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Despite optimism over new HART Hub, executive director says lack in supervised consumption services will increase pressure on emergency services, policing, and public spaces

Article by Bethan Bates, KawarthaNOW

With the closure of Peterborough’s Consumption and Treatment Site (CTS) looming, community leaders are voicing their concerns about the potential impacts on service users and the community at large.

“From a service user perspective, you are removing a very important place where they start the foundations of making change to recovery,” said Donna Rogers, executive director of Four Counties Addiction Services Team (Fourcast), in a recent interview with kawarthaNOW.

On March 16, the Ontario government announced it would end funding for seven CTS site in communities that now have a provincially funded Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub, including Peterborough, with a “90-day wind-down period … to give clients time to transition to the support provided by their local HART Hub.”

Closure a result of provincial policy shift away from supervised consumption and harm reduction to treatment and recovery

The decision to close Peterborough’s CTS comes almost two years after the Ontario government’s August 2024 “safer communities” announcement of a policy shift to restrict harm reduction sites and make addiction treatment a priority, banning supervised drug consumption sites within 200 metres of schools and child care centres.

The announcement resulted in the closure of nine provincially funded CTS sites, including four in Toronto as well as sites in Guelph, Hamilton, Thunder Bay, Ottawa, and Kitchener-Waterloo.

At the same time, the provincial government announced a $378 million investment, later increased to almost $500 million, for new HART Hubs focused on treatment, recovery, and housing, and issued a province-wide call for proposals, encouraging the nine closed CTS sites to submit proposals to transition to HART Hubs.

In January 2025, the province announced the nine closed drug injection sites would be transitioned to HART Hubs and also announced additional HART Hubs would be created, including one in Peterborough, ultimately resulting in 28 across Ontario.

A response to the opioid crisis, the Peterborough CTS opened in June 2022 in the former bus terminal at 220 Simcoe Street in downtown Peterborough to provide a safe and medically supported space for people to consume pre-obtained drugs under the supervision of health professionals.

People using the CTS are provided with sterile injection supplies, education on safer consumption practices, drug checking, basic medical services, and referrals to addiction treatment services, housing, and other social services.

Rogers explained that such sites were funded to provide the singular function of offering a safe space and clean supplies for the use of personal illicit drugs.

“We weren’t a drop-in spot, you couldn’t loiter around, and you couldn’t have tents,” she said.

Lack of supervised consumption expected to increase emergency calls and public drug use

Following the closure of the first nine CTS sites, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition tracked calls made to emergency services and visits to the emergency department for opioid-related overdoses.

A release from the Coalition says “Ontario-wide data shows a sharp increase in EMS calls (+69.5%) and emergency department use (+67%).”

Rogers said this data is worrying and representative of the importance of supervised consumption in the healthcare and recovery continuum. For her, it is clear people will continue to need the services provided at the CTS, but the closure will leave them with nowhere to go.

“These uses will happen somewhere else,” said Rogers of the approximate 300 uses per month supervised at the Peterborough CTS.

Furthermore, Fourcast works in partnership with paramedic and emergency medical services to function as an alternate drop-off location for individuals experiencing drug-related medical complications — a service that will also no longer be available when the CTS is closed.

The Ontario government cited concerns about public safety around CTS locations as a primary reason for the closures. However, for Rogers, the real concerns around safety will come after the CTS is closed and a gap in services has been created.

In particular, she said that when the Peterborough CTS is closed, even temporarily, the immediate surrounding area feels the impact.

“If we closed for an hour or two we would notify the library,” said Rogers, referring to the main branch of the Peterborough Public Library, which is located half a block south of the CTS.

Prior to the opening of the CTS, drug-related emergencies were a common occurrence in and around the library. In a report presented to the library board on May 12, library director and CEO Melissa Reddenit noted the library is preparing for the closure of the CTS with several steps related to safety and security.

Rogers also foresees the closure impacting police response and public works as people continue to use, although now in public spaces.

Further, Rogers said a major impact of the CTS closures will be increased costs for municipal policing and public services “downloaded” from the province.

“This is going to be a costly decision on the city,” said Rogers.

HART Hubs do not offer safer supply, supervised drug consumption, or needle exchange programs

Following the closure of the CTS, Fourcast will begin the operation of Peterborough’s provincially funded HART Hub. Peterborough is one of 28 communities approved for HART Hub funding, having secured $6.3 million through a joint proposal between Fourcast and the City of Peterborough.

In its March 16 announcement of the latest CTS closures, the province stated the goal of HART Hubs was to “fund treatment and lasting recovery from addiction, rather than continued public funding of drug injection sites.”

“It’s a philosophical shift — it’s doing diametrically different things,” said Rogers of the HART Hub system.

Like all HART Hubs, the Peterborough hub will not offer safer supply, supervised drug consumption, or needle exchange programs. Eligible activities under HART Hub funding include, but are not limited to, primary care, mental health and addictions services, supportive housing, case management, and drop-in services.

“The HART Hubs are all different,” explained Rogers.

Rogers told kawarthaNOW he Peterborough HART Hub will focus its efforts on providing healthcare and housing supports to residents at the modular bridge housing community on Wolfe Street.

Owned and funded by the City of Peterborough and operated in partnership with the Elizabeth Fry Society of Peterborough (EFry), it consists of 50 modular housing units with 24/7 onsite support for individuals with complex needs that cannot be met at low-barrier overnight shelters.

“The people on Wolfe Street can’t stay at the shelter because they have service restrictions,” said Rogers.

Focus of Peterborough’s HART Hub will be healthcare and traditional and supportive housing

When assessing how to use the $6.3 million investment for Peterborough’s HART Hub, Fourcast and community partners established that their focus should be to establish “long term stable housing, with the appropriate supports, for the people who are the most complex in our community.”

Rogers explained that individuals experiencing chronic homelessness are more likely to have complex physical and mental health needs due to a lack of access to healthcare, ultimately making finding and maintaining housing an ongoing challenge.

“They are some of the most complex healthcare patients you could ever imagine,” said Rogers.

To address the barriers faced by Wolfe Street residents, the Peterborough HART Hub will develop a healthcare team to work in partnership with the existing EFry frontline staff.

In addition to the onsite health team, the HART Hub will operate 50 units of transitional housing for residents moving out of Wolfe Street housing, a further six spaces in supportive housing hosted by the Canadian Mental Health Association – Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge (CMHA HKPR) for individuals with acquired brain injuries or a dual diagnosis including developmental disorders, and finally, a six-month “sober living” program for people who are unhoused when entering addictions treatment.

Fourcast is also working in collaboration with One City Peterborough to use newly built, single-occupant additional rental units (ARUs) as transitional housing units for individuals with complex needs requiring ongoing support.

Recognizing that other municipalities have elected to develop drop-in programs and homelessness response hubs, Rogers said the existence of the Trinity Community Centre operated by One City has allowed Fourcast to take a more targeted approach.

“We already have a homelessness response hub,” said Rogers. “This allowed us to take a laser focus on housing and housing stability.”

Despite optimism about the positive impact of the HART Hub, Rogers said it should not be seen as a replacement for the services provided by the CTS.

“There’s a discussion that it’s a direct trade off, but it certainly is not,” she said.

Four Counties Addiction Services Team (Fourcast) is looking for community-minded people who want to make a difference by serving on our Board of Directors.

Our Board plays a vital leadership role in guiding Fourcast’s strategic direction; upholding our mission, vision, and values; serving as financial stewards; and supporting continuous quality improvement.

“Fourcast has experienced tremendous growth and significant expansion of our services over the past five years, and we are very proud of this growth and of the organization,” said Ron Black, current Board Chair. “At this pivotal phase, we need forward-thinking leaders with the ability to work well in a team environment and a willingness to be a spokesperson and advocate for those struggling with addiction. New Board members will join a group of dedicated volunteers who contribute their time and talent to help the organization deliver high-quality programs in service to our communities.”

Fourcast welcomes applicants with experience in Non-Profit Governance, Government Relations, Communications, and other areas of expertise that would make them strong contributors to our Board.

“As Fourcast navigates this next chapter of growth in the area of Bed-Based Addiction Treatment Services and leading our community’s innovative Homelessness Addiction Recovery and Treatment (HART) Hub model, we are looking for visionary leaders who can help us leverage these new opportunities,” said Donna Rogers, Executive Director. “A strong, diverse Board of Directors is critical to ensuring that Fourcast continues to meet the evolving needs of our community.”

Applications will be open until May 15, 2026. For more information or to apply, please visit www.fourcast.ca/about-us/board-recruitment.

Contact:
Meghan Moloney, Communication Coordinator, Fourcast
705- 931-2839, mmoloney@fourcast.ca

Peterborough was one of 27 communities in Ontario to be approved for HART Hub funding in January 2025.

HART Hub funding is flowing into Peterborough and the work of building up the region’s response to treating mental health and addictions while addressing homelessness is well underway, says the executive director of Four Counties Addictions Services Team (Fourcast).

Donna Rogers explained the work is “a focused approach based on consolidating some of the planning and some of the decisions that city council made,” specifically around the decisions to fund One City’s Trinity Shelter and the Modular Bridge Housing Community on Wolfe Street.

Peterborough was one of 27 communities in Ontario to be approved for Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub funding in January 2025 and is set to receive more than $18 million from the province over a three-year period to support the project.

“When you opened up the modular community, you moved 50 people instantaneously out of encampments,” she explained, while underscoring that the goal of the HART Hub network is to open and manage the movement of people from spaces like Wolfe Street through to transitional housing, treatment, and then hopefully into affordable permanent housing.

Rogers refers to the movement of people within this system as “shifts”, illustrating movement between varying levels of care and support.

Under the existing HART Hub model, there are 40 units of transitional housing available across the city with an additional six units, run through the CMHA, reserved for people exiting Wolfe Street with acquired brain injuries or dual diagnoses, which present challenges to securing and maintaining housing. Those six units are staffed 24/7 and are rent supplemented.

“There won’t be 40 people exiting there at the same time,” Rogers explained, noting the difference between the opening of Wolfe Street and the model established under the HART Hub.

“As people are ready, and as we can find units, it’ll be a bit of a slower trickle off Wolfe Street, but every time we move someone off the site, someone can move on the site.”

Through the HART Hub model, one individual has been moved from Wolfe Street, Rogers said, but hopefully that will speed up as hiring continues and the services are established.

Meanwhile, another six units are reserved for individuals who are entering housing out of homelessness following their choice to enter [bed-based] addictions treatment. These units are meant as a form of aftercare, lasting six months post-treatment, and allow individuals to be fast-tracked into available transitional housing, Rogers explained.

Fourcast is working as part of a larger team of health-focused organizations and community partners on the implementation of the HART Hub locally. The partners involved include PRHC, One City, CMHA, Elizabeth Fry Society, Peterborough City-County Paramedics, and the Community Health Centre.

“All of those partners have different parts to play in implementation of the HART Hub, so we have been doing a lot of work around planning and designing the four different structures or components of the HART Hub as we implement them,” Rogers said.

A small portion of HART Hub funding was earmarked for capital projects, which includes renovations to the main building located at the Wolfe Street Project which will house a health team consisting of nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, addictions case managers, and Ontario Works social services staff.

The nurse practitioner positions are being actively recruited through PRHC while Fourcast is working toward hiring two intensive case manager positions and housing support workers who will operate with a caseload of between 15-20 people. The roles entail helping to identify and work with individuals living at Wolfe Street or making use of Trinity’s overnight program who are ready to move into transitional housing.

Wolfe Street, Rogers explains, targets the more complex cases of people looking for homes, meaning that the work of the HART Hub is specialized and targeted while also flexible enough to operate between different levels.

It also goes some way to explain why, as councillors asked last week, an organization like Redpath — which the city just granted $150,000 to support planning for a transitional housing project — had not been involved in the planning and therefore not eligible for the provincial funding.

The differences also extend to the point that the only part of the HART Hub model dependent upon complete abstinence from substances being required is the six units for post-treatment housing.

There’s a specific reason for that, Rogers said: “Wolfe Street, and the folks that Fourcast admits into our existing transitional housing programs under the city, is a population for whom abstinence at point of admission into housing is a barrier to housing.”

“We’re talking about the population that’s signing on to getting off the street and getting into housing as a starting point,” she added.

The focus on building transitional housing, including HART Hubs, Redpath, and a planned development by the Brock Mission too, means that within a few years there will be an issue in terms of where people who are living there will go. Under provincial legislation, transitional housing is specifically time-limited, allowing residents to stay up to four years, and includes exemptions under the residential tenancies act.

This point, Rogers says, means that there needs to be increased investment in the creation of permanent affordable housing in the region to avoid bottlenecks which are only just beginning to ease at Wolfe Street as a result of the HART Hub investments.

“If transitional housing is time-limited, there’s probably a formula that says for every transitional housing unit you have, every 10 years you’re probably going to need three to four affordable housing units,” Rogers said. “If we robustly support transitional housing, we have to be thinking we’re creating a problem three to four years down the road.”

Locally, two “shovel ready” projects supported by Peterborough Housing Corporation (PHC) have been stalled since 2024 due to a lack of available funds from the province and the federal government.

Both Rogers and MPP Dave Smith told the Examiner that it’s too soon to know exactly what future rounds of HART Hub funding would look like at this time, and what, if any, changes might be made to the expectations.

Rogers noted, however, that the information gathered over the next two years would help inform how the programs will be utilized.

By Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay, Reporter
February 9, 2026

Addiction treatment in our community has just reached a major milestone. The Four Counties Addiction Services Team (Fourcast) is proud to announce that the renovation of the historic Paddock Wood house is now completed, and we are moving into the next phase of the project by launching a staff recruitment campaign for the new services that will be housed at the site.

Visit our Careers page to see all available positions

Beginning on Monday, May 5, Fourcast will be recruiting a full complement of staff to run the highly anticipated bed-based programs, which include a 35-day addiction treatment program and a 5 to 7-day withdrawal management program. Developed over the past two years, the services will align with the current best practices for addiction treatment and withdrawal management and will allow Fourcast to add this vital new service to our existing program options

“We are incredibly excited to be moving forward with setting up our new facility and getting closer to opening the doors at Paddock Wood,” said Donna Rogers, Executive Director at Fourcast. “The biggest variable in predicting when we will be able to open these programs to the community is getting staff in place. We are committed to having the right people in the right roles so that we can ensure that we are offering the highest quality programming and meeting the highest standards of care to those receiving our services.”

Fourcast’s new programs will require a team of highly trained professionals to operate services that will see male-identifying participants residing on-site 24 hours a day. The agency will be recruiting for a wide range of roles, including full-time and part-time staff, day and night shifts, in different capacities from addictions and withdrawal management workers to food services and overnight care workers.

Ms. Rogers added, “Just as we do for our community-based treatment programs, we place the utmost importance on employing qualified, experienced, and compassionate professionals who will uphold our values in every interaction with our clients.”

There is currently no bed-based treatment available in the region of Peterborough, causing many people to travel to Oshawa, Kingston, or Barrie to get the help they need. Adding local bed-based services will allow Fourcast to complete the continuum of services from early-access and harm reduction services to full 24/7 care.

“As we heard from many community service agencies, government partners, and healthcare partners during the early stages of approving this initiative, Peterborough and its surrounding counties have a critical need for this program as part of the continuum of substance use services,” Ms. Rogers said. “By providing 12 new units of bed-based addiction services to the community, we will be able to get people into this intensive level of treatment much more quickly and much closer to home.”

The new programs will be located in a house in the Paddock Wood subdivision in the north-east end of Peterborough. The 160-year-old building, formerly used by the Canadian Mental Health Association Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge (CMHA), has been extensively renovated to meet the need for a bed-based service location.

Fourcast will be posting jobs on our website at www.fourcast.ca/about-us/careers and will share widely with community partners and on social media.

Fourcast thanks the Ontario Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, the City of Peterborough, and Peterborough County for contributing to the funding for Paddock Wood.

PRHC Press Release

April 12, 2017 (Peterborough) – Peterborough Regional Heath Centre (PRHC) is pleased to announce the recent opening of the area’s first Rapid Access Addiction Medicine (RAAM) clinic, which provides expedited, barrier-free treatment for patients who are addicted to alcohol or opioids.

The clinic is staffed by PRHC physicians and registered nurses (RNs). No booked appointment or physician referral is necessary, although referrals from doctors, nurses, social workers, addiction counselors and community providers are welcome.

“Our Rapid Access Addiction Medicine clinic provides immediate access to lifesaving treatment by offering same-day counselling and addiction medication, and prescription therapies,” said Dr. Jim McGorman, an Emergency Department physician with PRHC who is now also treating patients at the new clinic. “This care model has been shown to help save lives by engaging patients with both short- and long-term therapies as soon as they are ready to pursue those treatments.”

The Rapid Access Addiction Medicine model is designed to initiate therapy for opioid or alcohol addiction and then triage clients to the most appropriate ongoing care provider. It is not intended to replace or duplicate the care provided by a family physician or a treatment clinic. The Peterborough RAAM clinic is working closely with other healthcare providers and resources in the community to ensure patients have access to additional supports following their initial treatment, as they move through the continuum of care.

PRHC’s RAAM clinic has been made possible through a $200,000 commitment from the Ministry of Health and the Central East Local Health Integration Network (LHIN). The RAAM clinic model has been implemented in cities across Ontario, where it is helping to prevent opiate overdoses and reduce ED visits and inpatient stays for people with addictions.

“The Central East LHIN, together with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and our health service provider partners, is committed to improving access to comprehensive care for people living with substance abuse disorders,” said Deborah Hammons, CEO of the Central East LHIN. “We look forward to seeing how the opening of the Rapid Access Addiction Medicine (RAAM) clinic at Peterborough Regional Health Centre will have a positive impact on our ability to support individuals dealing with an opiate addiction by providing them with timely treatment, counselling and other supports. The development and implementation of RAAM clinics in Oshawa, Scarborough and now in Peterborough is an important part of the recently released Central East LHIN Opioid Strategy as we collectively respond in an integrated and coordinated way to addressing the opioid crisis in each of our sub-regions.”

The RAAM clinic has been operating in its downtown location at 159 King St. Suite 302 (co-located with PARN) since March 5. It is open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 8:00 a.m. to 11 a.m.

For further information, please contact:

Michelene Ough
Director, Communications
Peterborough Regional Health Centre
705-743-2121 x. 4259
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Report to the Minister of Health and Long-Term Carefrom the Expert Working Group on Narcotic Addiction

October 2012

Read the full report