hearing about no improvements to detoxification or drug treatment programs, people are still being put on wait-lists as they were before,” said Kolla.

“They’re also not reporting any increases to housing availability.”

There is also continuing concern over the lack of drug testing once available at supervised consumption sites, a service outlawed at HART Hubs. It’s a major gap that coincides with a toxic drug supply where Toronto’s top doctor said people are often unaware what they’re actually ingesting.

“Through our drug checking, we see that almost 80 per cent of substances that people thought was fentanyl actually contains other things like medetomidine, an animal tranquilizer that’s not approved for humans and is also not responsive to things like naloxone,” said Toronto Medical Officer of Health Dr. Michelle Murti.

Murti added that overdoses may have been on the decline in 2025, but since late last year they’ve been steadily rising month-over-month.

While many say HART Hubs aren’t doing enough, they aren’t writing them off altogether. In fact, many in the harm reduction field said they had been pushing for their introduction to help treat addiction in concert with supervised consumption sites.

Bill Sinclair heads up the Neighbourhood Group, which successfully got a court injunction to continue running its supervised consumption site near Kensington Market. He said since the Ford government closed other sites, his location, the only remaining supervised consumption site west of Yonge Street, has seen twice as many clients.

Sinclair is adamant addiction treatment doesn’t need to be an either/or choice between a supervised consumption site and a HART Hub.

“HART Hubs are meant to support people while they go through this waiting and that’s important, but it doesn’t reverse overdoses,” he said, “and today, people need to live to be on a waiting list.”

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