Neighbors;   Last week some of you may have received at letter / flyer delivered from Hamilton Urban Core Community Health Care thru the door, saying we had  ‘new neighbors ‘.   You were invited to a Zoom meeting on Wednesday March 25. No address was included in this communication.  In a multi ethnic/ multilingual neighborhood like ours this notice was only distributed in english.  Without access to a computer and internet you have been excluded from any participation.  It would seem only people who were home at the time received a flyer, there are instances of 1 person getting the flyer because they were at home, but their neighbor who was not in at the time did not receive a flyer. If you live in Wentworth house you did not receive a flyer (you live in public housing and have been deemed not part of neighborhood by outsiders and the rest of us apologize).

Alll together this is just about the most exclusive communication campaign, stage managed by four politicians (Nrinder Nann, Mathew Green, and Andrea Horwath ,Donna Skelly).  As a community we have literally been thrown into the middle Cannon St. to wait for the bus to run us over. HUCHC has a 15.4-million-dollar budget to build on the old Hamilton Cab property at Cannon and Ashley St. (430 Cannon St East).  This is approximately same budget for the rebuild of St. Patrick’s Separate school at Main and Victoria.  Among the ‘services’ HUCHC will offer include Safe Injection Site, Safe Material Distribution, and Drug Testing.  A safe Injection site is a Federally licensed facility where hard drug addicts can go and inject drugs in a ‘supervised’ environment.  Safe Material Distribution involves giving away syringes, safe injection kits, and crack pipes., this is what you may remember being called ‘Needle Exchange’. Over the years the ‘industry’ has renamed this to remove any responsibility for the safe disposal of these items.  Drug testing is not about sobriety, it Is the testing of drugs to ensure their purity.   

                

This is a federally (and the only one in Hamilton)licensed facility has been in the works since 2018.  Both the Hamilton Public Health and Federal guidelines include a provision where there is community consultation before a location is selected.  This has not occurred in our case despite outreach from individual residents and community organizations  (GALA , and the Barton Village BIA).  Instead, we are being ‘invited’ to a meeting hosted by HUCHC with our councilor attending. There are guidelines as to the proximity to schools, day cares and parks.  The location selected is within 200 meters of 3 schools and (at least) 4 daycares and (at least) 3 parks.  In our case that simply does not count.  There will be no plan or even an admission that extra policing and collection of discarded supplies, will be required.   

            

We are asking that you sign this letter with your postal code, if you are a renter, we encourage you to contact your landlord with a copy of this letter and ask them to sign as well.  We be holding a community Zoom meeting at 6:30 on Monday 22 of March.  For those that don’t have internet access I will place a large screen monitor and speakers in the alleyway north of Century St between Ashley and Steven St.  I will also do this for Wednesday meeting if there is a demand.

 

We will be asking for the following at the meeting on Wednesday the 25

 

•  A representative from Hamilton public Health to attend and explain what the geographic restrictions on this kind of facility and a public opinion on whether this site would have met their requirements. 

 

• An explanation from councilor Nann as why after a year of seeing businesses destroyed and families kept apart because of public health guidelines we are told  ‘public health guidelines’ don’t apply to your neighborhood.

 

•  The attendance at the zoom meeting on the 25 of our federal representative  (Mathew Green)  to guarantee that the permits will not be renewed until proper consultation(it expires March 29 2021 ) has taken place and will work with us to guarantee our representation in the process.  

 

•  opinion from both our councilor and our federal representative ,as too if they think this has been a transparent and equitable process.