The CTV News Ottawa mayoral debate is Wednesday, Oct. 14 at 10 a.m. Watch on CTVNewsOttawa.ca, listen on Newstalk 580 CFRA and watch on the Newstalk 580 CFRA YouTube Channel. Ottawa mayoral candidate Alex Lawson has released his plan to tackle the toxic drug crisis in the city, with a focus on building addiction recovery infrastructure. Lawson’s plan is centred around building a 200-bed addiction recovery centre in the Greenbelt, he calls the “HopeWorks Recovery Campus.” “A 200-bed campus on leased Greenbelt land, built with the National Capital Commission in two phases of 100 beds, with treatment paid for by the province. Residents stay up to ten months, train in food and agriculture, building maintenance or the construction trades, and leave with a job, a place to live and a year of aftercare,” Lawson’s platform says. Greenbelt land is owned by the NCC and other federal agencies and has strict rules around what can be developed on the more than 20,000 hectares that separate Ottawa’s urban core from its suburbs and rural villages. Lawson says building the treatment centre in the Greenbelt would avoid the inevitable backlash from neighbourhoods that would oppose any such facility in their area. “A recovery campus there gives people the space and distance they need to recover, without putting it on anyone’s block,” he says. “The National Capital Commission provides a long-term lease of Greenbelt land and barns. Housing programs provide recovery housing units and the housing exit. The City of Ottawa brings fast-tracked approvals, transit access, and existing addiction contracts redirected to results-based funding. No new property tax.” The plan would see the first phase of the proposed facility built within three to four years of being elected. Lawson says he would also work with the provincial government to expand its Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub program, require nurse or pharmacist supervision for anyone taking prescribed opioids, and limit the supply of drugs used to treat opioid use disorders to prevent reselling. Naloxone would still be widely available under Lawson’s plan, but he says simply reversing overdoses is not enough to deal with the issue of drugs in Ottawa. “An overdose can starve the brain of oxygen, and naloxone restores breathing but can’t undo damage that’s already done,” he said. “And when someone finally says, ‘I want out,’ the door is barely there. Ottawa has about 38 withdrawal management beds for a city of more than a million people, and only 12 of them are medical. Detox without a next step is a revolving door: people leave with their tolerance gone, go back to the same corner, and face the highest risk of dying they will ever face.” The plan also includes police enforcement against drug dealers and public drug use, with treatment conditions attached to tickets. He is also proposing a “sobering unit” within Ottawa Police Service headquarters on Elgin Street, staffed with a nurse, where paramedics and police can bring intoxicated people. Lawson says his plan is built on models that have been used in other jurisdictions, such as Zurich, Red Deer, Winnipeg, and Philadelphia. What other candidates are promising Incumbent mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s public safety plan includes expanding the non-police Alternative Neighbourhood Crisis Response, or ANCHOR, program, and revoking business licences from so-called “pill mills” in communities like Chinatown, Centretown, and Lowertown. It also includes exploring the use of mandatory care “in specific cases.” Other mayoral candidates, including Neil Saravanamuttoo and Coun. Jeff Leiper, have promised to expand ANCHOR citywide. Saravanamuttoo says he would provide same-day access to detox and recovery beds, investing in Neighbourhood Watch programs, reviewing fire and paramedic coverage in rural areas and creating a Community Emergency Response Report Card to provide information on emergency response times, ambulance availability and hospital offload delays, if elected mayor. Leiper would tie future growth in the ANCHOR program to increases in the police budget to “ensure the right response is available for every call.” Leiper is also promising to focus police resources and strengthen Bylaw enforcement to improve response times. Election day is Monday, Oct. 26. An advance voting day will be held on Friday, Oct. 16. Fourteen candidates are running to be mayor of Ottawa. In alphabetical order, they are: Queen Divine Priya Amber Bakshi, Zed Chebib, Bernard Couchman, Suraj Harish, Alex Lawson, Jeff Leiper, Geoff Nicholas, Josh Rachlis, Neil Saravanamuttoo, Ali Shayvard, Jacob Solomon, Mark Sutcliffe (incumbent), Amjad Ali Syed, and Peter Westaway.
