The Lives of addicted people matter, too.
Jennifer Bridge
“Do you think it's up to taxpayers to keep enabling addiction?”
That is the question Kitchener Centre MP Kelly DeRidder asks residents in a recent constituency publication, following calls for compassion, accountability, treatment and stability for people experiencing homelessness.
Those are goals I support. As a mother whose family has been affected by substance use, and as a social work student, I understand the desire to see people safe and supported. But the question does more than ask how public money should be spent. It tells readers how to understand that spending before they answer.
“Keep” assumes taxpayers are already enabling addiction. “Enabling” presents an accusation as fact. Yet the publication identifies no particular program or evidence demonstrating that publicly funded services perpetuate addiction.
Unless keeping people alive is itself considered enabling.
According to Sanguen Health Centre, the former Consumption and Treatment Services site in downtown Kitchener responded to more than 1,000 overdoses without an onsite fatality. Needle and syringe programs also help prevent HIV, hepatitis C and other infections, reducing preventable illness and associated health-care costs.
Is saving lives and preventing disease what we are being asked to call “enabling?”
The publication connects Kitchener's encampment with addiction, but homelessness is not an addiction diagnosis. People lose housing through poverty, unaffordable rent, disability, violence and other circumstances. Reducing homelessness to addiction shifts attention from structural conditions toward perceived individual failures.
DeRidder suggests looking beyond “simply providing a place to stay.” Certainly, some people need more than housing. But they still need housing. A secure place to sleep should not depend on first resolving every other difficulty. And if treatment is the answer, where is timely voluntary care? Where is affordable counselling? What happens while people wait?
As a mother, I know the fear of loving someone through substance use and the longing for something that will make them safe. My daughter is now in recovery, rebuilding her life through school and volunteering. I am immensely proud of her. But her life mattered just as much before recovery.
Treatment deserves investment. So do the services that keep people alive long enough to access it.
This distinction matters amid renewed political discussions about involuntary addiction treatment. In September, Premier Doug Ford expressed openness to mandated treatment. While DeRidder does not explicitly advocate coercion, framing existing supports as enabling addiction risks making coercive responses easier to justify.
Public spending deserves scrutiny, including proposals for involuntary treatment. A systematic review published in the International Journal of Drug Policy found little evidence that compulsory addiction treatment improves substance use outcomes, with some studies identifying potential harms. Coercion may also discourage people from seeking help.
What happens when treatment ends? Where does someone sleep that night?
Treatment alone cannot resolve poverty, unaffordable housing, isolation or unmet mental health needs.
We should ask whether programs prevent deaths, improve health and support lasting stability. But accountability must extend to governments. When politicians advocate treatment, they should explain how people will access it. When they question existing services, they should identify what will replace them.
The people affected are members of our community, with rights, relationships, goals and voices that deserve to be heard.
When elected representatives frame assistance as “enabling addiction” without substantiating that claim, they risk enabling stigma instead.
I would rather they ask: Are we funding the housing, voluntary treatment, mental health care and harm reduction services people need to survive and build the futures they want?