Wednesday, March 18, 2026 – South Riverdale Community Health Centre (SRCHC) has been operating Moss Park Consumption and Treatment (Moss Park CTS) since 2018; it is one of Ontario’s first and the only standalone site located in downtown Toronto and provides almost 900 people annually – more than half identify as Indigenous – with direct access to coordinated and compassionate healthcare, including primary care, substance use treatment, mental health programs and services, chronic disease management, and client and family supports.
“SRCHC’s dedicated staff, including nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers, community health workers and overdose response workers have been on the frontline of the toxic drug crisis, providing high quality substance use care, and saving thousands of lives for years,” says Shannon Wiens, SRCHC CEO. “We deliver an essential service to Toronto’s most complex and under-served populations. Our CTS is health care, and I am deeply concerned about the provincial government’s decision to terminate funding for the incredibly important work at Moss Park CTS. It will have disastrous health implications for the people we serve and will result in client deaths.”
It is a documented and well-established fact that the people who access programs and services at Moss Park CTS are among the hardest hit by the social determinants of health, including lack of housing, food insecurity and increasing poverty and, therefore, experience the lowest life expectancy in the city.
The staff at Moss Park CTS make an enormous difference in the community every day, by distributing nutritious food, providing referrals to housing, building social connections for service-users and their families and offering a safer, more trusted place to consider options for treatment and recovery.
Over the past year, Moss Park CTS staff have:
- Provided 592 low-barrier primary care visits
- Treated 467 complex wounds
- Responded to 446 non-fatal overdoses
- Provided 2,875 encounters for onsite social service supports
- Provided 300 encounters of onsite addiction treatment
- Provided 2,762 encounters of onsite mental health treatment
- Provided 5,267 meals to community members who do not use the consumption service
“There is already so much pressure on Ontario’s healthcare system, with over-flowing emergency departments, long wait lists for mental health treatment and recovery, long wait times for emergency services and ongoing cuts to community-based programs and supports,” adds SRCHC Board Chair Rebecca Ho. “Closing down Ontario’s CTS’s will only amplify these challenges across the province. Along with our colleagues across the province, I strongly urge the government to reconsider this decision”.