Opinion: Harm reduction must not become harm production

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In June, I cautioned in The Gazette that the opening of the Maison Benoît Labre’s injection centre next to a kindergarten playground would harm children if not done properly with credentialed staff following best practices. My caveats acknowledging the fundamental rights of people to be housed and to receive quality treatment seemed insufficient for those critical that I dared to raise concerns about this organization. Unfortunately, time has borne out those worries.

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Crime statistics have been released by Montreal police to a community coalition that shows a shocking rise in crime. Emergency calls were up 1,967 per cent within 50 metres of the centre — not a typo, a 20-fold increase! In real terms, that is going from just six calls for police intervention to 124.

And this has not just impacted the immediate surrounds. Out to 250 metres from the centre mischief calls were up 800 per cent, and a 93-per-cent increase, or near doubling, in crimes against people. These have included serious incidents — and yet don’t reflect more recent violent acts since school started, including a spate of three stabbings in a three-week period.

Even overdose incidents were up 300 per cent, giving lie to claims from the organization’s director that they went to where the need was already existing.

After one recent late-night incident of a man in severe distress on our street, I found a Styrofoam “trauma ball” on the pavement the next morning where his things were strewn about. Versions of these balls are widely used through various trauma-informed treatment modalities, many of which involve people holding a ball while they speak to past trauma experiences, and some of which involve them then releasing it. It was a sad moment for me to see that, given my work as a scholar of the effects of early child stress and trauma on lifelong well-being, and a reminder of the pain and trauma that many of the unhoused dealing with addictions and mental health challenges have faced across their lives.

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Our society has, for too long, failed in its duty of care. But it also stood out to me that just a couple of weeks before, neighbours and I had to call police when another person in distress in almost the same spot came running out into the street and tried to kick the back tire out from under a young child cycling past. The boy looked terrified as he cycled off, giving us just a quick yes that he was OK.

Here I was seeing a metaphorical trauma ball, used to symbolize the naming and releasing of pain, in the spot where I saw another person quite literally pass their trauma on to a child. The programmatic solutions to unresolved trauma in our world cannot be passing that on to the children of our community.

In late August, Social Services Minister Lionel Carmant committed to working quickly with the city to relocate the day services for non-residents, while preserving the essential transitional supportive housing component. That has not happened.

Meanwhile, the organization’s director, and other proxies including the Regroupement intersectoriel des organismes communautaires de Montréal, made clear the ministry isn’t going to tell them what to do, that they would not close the day site, and demanded additional resources to support those services in that location. It was surprising to see how quickly they put the Coalition Avenir Québec government in its place, despite the ministry providing nearly all its funding.

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To reiterate, our community has seen no evidence of the residents of the housing program causing even one incident. Even the injection centre is used by only six to eight people a day, according to their own data. They are not the issue at all — it is the people and behaviour that has been concentrated outside. Those folks, largely in significant psychological distress, aren’t using in the centre; they’re using on our sidewalks, in our alleyways and on our doorsteps.

If Carmant, Premier François Legault and our city officials care about our children, then they need to answer why they are not moving faster to close the day site, and why they continue to provide no-strings attached funding to an organization that has stated their intention to not comply with closing those services.

Dealing with adult trauma in a way that can harm children is not harm reduction; it’s harm production.

Michael MacKenzie is the Canada Research Chair in child well-being and professor of social work and pediatrics at McGill University.

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