The Needle and the Law: Who’s Really Protected?

Is our approach to drug addiction helping or hurting our cities? 

Gavin and Stephen tackle one of the most controversial issues in modern urban life: safe injection sites and the opioid crisis. 

The duo breaks down a controversial court injunction that temporarily blocked the government's plan to convert supervised injection sites into rehab-focused "hubs." But in a twist worthy of a legal thriller, it turns out 9 of the 10 sites had already voluntarily agreed to transition — a fact the judge was never told. 

With sharp legal insight and candid commentary, they question whether harm reduction truly reduces harm—or if it's deepening the crisis. 

Listen For

8:37 Old Policy, New Crisis: Are Safe Sites Effective?

15:17 Legal Showdown: Government vs. Harm Reduction

23:54 Can Courts Force Policy?

25:29 The Notwithstanding Clause: A Charter Time Bomb

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Contact Us

Gardiner Roberts website | Gavin email | Stephen email  

Transcript

Gavin Tighe (00:01):

This is really a blight on urban families, frankly, with two of small children and playgrounds, which are at this point oftentimes near these sites, littered with used needles and drug paraphernalia. Hello, and welcome to the next episode of Beneath the Law Gavin Tighe here with my friend Stephen Thiele. Stephen, how are you?

Stephen Thiele (00:32):

I'm great, Gavin.

Gavin Tighe (00:35):

I think congratulations are in order. Stephen, I hear that you are the proud recipient of the kink Charles III Coronation Medal.

Stephen Thiele (00:45):

Yes. And I hear that you are as well. And I got to tell you, Gavin, when I saw that I was extremely humbled and I thought, wow, what a fantastic honor for both you and I to have received here. The smell through the Governor General of Canada, distributed through premiers and other folks. It's great.

Gavin Tighe (01:10):

Very nice. And I honestly can't think of anybody more deserving than you. So sincere, congratulations. And it's nice to see some recognition like that. It's certainly been a force to be reckoned with, not only in your community, but nationally. And I'm reminded Stephen. I think that part of this has got to do with our efforts. It's fighting for election integrity and democracy in a small way. And I think that it added quite a bit to the integrity of elections in this country, and hopefully a little bit to the substance of our democracy.

Stephen Thiele (01:54):

Well, yeah, and to you as well in terms of being involved fundraising for various organizations. So I think I'm extremely proud of you, of course. And I thank you for your compliments of me as well. So

Gavin Tighe (02:11):

Our listeners won't be interested in our mutual admiration society, so we'll better shut up. Yeah, so better get on to

Stephen Thiele (02:17):

Talk about

Gavin Tighe (02:17):

Something else. Yeah, it's something not so nice. The scourge, I call it the scourge of our society. And it's not just here, but it's certainly become extraordinarily prevalent in Toronto, which is opioid drug use and illegal drug use. And the incredible toll that it takes on, obviously the individuals who are afflicted with this, I call a scourge, and I think it is a scourge of opioid drug use, how it destroys their lives and the decay of the entire everything around it. That it's just a rot that has set in at the core of our society. And there are nothing, quite frankly that I've seen, but victims of this terrible affliction.

Stephen Thiele (03:15):

You know what? That's a really good way of looking at it, Gavin, because it's not just the victims of the opioid users or drug users who become addicted. Everybody's a victim. The communities are victims to this, even though people, majority of people in most communities are not addicts. They're not drug users, but we need to see it on the street. We need to see the disorderly conduct. People are in fear. I was speaking to one of our employees yesterday. She was walking through a union station and she basically related to me a story of how uncomfortable she felt walking through Union Station because she passed three or four individuals who she basically was saying to me they were using needles. And so she felt completely uncomfortable. And look everywhere.

Gavin Tighe (04:23):

Toronto is a large urban center, not the largest, but large enough. And I cannot believe when you walk the streets of Toronto now, the number of homeless people, the amount of absolutely brazen drug use. And I think, I dunno if it's, I don't know, I feel for the police because I think that the police are instructed to avoid it. I've seen police officers walk by intravenous drug users lying in doorways or lying in doorways. I've seen them lying on flat across young street and police officers literally stepping over them. I think they're ordered to do that.

Stephen Thiele (05:10):

Look, it's a significant political issue and it's an emotional issue. And I think you're right with respect to the direction that certain governments give to their employees, IE police being one to ignore the problem and because they have a different vision in how to deal with the problem. And then you have other political viewpoints, certainly where I'd be sitting a little bit more on the political fence. We got to take care of these people and taking care of these people doesn't mean that they should be allowed to get free needles, et cetera, and have these to go to, particularly here in Ontario where we have new legislation that prohibits these kinds of sites 200 metres from a school or a daycare.

Gavin Tighe (06:09):

Yeah, I agree. Obviously, I think we agree on this. I personally have nothing but sympathy for people who fall into this trap and hellhole of opioid drug use. And I don't mean to be a pessimist, but I think it's just a swamp that very, very few people emerge on the other side of, and it is just a slow, horrible path to death, quite frankly, one way or the other. And I would like to see every effort to stop people from even going near that swamp rather than facilitating those that are already in it and making it potentially easier to slide into it because I just don't believe that they're, the statistics support this. I mean, maybe if resources were focused in a different direction, they would, but I would like to see statistics of people who have managed to escape from the clutches of this, as I call it, s scourge of society. And I just haven't seen that. What I see is a lot of effort and a lot of, quite frankly, and this is going to go off badly, self-righteous, this in terms of helping people who are in the throes of this and making it easier frankly, or safer for them to continue to frankly poison themselves in

Stephen Thiele (07:52):

My opinion. So my son, Gavin, as you know, just graduated with a master's degree in public health, and part of his curriculum was looking at these kinds of issues. And my understanding is that creating these kinds of sites is basically old political theory that in the past has been proven not to work, and governments haven't changed in that regard. And giving addicts a place to continue to remain addicts, certainly in my viewpoint, is not helpful to them at all.

Gavin Tighe (08:37):

So let's talk about that because that's really come to the fore in the last week or so. Here we are in April, 2025 here in Ontario, because there was a provincial election here earlier this year, although trade issues certainly sucked up all the oxygen in the room. One of the platforms that the provincial government was reelected on was a different approach to these what are refer to, and you really reveal your view on it. If you call them a safe injection site, I think that's an oxymoron. But if you call it that, you've kind of revealed where you stand on it. But they were institutionalized, let's put it that way. Institutionalized injection sites where there were people were free to consume what are clearly criminal substances. They're criminal, it's illegal to possess these substances. But they were in government funded locations, allowed to inject themselves. And frankly, that was facilitated, as I understand, stand by staff who would assist them in terms of injecting themselves, provide needles for them to inject themselves. And I think, and I love to know the statistic on this, but check the drugs to see if they were okay. I mean, I'm being flip about it. There's nothing laughing about it, nothing funny about it. But I would suggest that I suspect there aren't very many addicts that would be parting with their drugs. And if somebody said, oh, this batch is a little off, I don't think that most of these addicts would care. And I suspect that very, very few of them would allow their drug to be inspected by anybody.

Stephen Thiele (10:41):

Well, it's my understanding of what has happened now, particularly with fentanyl, is that it's mixed in with other chemicals, and that basically the drug that permits a person to be reversed on an overdose doesn't work anymore. So it's half dozen of one, half dozen of another. In my view. Obviously you don't want to see anybody overdose with respect to drug use, but in my view, Gavin, we need to actually help people get away from being addicts. And how do these sites do that when they're designed to basically continue a person's addiction? And to me, that's just wrong. And I got to tell you, isn't this what President Trump is really has argued about, certainly initially with respect to tariffs was he said everything cross border fentanyl. Well, look, president Trump is who he is, and he certainly has an agenda, but isn't he really expressing the views that, look, fentanyl is a scourge on our society and we really need to crack down on it. So the first thing that we really should be doing is giving resources to policing to make sure that fentanyl is not hitting our streets.

Gavin Tighe (12:16):

Yeah, I agree with that. I absolutely agree with that. And I think that it is a curse. If you want to talk about why there's been such an increase in homelessness, why there's such an increase in people on the street. I mean, it's a thin line, frankly, to my mind, between people who are completely out of their mind on drugs or out of their mind on fixating on how to get the drugs, which is what we can talk about, and people who are mentally ill. And quite frankly, oftentimes they're the same people. And we see this explosion, frankly, of homelessness. And I think that it's no coincidence that that is directly related in my view to fentanyl, which is people say, well, what's changed since the 1970s? Well, I'll tell you one, thing's changed Fentanyl. Fentanyl is frankly synthetic opium. So heroin may have been the drug of choice in the seventies, but heroin was hard to get and it was expensive.

(13:26):

And now fentanyl is basically available everywhere. It's being pedaled like Tylenol, and it is infinitely more lethal and infinitely stronger than natural based opioids like heroin, for example. So right, it's more addictive. So here we come to, the government gets reelected, they've taken the approach that they are not going to fund, and frankly took an interesting approach. They did not take a stick approach. They took a carrot approach. What they said was, we are going to fund and we're going to put more money on the table because I think it's actually harder to break the cycle of addiction than just to sort of create a safe place to indulge in addiction. And they said, we're going to incentivize some of these sites to convert to what they refer to as hubs, which were sites dedicated to rehab and getting people off of drugs rather than safe injection sites or safe injection sites, supervised injection sites. And that came about, and that would've led to, well, it did lead to the closure or the transitioning rather of a number of these sites and a group of, I'm sure very well-meaning individuals fronted by some very well-meaning lawyers did what lawyers do, which is run off to court and asked the court to step in and bar this change in government policy, which had followed an immediate election on that plank of the government's policy. And there was an injunction application was brought to prevent the closure of these safe injection

Stephen Thiele (15:17):

Sites. Yeah, 10 of them across Ontario, five outside of Toronto, and I think five within Toronto. Just actually a very remarkable kind of decision in some respects, because obtaining an interlocutory injunction which was granted by the court over a constitutional issue is not necessarily an easy thing to do, because legislation that is duly enacted by a duly elected government is presumed to be for the public good. And here we have a constitutional challenge that it breaches right to equality and right to life to close down these supervised consumption sites.

Gavin Tighe (16:07):

Yeah, no, I mean, one of the things that troubled me about the decision was that it was not granted the injunction on an interim basis, which was to say, well, I want to think about it. So while I think about it, I'm going to issue the injunction because the court was of the view that the harm of closing the sites would be more than the harm of leaving them open. And I think also important to remember is that these are just any old sites. I mean, the legislation prohibited the operation of these sites within 200 metres of a daycare or a school. And that came out of the fact that this is really a blight on urban families, frankly, with two of small children and playgrounds, which are at this point oftentimes near these sites littered with used needles and drug paraphernalia. On the one hand, also, one of the things sadly that occurs is, and it's the ripple effect in my view of the consumption of this type of thing, unfortunately, people who are addicted to these substances are desperate people.

(17:24):

They are people that desperately need to get the next fix of these substances. And they are quite frankly, prepared to do just about anything to get it. And that attracts another group of lovely people, which are the dealers. I mean, the dealers go where the customers are. So as with any good businessman, you're going to pedal your wares where the buyers are. So there was all sorts of dealers that are running around, and these guys are not nice people, and they don't like other dealers on their turf. So you got into all sorts of turf wars between these characters to the point where there was an innocent woman walking along Queen Street in Toronto, I think it was a year or so ago, who was shot and killed. Because one thing about the dealers and gang bangers is there are a lot of things, but they're not marksmen and they're spraying bullets all over the place. They could care less. And a young mother was shot and killed for having the temerity to walk down a public street. It's just horrific.

Stephen Thiele (18:31):

It is. But look, we have our charter of rights and freedoms, as you know. Gavin,

Gavin Tighe (18:37):

What about her rights and freedoms?

Stephen Thiele (18:39):

Oh, look, I'm not here to debate right now, I guess the constitutional, the constitutionality of the legislation. But I think what was interesting when we get back to the granting of the interlocutory injunction is that not withstanding that the crown hasn't conceded whether the legislation is constitutional or not, for the purposes of the injunction, they said that there was a serious issue to be tried and there wasn't. Well, yeah. So

Gavin Tighe (19:11):

We'll get to that. But we laugh about that. And I feel for the judge, because I don't think that the judge was given all the facts, but as I said, that goes

Stephen Thiele (19:20):

In, no, he seems to have been really angry

Gavin Tighe (19:22):

After, I don't blame him. He's entitled to be angry because I think the judge is entitled to think that the whole case has been put in front of him. But that comes back to my point earlier, that what the government did here was they never ordered these sites to be closed. They didn't use a stick to say, we decree that this site shall be closed. No, these are all funded by taxpayer money and the government and the legislature, that's who we elect them frankly, to be the gatekeeper of how our money is spent. And they decided that they were going to use the carrot approach and say, we will fund, I think it was four times as much money if you convert these sites to these hub sites, which are focused on lessness and recovery, right? As opposed to use. And guess what? As off the case, people follow the carrot. And nine of these 10 sites had voluntarily agreed to transition into these hub sites from injection sites. The judge was never told that. Apparently the judge

Stephen Thiele (20:30):

Was never told.

Gavin Tighe (20:32):

So the whole thing, there's no serious issue to be tried because guess what? You can't fire me because I quit. They're out, they're done.

Stephen Thiele (20:44):

Look, I'm not going to talk about the strategy of counsel for the Attorney general, but that's what they did. Given that basically none of these sites were off the table, it certainly would've lent itself to an argument that there was not a serious issue to be tried. We might do another podcast on the removal of the bike lanes in Toronto legislation where indeed, the Crown said that there was no serious issue, should be tried. They lost on that point. But anyway, it is a pretty easy, I mean,

Gavin Tighe (21:22):

It is an easy test. It's a low threshold, but Mootness would seem to me to be a pretty good answer to serious issue.

Stephen Thiele (21:30):

Well, it would've been interesting, I think in terms of if you only had really truly one applicant, would the balance of convenience have fallen the way that the judge found that it did?

Gavin Tighe (21:41):

Yeah, I think it changes the whole math and the whole

Stephen Thiele (21:43):

Thing, right? It changes the math, as you say, and the overall factual matrix. But just to get to the point, because we've talked about it, the judge granted his injunction on the basis that he thought that there were 10 sites were impacted by this legislation when indeed there was only one. And as you say, the judge was very angry and called the parties back to court after issuing the injunction. I'm not sure what's happened with, I guess it was a case conference or something, and whether the judges changed his views or what he had to say to counsel. But certainly a very interesting turn of events because we noted it right away that basically it's a paper injunction. It's an injunction that really had no teeth because nine of these sites were no longer actually impacted by the injunction. They had no power or authority against the government. They'd already made a deal to take more money and do something else.

Gavin Tighe (22:52):

Yeah, it's an interesting point because when we talk about what's an injunction, I mean, a lot of listeners will know, but an injunction generally is something that enjoins you from doing something. Enjoining means you can't do that. If you are to do something, you are ordered not to do it. It's very different than there's another remedy, which is referred to as a mandatory order, which is something that requires you to do something and is a big difference between saying you can't do something and ordering you forcefully to do something. And I don't know, I mean, it gives me an interesting subject for the podcast, but nothing comes immediately to mind where a court can order a government, a duly elected government to spend taxpayer money on a particular program that the government has decided that they don't, legislatively as a matter of policy they don't want to pursue, are they compelled to continue programs that they've chosen or have been elected to not fund further?

(23:54):

I mean, that's really an interesting question is where does the line, in terms of government in a constitutional democracy, where is the line where the court is dictating social or public policy over the government when we don't elect judges in this country? And presumably, ultimately, the rule of law has to flow from the legislature, which is the elected representatives. And really also, I've said this before, I worry because I am a firm believer in the charter, and I'm a firm believer in charter values, but our charter includes a notwithstanding clause. And I think that if courts go too far in, frankly trying to bigfoot legislatures on social policy issues, you're going to see that the notwithstanding clause, in my view, use so often that the charter will effectively become meaningless. Because I think one of the things that's happened previously is that the novel standing clause is used relatively sparingly with increased frequency, admittedly, but because nobody wanted to do it. But as with everything else, as people get more used to it, and if people feel that it's necessary, it will become much more commonplace to see legislatures invoke the notwithstanding clause if they think that a activist judges, for example, are going to step in and try to overrule them on matters of public policy.

Stephen Thiele (25:29):

I agree with that, Gavin, I'm going to borrow a word from our previous podcast that we in law are always vexed by

Gavin Tighe (25:40):

Teaser.

Stephen Thiele (25:41):

Yeah. Look, we're always vexed by decisions on public policy where you basically have judges who are proactive and insert themselves into the public policy argument, making decisions on these charter cases and other judges who step back. And this case in particular, and I know we got to wrap up soon, I contrast it with the bike lane case, which I hope that we talk about, where the judge refused an injunction based on the same law and basically said there's public good in the removal of the bike lanes that outweighed the charter argument. And here in this case, you have the complete opposite decision based on the same fundamental principles of law that govern, right?

Gavin Tighe (26:34):

Right. I mean, the one thing about legislatures is if you don't like the people in power, and the notwithstanding clause is timed very appropriately in this way, it has to be brought back. Any legislation protected by it has to be brought back on. And you can boot the bums out frankly, by not voting for them. If you don't like the people who are legislating, you don't like the legislation, organize, get the vote out and change the people who make the law. Unfortunately, that is the fuse in the notwithstanding clause. Even if a legislature passes legislation with the notwithstanding clause, they got to bring it back on again in the next election cycle, and they may not be there by then.

Stephen Thiele (27:15):

Right. And it's ballot box issues. So look, Gavin, look, we've had a great discussion here. We thank all of our listeners for tuning in back to our podcast. Please don't forget to rate our podcasts. It's really important for our profile. So please give us a five star rating if you like listening to us or

Gavin Tighe (27:43):

Not. If you don't like it, let us know because you know what? Freedom of speech is all about

Stephen Thiele (27:50):

100%. And don't forget, if no one is above the law, everyone is beneath it.

Gavin Tighe (27:57):

Thank you.