The following is the July 27, 2009 transcript of Pincott and Colley-Urquhart's motion to review methadone clinic land use. If you are pressed for time, skip down to Colley-Urquhart's speech. Hodges – Need to show a direction. If you just want a report, we have reports everywhere. I am not sure what the Good Neighbour Agreement solves.
Hawkesworth – I have to say this as loudly and clearly as I can, putting a methadone clinic in an industrial area may not solve the problem. The Highland Park Thorncliff methadone clinic was on a parcel of land zoned for industrial. In that part of the city, industry is right across the street from residential….City Council rezoned this area for the Fresh Start program….This agency met with the community and addressed their issues. Community began asking themselves, are we going to be the focus of all the addiction programs in the city because we said yes on one occasion. I think we also need to make sure the concentration of a number of these facilities is also addressed….In many ways this is not a land use issue. When you have a million people and there is only one outlet for addressing addictions through methadone treatment. When the second one shows up all of a sudden there is a huge influx of people flocking to it. This heightens the anxieties and concerns of people. If you had a dozen of these this would be no big deal. These services could be available in every single health care facility in the city.
Farrell – I think we should also be looking at criminal half way houses for example. What some cities have done to address the fears associated with these – why they are needed, where they should be located, how they can fit in these neighbourhoods, what needs to be done in order to prevent certain consequences….We need to work with the province, the Homeless Foundation, and other agencies. This worked really well in the city of Los Angeles…..I have many of these facilities in my ward. Some have been welcomed by the community because the communication strategy has been brilliant. When the communication has been poor or non-existent there has been push back from the neighbourhood. Can we require a communication strategy and Good Neighbour policy in these applications?
Bronconnier – There are many medical procedures that take place across the entire city that administer narcotics and all types of drugs, including three facilities within six blocks of where we are sitting that administer these on a daily basis under the guidance of medical physicians. I think the challenge is to debate what type of procedures – we don’t have that ability. It is medical or it is not.
Lowe – This morning you keep leaping in where I was going your worship. How many physician offices in Calgary are in a position to write prescriptions for methadone? Saying that every clinic of this nature requires adequate transportation, yet we want to relegate these to industrial areas….What is the next medical procedure that we will be nervous about that we put somewhere else?....This takes us into an area we simply do not have jurisdiction over and that what constitutes a medical treatment and where that treatment can be performed. That is a provincial responsibility.
Fox-Mellway – I don’t know what a Good Neighbour Agreement is? (Administration – David Watson – is an agreement that lays out expectations on both sides and that outlines a resolution process when conflicts come up).
Jones – To me it seems there is an obvious answer here. Nowhere does it mention here to have discussions with the Calgary Health Region. Why can’t we simply put methadone clinics into the hospitals where it belongs? Put it here and nobody will argue…. Is there just one methadone clinic, the Sheldon Chumir? (Yes). Can we see the impact of the methadone clinic at the Sheldon Chumir in the report? (Administration – David Watson –My understanding, there has been no indication of any issues at the Sheldon Chumir).
Mar – This report allows us to respond to some of the challenges that communities are facing. We can openly discuss with the communities we represent to explain to them what the process is and have an opportunity to engage them. In defence of the Good Neighbour Agreement, these have worked in the past. Worked with us with the Mustard Seed.
Diane Colley-Urquhart – I just wanted to share with members of council the meeting that Alderman Pincott hosted in Braeside. I attended because where this clinic is operating impacts Ward 13 as well. There were residents from Woodlands and Woodbine. Woodbine has Hull Homes, they treat young kids there and this is certainly a drug protocol as well. The meeting was to start at 7pm. Alderman Pincott had members of the Calgary Police Service there, who hadn’t had any consultation with the methadone clinic. So the police were caught off guard because they didn’t know what the expectations were.
It was a hot summer night. There were fire restrictions and capacity issues in the room. There were 300 people seated. There were another 75 standing. Alderman Pincott was informed that there were another 300 people outside waiting to get in and they were not happy. So Alderman Pincott had to go outside to speak with these folks. He was gone about 25 minutes. Meanwhile people inside are starting to boil and were very upset. If anyone needed police protection that night it was Alderman Pincott. There was nothing he could say or do that would please the people who were there. They were wild about this.
Everyone was a loser that night. Alderman Pincott was a loser because he was trying to present both sides of the issue in a reasonable approach and provide a venue where people could be heard. But no one wanted to listen. There were cat calls. There was yelling. There were accusations toward Alderman Pincott for a whole variety of reasons. The community association was a loser. The president tried to work very closely with Alderman Pincott with this issue. They got targeted as well. That was unfortunate. The residents of the community got labelled as NIMBYs. A lot of the way people expressed themselves that night further emphasized that that was probably true. The doctor who wanted to set up the clinic were losers. They felt they didn’t need to go through anything special. They had the zoning. The owners of the shopping mall were losers because the site was subleased. The owners were told it was a psychology clinic. And then came the letter saying that it was really a methadone clinic. And so they weren’t even told what it was. The merchants were losers because everyone in the audience said that they were going to stop shopping in the mall.
I don’t know what we accomplished that night, other than everyone going away feeling quite bad. But most of all the biggest losers were those who needed the treatment. There were people who had successfully overcome drug addiction, whether they are street drugs, whether they are prescription drugs for chronic pain.
Ninety percent of the people who would come to that clinic were coming by bus because when you are heavily sedated on methadone you can’t drive. People were worried they would be mixing with school children during school hours. It just went on and on.
This motion today is I think the partial bandage to pull this out of the Land Use bylaw and least trigger a community consultation process through the development permit process. It is only a partial answer. We need to do more on this. It reminds me of the stigma attached to homeless people about 5 to 6 years ago. People said why don’t they just go get a job so that they can get their own home. Fifty percent of those people were the working poor. We didn’t differentiate whether it was a provincial, federal or municipal issue. It is a community issue. So we developed this comprehensive plan to end homelessness. All of us are working together. This is no different. We are one of the few cities in Canada that does not have a comprehensive drug strategy for this community. So we certainly approach it from a harm reduction perspective, an educational perspective, a rehabilitation perspective, and an enforcement perspective. It is a shame we are looking at this issue from a Land Use perspective. This is the problem. It should be coming from Community Protective Services. It is a community problem.
AADAC has said they are willing to work with the City. That’s where the funding comes from. Alderman Jones is absolutely right, Alberta Health Services can do a much better job working with the City of Calgary on these methadone clinics. They are moving to a more community based strategy in dealing with this problem. It is not going to be based just at the Sheldon Chumir, it is going to be community based, which is where it should be. So you can’t compare how it operates at the Sheldon Chumir and the way it would operate in a community. A Good Neighbour agreement is a good idea, it takes us partially there, but it is not a comprehensive strategy
What are we saying when we are delegating this off to a light industrial area? It reminds me when we had minus 30 degree weather for the overflow of homeless at the Brick. Lets put them in the light industrial area. I am not so sure. We have professionals working in the downtown area who prescribe methadone. We don’t need to send them off to a light industrial area.
For concentration Alderman Hawkesworth, creating a critical mass of these is something that needs to be dealt with in a comprehensive community strategy. I have a whole bunch more points, but I will close by saying that the Canadian Mental Health Association has a commission and Calgary was chosen to be the secretariat. This is something we should be terribly proud of. We have to get to the bottom of the stigma of drug addiction and mental health issues.
Pincott – It was a difficult meeting. I do think at the end of the day the losers were the 500 patients of Second Chance, particularly when Second Chance said their response was to move out of the city. I think for me that this was the biggest trigger that we have to do something as opposed to addressing the issue of the day. How can we look at this from a community perspective? How can we look at this from a broader perspective? So that we get that engagement, that more proactive approach. As opposed to reacting to issues as they arise.
We need to make sure that methadone clinics are included in the applicant’s guide. Be proactive. This is part of what being a community is.
Motion passed.
NOTICE OF MOTION
2009 07 27
RE: Methadone Clinic Land Use Review
Alderman Pincott, Colley-Urquhart
WHEREAS, Methadone Clinics are a necessary and important component for addiction therapy,
AND WHEREAS, there are planning sensitivities that arise from the potential community impacts due to the proximity of a methadone clinic,
AND WHEREAS, methadone clinics, being classified under “medical clinic”, do not currently require a community consultative process prior to beginning operation when taking over an existing legal medical clinic use,
AND WHEREAS, there are tools available for public engagement and understanding for the operation of potentially contentious facilities,
AND WHEREAS, Council considered the land use regulation of methadone clinics in LPT2005-85 on 2005 Dec 12,
AND WHEREAS, subsequent to LPT2005-85 the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta have released their Standards and Guidelines for Methadone Maintenance and Treatment in Alberta,
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED,
That Administration investigate and report to Council, through the SPC on Land Use, Planning & Transportation, by November 2009 on the implications, resource impacts and potential timing for addressing the following:
1. Review and update the information in LPT2005-85, including whether methadone clinics should be identified as a separate use in the Land Use Bylaw 1P2007;
2. Review whether medical clinics/methadone clinics should be the allowed as permitted or discretionary uses within Industrial land use districts, including the I-B, I-E, or I-R Districts;
3. Incorporate methadone clinics into the “Applicants Guide for Special Care Facilities” that is currently being prepared by the Administration, in order to provide agencies and communities with information on the best practices, processes and techniques for community consultation when locating and operating these facilities; and
4. That the Administration offer support and assistance to methadone clinics and similar agencies on the preparation of a Good Neighbor Agreement with the local community.
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