6 months later, how has Prairie Harm Reduction's closure affected the city?

When Prairie Harm Reduction closed its doors about six months ago, there were dire warnings, including from our next guest, who told us about his biggest fear. Toby is with us in studio this morning to talk about what's been happening out on the streets since the closure and what we can expect moving forward. Good morning, Toby. Good morning. Have those fears played out over the last six months without PHR? Yes, to an extent. We did see, unfortunately, several deaths over the last six months. As a clinic, we saw those. More importantly, families saw those. At that point six months ago when I was speaking to you, the overdoses were starting to ramp up, and they ramped up for quite a while. We saw a pattern, unfortunately, that we're used to seeing where the overdoses ramp up like that when a new substance shows up, in the illicit drug supply and then ease off a bit as people's tolerance to that new substance builds up. So we've seen that pattern again where we've backed off of the rate of occurrences and the severity of the occurrences of overdose, but we anticipate that we just are in a waiting period now until the next unknown substance makes its way into the drug supply. When the encampment was cleared at 20th and Avenue K, Toby, I am wondering what kind of impact that had on an organization like the Saskatoon Community Clinic. For us, it's a very, very specific impact, perhaps one that a lot in the general public might not understand. Encampments, as challenging as they may be in many different aspects, are still a gathering place. Our teams work to support individuals trying to get back on their feet. We're trying to help them figure out navigating complex health diagnosis, whatever it might be. And when that encampment was closed, we spent the next several weeks trying to figure out where everybody was. We needed to find our folks again. We needed to make sure that the individuals that we were assisting to get to daily care, assisting to get to income assistance appointments, assisting to get to viewing that next house, that we could maybe get them rented. Do you see a connection between the closure of Prairie Harm Reduction and this encampment crisis the city is seeing? no the the reality is is that had the closure not happened six months ago many of us in community myself included would have still been talking about this growing need there is homelessness throughout the city at unprecedented levels there's people coming to the city because there's more resources as as bad as it is in Saskatoon there's more resources here than there are in other communities. So we see a continuing evolution and a growth of the need in our city. It's not related to PHR. This is related to systems. This is related to structures in every single system of our city, system of our society, really, when it gets right down to it, where people cannot get up those first two steps, first three steps to find the beginning of stability. You have a vulnerable population in this city that is encountering barrier after barrier after barrier no matter which system they are trying to navigate.