Thanks. It's such a good question.
I'll just note that these sites are implemented in places where there is drug-related activity, right? That's generally where they are placed, so that they can benefit as many people as possible. I think it's important to remember that.
We've been looking at this question. In Toronto, there was some violence—unfortunately, a fatal shooting—less than a hundred metres from a certain supervised consumption site. We worked with the coroner's office to analyze spatial data on homicides, fatal shootings, that could be potentially related to drug market activity across 10 years in Toronto. What we found is that there's no association between the location of homicides and the location of these sites.
On that at least, I think there's evidence from Toronto suggesting that these sites aren't necessarily attracting increased fatal violence. We're still going to look at other measures of violence to see whether they agree with our initial analysis.
I also understand people's desire to ensure that the programs in their communities are run and managed as well as they possibly can be. I fully understand people being concerned about their public safety.
What I found galvanizing is that the conversation that has happened, at least in Toronto around this issue, hasn't gone to the extreme of saying that we need to close these sites. A lot of the conversation is about how we design them and how we can better manage these sites.
Unfortunately, what happens is that these sites are designed for the estimated number of clients they're going to have, and then budgets are often cut and resources aren't provided for them to provide the services to the number of clients they actually have, so you're starting at a deficit. You have waiting lists. People show up and then they leave without actually being able to access the services.
I think a key component here needs to be resourcing these services sufficiently so that they can meet the needs of their client base.