04/12/2026
A STAKE IN THE GROUND: Our Fight for the Right to Live
From Melissa Reid
Founder of POET & Alliance for Community Integrity (ACI)
To the advocates, the professionals, and the neighbors who stood with me at City Hall on March 24th: I am asking you to show up again. I spent 20 years in active addiction. I found my way to recovery on my own not because the system worked, but because I survived long enough to find a way out. I survived for this exact purpose: to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. The "Death Gap" is Not a Theory It is a Statistic
The City wants us to believe that the new HART Hub is a replacement for our Consumption and Treatment Services (CTS). As a systems architect and certified evaluator, I am telling you: this is a logistical fallacy. Recovery and Harm Reduction are two halves of one system. A HART Hub without a CTS is a hospital with an ICU but no Emergency Room. By closing the CTS, the City is removing the floor. Because a Hub has a "behavioral gate" rules that many in active crisis cannot meet it will naturally exclude the very people who need us most.
We are already seeing the cost of this mistake across Ontario:
Since the initial wave of CTS closures in 2025, opioid toxicity deaths have surged by 19.4%.
EMS calls for overdoses have skyrocketed by 69.5%
In some areas, overdoses at drop-in centers have spiked by 179% because the medical safety net was stripped away.
When you remove the survival tool and replace it with a conditional one, you create a Death Gap. People aren't "getting better"; they are being pushed into back alleys to die alone, away from the teams like POET who are trying to save them.
A State-Created Danger
The Minister of Health and the Attorney General have the data. They know CTS sites prevent death. Choosing to ignore that data to satisfy a political narrative is willful negligence. It is a State-Created Danger. By refusing to join the provincial injunctions to protect our unhoused neighbors, the City of Kingston is placing a timed expiry date on human lives.
The Ask: April 23rd at 6:00 PM
The City is counting on us to get tired. They are counting on us to accept a "Hub" as a victory while they dismantle the safety net. We have not disappeared, and neither has this crisis.
WHEN:April 23, 2026, at 6:00 PM
WHERE:City Council Chambers, City Hall
THE MISSION: To demand the City join the provincial injunctions. No evictions. No removal of life-saving services without a truly low-barrier, non-conditional replacement.
We did not advocate for a Hub; we advocated for Dignity, Logistics, and Compassion. Survival is a human right, not a conditional offer.
Show up on April 23rd. Help me make sure no one else in our city is legislated out of existence.
Melissa Reid
Founder, Peer Outreach Empowerment Team (POET)
Alliance for Community Integrity (ACI)
