A petition calling for Hamilton City Council to designate public libraries as safe drug consumption sites will be debated at the upcoming meeting of Hamilton’s Public Health Sub-Committee.

The 115 signatories want the City of Hamilton to create and fund ‘safe drug consumption sites’ outside Hamilton’s public libraries.

The petition requests that the City install heated shelters, similar to those used for bus stops, outside libraries to reduce indoor drug use. It states that there should be “no cameras” monitoring these spaces because trained staff should be present at all times.

The petition states that the City should begin at the Central, Barton, and Red Hill branches.

It also calls for increasing the “availability of social services AT” libraries. [Petition’s emphasis.]

The provincial government closed Hamilton’s supervised consumption site as part of a province-wide policy change to implement treatment-focused HART sites, which Premier Doug Ford says will better assist people to get supports towards permanent housing and to address addictions.

Petitioner Tyler Dhaliwal will delegate and present the petition to the committee.

The Committee will meet on Monday, April 28, 2025, beginning at 9:30 a.m.

Public correspondence can be sent to clerks@hamilton.ca, or delegation requests made on the City website, until 12:00 noon on Friday.

Addendum:

Ward 2 Councillor Cameron Kroetsch, who chairs the Public Health Sub-Committee, posted to Facebook this evening to state the petitioners have the right to delegate to Council, and that the petition is included in the agenda package “so everyone could see it.”

“It’s there for information, not for approval, just so the citizen members of the Sub-Committee didn’t have trouble finding it. I did this to ensure it was accessible and easy to find and for no other reason,” he writes.

Happy to clarify. All residents have the right to sign petitions and submit them to Council and Committee. That's all that's happening here. The petition was added as an Item for Information because that's how the new Procedural By-law works. Correspondence is submitted in one place, not added to agendas automatically as it was in the past. In order for the petition itself to be present when the delegate speaks, a member of Council or Committee has to put it on the Agenda so it can be easily seen by the public and other members. Since the Public Health Sub-Committee isn't made up of all Councillors, it made sense for me, as Chair, to ask for it to be added to the Agenda. It's there for information, not for approval, just so the citizen members of the Sub-Committee didn't have trouble finding it. I did this to ensure it was accessible and easy to find and for no other reason. For context about the issue itself, this was a petition written, distributed, and signed by residents. As I said when this was emailed to me by one of the petitioners, the Province is not approving any safe consumption site applications at the moment and has entirely shut that process down. Public Health has no way to make such an application under the current government. The petitioners are welcome to send this to the Hamilton Public Library Board of Directors for their information, but the HPL cannot unilaterally make such an application, even if there was a process to apply. I hope that clears up any confusion about this.

The petition is captured in the image below.

Production Details
v. 1.0.0
Published: April 23, 2025
Last updated: April 23, 2025
Author: Joey Coleman

Update Record
v. 1.0.0 original version
v. 1.1.0 added Facebook comments posted by Clr Kroetsch

Join the Conversation

8 Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  1. Is our city council going to prioritize the drug addicts over our children, again?!

    And the city wonders why the residents of Hamilton don’t trust our council.

    It’s a disgrace that our council is wasting time on this proposal. I’m not ok with my tax dollars being squandered on such non sensical and ridiculous attempts to endanger public safety and to perpetuate someone’s addiction and illness.

    The city is a mess, hasn’t council got better things to do than entertain this ridiculous idea?

    Reply