Vestry motion for 2025: Protecting and Expanding Harm Reduction in Ontario
On Aug. 20, 2024, Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced their decision to close 10 of the 17 safe consumption/overdose prevention sites around Ontario, and to prevent any new sites from opening. On Nov. 18, 2024, the government introduced legislation enabling this decision in the form of Bill 223, the “Safer Streets, Stronger Communities Act, 2024.”
This decision will have a devastating impact and lead to thousands of deaths. Every day more than seven Ontarians die because of a fatal overdose. Without supervised consumption sites, the numbers will only grow. Hospitals, front-line workers and a commission appointed by the province all agree that safe consumption sites are a necessary public health service and prevent accidental overdose deaths.
Five of the sites are in our Diocese, within the City of Toronto. The others are in Ottawa, Guelph, Hamilton, Kitchener and Thunder Bay. Several faith leaders around the province, including Bishop Andrew Asbil, have signed a letter calling on Ford and Jones to reverse their decision.
Our Social Justice Vestry Motion for 2025, “Protecting and Expanding Harm Reduction in Ontario,” calls on the province to reverse its decision on the planned closure of safe consumption sites and to lift the ban on the creation of new sites, in order to expand life-saving harm reduction services to Ontarians.
Read the motion and backgrounder here.
Tips for presenting and following up on the motion
- Circulate the motion and backgrounder before the vestry meeting
- Identify parishioners who are ready to speak to the motion both before and at vestry.
- Consider exploring the subject in advance through an information session, like a “lunch and learn” after a Sunday service.
- Follow up with a letter (or a visit!) to your local elected official (municipal councillor, MPP, or MP, depending on the level of government addressed). You can do this as an individual or as a parish, or both. We can help you with templates for each year’s vestry motion.
Find contact information for provincial Cabinet Ministers and MPPs
Our parish passed the motion. Now what?
If your parish presented the motion, whether it passed or not, please contact Elin Goulden, Diocesan Social Justice & Advocacy Consultant, at egoulden@toronto.anglican.ca to report. Not only would we love to know if the motion passed, we’d like to know what kind of discussion it generated, and if you found our resources helpful, or have a suggestion for what we could do in the future. If your parish altered or amended the motion at all, send us the text of what was passed. Clergy are also reminded to check the Social Justice Vestry Motion box on the Incumbent’s Return if this year’s motion passed in your parish.
Why do we present the vestry motion? What effect does it have?
Throughout the history of this Diocese, bishops and church leaders have spoken out on issues affecting our society. Our bishops regularly communicate with government through letters and meetings, and they’re invited to comment on budgets and new legislation. Canadian law recognizes these communications as aspects of the Church’s charitable purpose.
For nearly two decades, the Social Justice and Advocacy Committee has drafted annual vestry motions on concerns our Diocese is connected with. The College of Bishops approves their final wording before commending them to parishes for consideration.
When parishes support social justice vestry motions, it strengthens the bishops’ voices in their advocacy with government. The motions also invite Anglicans into Diocesan advocacy efforts. Each year the committee prepares a brief “backgrounder” on the issue at hand, which can be used as a bulletin insert, as well as offering other resources.
Results of the motions are used in communication with different levels of government and to support other faith-based and community organizations’ advocacy efforts. Through our Social Justice Vestry Motions our Diocese has played a part in improving minimum wage and working conditions in Ontario as well as in reconciliation efforts at the federal level.
Some parishes shy away from presenting a social justice motion at vestry, seeking to avoid conflict. This may be understandable in some contexts. No parish is required to present the motion, and any parish can change its wording if this is the will of its vestry.
But the Church can’t be insulated from issues that affect the world God loves. Learning about and speaking out on these matters – even learning to disagree well together – is part of the witness we bear to Christ, who makes all things new.