Kym Porter (left) holds a photo of her son Neil Balmer beside Robyn Westgarth, who is holding a picture of her brother Michael "Shane" Westgarth, in this September 2018 file photo. Porter is on her way to Calgary this weekend to rally in support of a supervised consumption site set for closure.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
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A Hatter will be joining a rally in downtown Calgary on Saturday against the closure of the Sheldon Chumir Centre’s supervised consumption site.
Kym Porter, member of Moms Stop the Harm, says the rally will be from noon to 1 p.m. in support of keeping the consumption site open. She notes she is concerned about the growing number of deaths due to substance use – including 5,100 lives lost in Alberta since 2016, she says.
“The No. 1 value of a supervised consumption site is it’s a safe place for people to consume their drugs. Like you go to a bar or pub, that’s a supervised consumption site for you to consume your drug,” she said. “No one has ever died anywhere in the world in a supervised consumption site. They have reversed numerous overdoses.”
Porter says she’s been told the city is planning to open two other supervised sites in better locations, but the locations have not be revealed. She says she is in favour of the two new sites, but is still against the one closure.
NDP representative Lori Sigurdson will be speaking at the rally and Porter says they have reached out to Jason Luan, associate minister of mental health and addictions, but he has not responded to the request to speak as of Thursday afternoon.
“If you close a supervised consumption site it doesn’t mean people are going to stop using their drugs, it just means that area becomes an unsupervised consumption site. Then you end up with more overdoses and more deaths happening on the street,” said Porter.
The rally is the third or fourth in downtown Calgary to save the Sheldon Chumir site, says Porter.
She adds there was originally a die-in planned for Saturday’s rally, but in respect to the many lives lost at residential schools, she says they will have a moment of silence instead.
“Because of the lives that have been lost in Kamloops and because of the residential school and the new finding this morning … in consideration of those lives lost, we decided we would have a moment of silence to honour lives lost through substance use.”
