Grant Higginson for City Council, Ward 4 St. Patrick's
Hand-drawn illustration of a St. Catharines public park with municipal lighting, cleanup equipment, a sharps receptacle, and an outreach van.

Public drug use, homelessness, and what a city councillor can actually do

Last updated: October 3, 2026

Straight about the boundary

City council is lower-tier government. Some of the biggest issues people care about — homelessness, policing, public health — are run by Niagara Region, not the City of St. Catharines. I'd rather be straight about that boundary than promise things a city councillor can't deliver.

This page is my answer to a question I've been asked at doors near the former GM lands and across the ward: now that the supervised consumption site is closed, what is the City going to do about open drug use and homelessness — and will I push the Province to reverse course?

The honest answer has four parts: what happened, what the City can and cannot do, what the City has done so far, and what I will do with the part the City controls.

What happened

December 2018. Positive Living Niagara opened Niagara's only supervised consumption site — the StreetWorks Consumption and Treatment Site on Queenston Street. By the time it closed, it had recorded more than 89,000 visits and reversed roughly 1,550 overdoses on site.

December 2024. The Province passed the Community Care and Recovery Act, 2024. It banned supervised consumption sites within 200 metres of a school or child-care centre, which required ten sites elsewhere in Ontario to close by March 31, 2025. St. Catharines was not one of them. The same Act bars municipalities from applying for, or supporting, the federal exemption a site needs to operate — even by council resolution — without the provincial Minister of Health's approval.

December 2024. Ontario's Auditor General reported that the Ministry of Health had not done a comprehensive analysis of the public-health impacts before finalizing its decision, and that the Ministry's own internal documents recognized the closures could bring "increased instances of public drug use and the public discarding of drug supplies." The same report found that in 2022–23, none of the more than 3,600 overdoses reported at Ontario's consumption sites resulted in death.

Late 2025 – March 2026. The Niagara HART Hub (Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment), led by Gateway Residential and Community Support Services and funded by the Province at up to $18.9 million over three years, began operating on Queenston Street and was officially opened on March 27, 2026. By provincial design, HART Hubs do not offer supervised consumption or needle exchange.

March 13, 2026. The Province announced it would end funding for the seven remaining consumption sites in communities with a HART Hub — including St. Catharines — after a 90-day wind-down.

June 12, 2026. The St. Catharines site closed. Thirteen full- and part-time positions were eliminated. Positive Living Niagara continues to run its needle syringe program and mobile harm-reduction services.

Since then. City staff have noted that overdose calls in the community were already rising year over year before the closure. In July, The Pointer reported Niagara EMS responding to more than 120 suspected overdose calls a month.

What the City can and cannot do

Getting this right matters, because the easiest thing a candidate can do on this issue is promise something the City has no power to deliver.

Hand-drawn civic scene connecting City Hall, a public park, cleanup equipment, and an outreach van to illustrate different government responsibilities.

The City cannot:

  • Reopen, fund, or run a supervised consumption site on its own. City staff put it plainly in a May 27, 2026 memo to council: under the Act, "municipal governments cannot apply for nor support exemptions required to operate a CTS under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act without provincial Minister approval. This includes, but is not limited to, passing by-laws or making resolutions in support of a Health Canada exemption application made by others." Staff's assessment was that provincial approval for a municipal partnership "would be unlikely."
  • Run shelters, outreach, or public health. Niagara Region is the service manager for housing and homelessness, and runs Public Health and EMS.
  • Direct the police. The Niagara Regional Police Service answers to a regional police board, not to city council.
  • Overturn a provincial decision. Council can ask. It cannot decide.
  • Clear encampments at will. Ontario courts have set limits on removing people from public land when there is nowhere for them to go, and the City's own by-law reflects that.

The City can:

  • Manage public space. Parks, by-law enforcement, fire services, litter and needle cleanup, sharps receptacles, lighting and sightlines, and City-owned property are all City files.
  • Enforce property standards on private land — including the former GM lands.
  • Approve housing, including affordable and supportive housing, and contribute City land and buildings, as it did with 320 Geneva Street and the 29 Riordon Street shelter site.
  • Set conditions when the Region puts a facility in St. Catharines. Council did exactly that in July 2026 for the Bunting Road shelter relocation.
  • Use its voice — council resolutions, Ontario's Big City Mayors, and the Mayor's seat at Regional Council.

What the City has done so far

The record, without commentary:

  • September 9, 2024. Council voted 12–1 to redirect the City's budget for contracted homelessness services — its outreach funding — to encampment cleanup, and to formally ask the Region to fund outreach workers and adopt a region-wide encampment protocol.
  • April 2025. Council passed the Public Space Use By-law (2025-048), which regulates where temporary shelters can be placed on City land — set back from playgrounds, schools, homes, rail lines and waterways — with fire, propane and waste rules. It carries no fines, and the City states that reporting an encampment does not mean the City will remove it; it describes its approach as human-rights based.
  • March 23, 2026. Ten days after the provincial announcement, council directed staff to investigate options, including financial and partnership models, to keep the site open past June 12 (carried 6–5); directed staff to monitor and report back on the impacts of the closure on fire, by-law, parks and community well-being; and asked the Region and the HART team to appear before council. The full resolution passed unanimously and was sent to the Premier, the Minister of Health, and local MPPs.
  • May 27, 2026. Staff reported back by memo. Positive Living Niagara had not asked the City for a partnership, because of the Act. The Region sent a letter rather than appearing. Staff listed the City's precautionary measures: working with police where open-air drug use is identified, safety training for parks, by-law and cleanup crews, "enhanced community clean up" downtown with the Welcoming Spaces team and the Downtown BIA, and contingency planning for downtown fire platoons. The memo says that if demands exceed existing budgets, staff will return to council for approvals.
  • July 13, 2026. Council unanimously set out what it expects from the Region before the modular shelter moves to Bunting Road: 24-hour on-site security, patrols beyond the property line, lighting and other physical security improvements, daily litter collection and needle sweeps across an expanded perimeter, a named liaison with a direct phone number, a public space management plan, and quarterly public reporting.
  • September 14, 2026. Council unanimously endorsed Ontario's Big City Mayors' Solve the Crisis — Reaction to Recovery campaign, which asks the Province, among other measures, to declare a state of emergency on homelessness, mental health and addictions, expand voluntary treatment and supportive housing, and appoint a dedicated minister.
  • As of September 24, 2026, the March direction to report back on the closure's impacts on City services remains on council's outstanding reports list with no target date.

Why downtown carries more of this than anywhere else in Niagara

Residents and downtown business owners tell me the concentration is worse here than anywhere else in the region. They are right, and the reason is on the record: the Region's services are concentrated in St. Catharines. Six of Niagara's nine emergency shelters are here. The only supervised consumption site was here. The HART Hub is here. Niagara Health's withdrawal-management beds are here, along with the hospital, the courts and the region's transit hub. Niagara EMS figures reported in 2021 put roughly half of the region's suspected-overdose calls in St. Catharines — a city with under a third of Niagara's population. People go where the services are, and that includes people from elsewhere in Niagara.

What the record does not show is where people come from. Niagara's 2024 Point-in-Time count published results on health, age and the causes of housing loss, but nothing on how long people have lived in Niagara or where they lived before — questions the national count methodology asks. Where other cities have published that data, the picture is consistent: in Toronto's 2024 count, 76 per cent of people sleeping outdoors were long-time residents, and 6 per cent had arrived within the year. I hear the Toronto theory at doors regularly. I have never seen Niagara data for it, and I would rather ask for the number than repeat the guess.

What follows is not that St. Catharines should turn anyone away. It cannot, and it should not. What follows is that the Region's next investment should go somewhere else in Niagara — and that the City should have a seat where that decision is made. Those are asks of the Region, and they are listed as asks below.

What I will do

Hand-drawn public-space work table with cleanup tools, a sharps receptacle, keys, and a neighbourhood map.

  1. 1. Get the impact report back to council — with numbers, and a budget ask if one is needed.

    Council asked for it in March. If City fire, by-law and parks crews are carrying the cost of a provincial decision, council should see the figures and decide in public whether to fund the response, rather than absorb it quietly. I will ask for a date, and I will vote to fund the City's side — cleanup, sharps disposal, by-law capacity — if the report shows it is needed.

  2. 2. Apply the Bunting Road standard to the neighbourhoods absorbing the closure.

    In July, council wrote down what a neighbourhood is owed when a facility lands nearby. The same standard should apply to the areas affected now — downtown, the Queenston corridor, and the streets around the former GM lands. The City delivers its own side: a published needle-sweep schedule, sharps receptacles where they are needed, lighting and sightline audits in City parks, and a single published City contact for public-space concerns so residents are not bounced between 211, the Region, and City Hall. The Region is asked for its side — outreach coverage and a public space management plan — with reporting back to council. Conditions at the downtown bus terminal at 70 Carlisle Street, and what the City's seats on the Niagara Transit Commission can do about them, are covered on the Downtown page.

  3. 3. Enforce the Public Space Use By-law consistently and humanely — as written.

    Clear rules on where and how. No fines for being unsheltered. A human-rights approach to encampments, consistent with what Ontario courts have required. That is what council passed, and it is what I will hold the City to.

  4. 4. Hold the line on the GM site.

    An unsecured, derelict 50-acre site is where fires and encampments happen — Fire Services responded to four fires there in 2023 and seven in 2024, and an encampment has been documented on the property. Securing that site is the owner's legal responsibility. The City issued property standards orders on May 22, 2026; they were upheld on appeal June 25, with a compliance deadline of October 23. The neighbours around the site should never have to wonder whether the City will enforce its own orders.

  5. 5. Say yes to housing when qualified staff recommend it.

    The City's biggest structural contribution is saying yes to homes, including affordable and supportive ones. When professional staff recommend approving a housing project, my default is yes — and if I ever vote otherwise, I'll owe residents a specific, planning-based reason.

  6. 6. Advocate — and label it as advocacy.

    The asks of the Province, and of the Region, are below.

On pressuring the Province — and the Region

Two questions, answered separately: will I push, and will it work?

Will I push? Yes. Council has already sent one resolution to the Premier and the Minister of Health (March 23) and endorsed the Big City Mayors' campaign (September 14). I would have voted for both. I will support council asking the Province to restore funding for supervised consumption services alongside the HART Hub — because the Province's own Auditor General found that none of the 3,600 overdoses at these sites in 2022–23 ended in a death, and because a community with one option instead of two is worse off.

Will it work? Not on its own. Hamilton's council asked the Province to reverse course in November 2024. St. Catharines asked in March 2026. The Province proceeded both times. A council resolution is a letter. It matters as a public record and as pressure in numbers — the Big City Mayors represent 29 cities — but I will not tell you it overturns a provincial decision. And I will not tell you the City can fund the site itself, because the Act forbids it without the Minister's approval, which City staff have assessed as unlikely.

On the Region. The decisions that determine how much of this downtown carries — where shelters, hubs and treatment beds go — are made at Regional Council, where the City's voice is the Mayor's seat and council's resolutions. I will support the City asking the Region for three things:

  • Publish the numbers. The municipal breakdown of the 2024 Point-in-Time count, its results on how long people have lived in Niagara and where they lived before, and suspected-overdose calls by municipality. Either the migration story is confirmed by the Region's own data, or it ends.
  • Put the next one somewhere else. The Region now operates a shelter in Welland, and is moving the Riordon Street shelter to Bunting Road — still in St. Catharines. The next shelter, hub satellite or set of treatment beds should be sited in a Niagara municipality that hosts few or none today. This is an ask about where the Region invests next. It is not a promise to vote against anything that reaches council: if a proposal in St. Catharines comes forward with qualified staff recommending approval, the rule in point 5 applies.
  • A seat where siting decisions are made. In May 2026, Thorold's council asked the Region for lower-tier municipal representation in Regional decision-making on mental health, homelessness and addiction. St. Catharines should ask for the same.

What I will not do is dress advocacy up as delivery. Every ask I make of the Province or the Region will be labelled as an ask, so you can hold me to the parts the City actually controls: public space, property standards, housing approvals, and a City budget that funds its own response.

Sources

Everything on this page comes from public documents. If you want to check any of it:

Last updated: October 3, 2026