Province used ward-wide crime data when justifying closure of supervised consumption site

The province says it used ward-wide crime data when justifying the closure of a supervised consumption site after a CTV News Ottawa FOI request.

The Ontario government says it used data for the entire Somerset ward when referring to crime near the Somerset West Community Health Centre’s supervised consumption site when discussing its closure last year.

The Somerset West Community Health Centre is located at 55 Eccles St. and was among the first supervised consumption sites the province said in 2024 it would be closing. In addition to the site being within 200 metres of a daycare, a news release announcing the move, dated Aug. 20, 2024, said, “the crime rate near the Ottawa site was 250 per cent higher than the rest of the city.”

Health Minister Sylvia Jones also told the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in 2024 that violent crime was up 146 per cent “near the Eccles Street site.”

• RELATED: Crime rate around Somerset supervised consumption site lower than government suggested when announcing closure

“Just last year, for example, compared to the rest of the city, there was a 113 per cent increase in reports of assault near these sites in Toronto. Violent crime was up 146 per cent near Ottawa’s Somerset site, and homicide was 450 per cent higher near Hamilton’s urban core,” she said.

CTV News Ottawa asked the Ottawa Police Service in August 2024 if it could corroborate the data and was told to submit a freedom of information request, which was received by CTV News Ottawa last week.

The request was for the annual crime rate within 200 metres of 55 Eccles St., the radius being the same one the province used to determine if a supervised consumption site was too close to a school or daycare.

The data provided by police referred to the West Centretown neighbourhood boundary, an area comprised of approximately 1.43 square kilometres, bordered by Albert and Scott streets in the north, Bronson Avenue and LeBreton Avenue in the east, Carling Avenue and Highway 417 in the south and O-Train Line 2 in the west. That data showed the overall crime rate in that area was 14 per cent higher than the city average.

In response to a question about the province’s data, Premier Doug Ford told reporters on Wednesday that CTV News Ottawa was “100 per cent wrong.”

“We double-, triple-checked that. We called the police down there. Their numbers were exactly the same as ours,” he said.

“You put a safe consumption site, and you got a bunch of drug addicts hanging out and drug dealers and you say crime went down? No, it didn’t. It did go up exactly the amount my deputy premier said it went up.”

• The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App

The province said Wednesday, after several requests for comment from CTV News Ottawa, that the data used in the news release last year and the data cited by Jones at the AMO refers to the entire Somerset ward.

“According to public data from the Ottawa Police Service in the neighborhood around former Somerset injection site (Ward 14), the crime incident was 15,498 per 100,000. That is over 250 per cent higher compared to the rate of 4,430 per 100,000 in rest of Ottawa,” the statement said.

On violent crime, the province said their comparison again used the per capita rate for Somerset ward compared to the entire city of Ottawa.

“According to 2023 public data from the Ottawa Police Service in the neighborhood around former Somerset injection site (Ward 14), the violent crime incidents were 1,829.3 per 100,000. That is over 146.2 per cent higher compared to the rate of 743 per 100,000 in rest of Ottawa,” a statement said.

“Drug injection sites do not belong within 200m of our schools or daycares.”

• Sign up now for daily CTV News Ottawa newsletters

The data CTV News Ottawa requested and received was for the number of reported violent crimes in the 200 metres around 55 Eccles St. Ottawa police said there were 20 violent crimes in that area in 2023, down from 26 in 2022. The number of calls for service in that 200-metre radius was 905, up 18 per cent from 2022.

The entire Somerset ward is approximately 6.5 square kilometres in area, and includes neighbourhoods such as LeBreton Flats, Parliament Hill, Centretown, Little Italy, and the Golden Triangle. Ottawa is comprised of 24 wards in total, with a mix of dense urban wards, suburban wards, and rural wards, with varying levels of crime. The entire city covers an area of more than 2,700 square kilometres.

Somerset Ward Coun. Ariel Troster said, in response to the government using ward-wide statistics, that it was being misleading.

“Somerset Ward is one of the two downtown wards in Ottawa and the most densely populated in the city. It is typical in any city for the general crime rate to be higher downtown than in less populated areas,” she said in an email to CTV News Ottawa. “When Sylvia Jones spoke last year, she specifically said that the stats she cited were in the immediate vicinity of the SWCHC site, which was misleading at best, outright lying at worst.”

The Somerset West Community Health Centre closed its supervised consumption site in March and is transitioning to a homelessness and addiction recovery treatment (HART) hub, which will not offer safer supply services, supervised drug consumption, or needle exchange programs.

Residents in the area told CTV News Ottawa this week that since the closure of the supervised consumption site, public drug use has increased on streets in the area, including in view of families and children.