Prison overdose prevention program expands to Ontario – Global News [2023-09-14]

While Canada battles an opioid epidemic, Correctional Service Canada is looking at how to address the same issue in its prisons.

Starting in the fall, it will launch an overdose prevention site at Collins Bay Correctional Facility in Kingston.

Originally started in 2019 at the Drumheller Institution in Alberta, the program will be the first of its kind in Ontario.

“The courts mandated the CSC to come up with a program to mitigate the spread of disease, and this is their measure to combat that,” says Chris Bucholtz, Ontario regional president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers.

“I know my members respond quite often to overdoses inside the walls.”