With few options to help address Saskatoon’s worsening drug crisis, the Broadway Business Improvement District is stepping up to try and fill the void.
Titled, “Building Safe Spaces: Strategies for Success,” the BID is hosting a professional development event with aims to equip business owners and staff with tools, resources, and expert insights on safety, security, and harm reduction on April 3.
“I’ve heard from many people,” Broadway BID executive director Anne-Marie Cey said. “This is probably the worst they’ve ever seen Broadway.”
Cey has been the executive director of Broadway’s business association since last April. Since then, she’s heard plenty of requests to help businesses and staff respond to potential crises or drug-related issues happening in the area.
“To know who to call, what to do,” she said. “De-escalation is really important as well in keeping their staff safe and their space safe.”
The Broadway Theatre event will feature members of the Saskatoon Police Service, the Fire Community Support Program, Prairie Harm Reduction, the Saskatoon Health Region Overdose Outreach Team and Design Smart Security.
People will be able to bring up concerns, ask questions and then how to administer naloxone, the medication widely used to temporarily reverse the effects of opioid overdoses.
The event comes as Saskatoon experiences a surge in overdoses in the last month.
The Ministry of Health initially issued a drug alert warning of an increase in overdoses in Saskatoon on Feb. 27. Multiple updates have followed, with the current toll sitting at nine deaths and 435 overdoses in less than one month.
The alert also says overdoses require four to five doses of naloxone, sometimes oxygen and paramedics to revive.
Last week, Prairie Harm Reduction closed its doors for the rest of the month because of repeated trauma staff are facing.
The 58-year-old Frances Morrison Library and Dr. Freda Ahenakew Library followed suit, saying those locations would be closed until April 14 because of “ongoing lack of support available for Saskatoon’s most vulnerable people.”
Amielle Christopherson, the manager at Steephill Food Co-op, says tools like this are part of operating a business during Saskatoon’s drug crisis.
“I think it’s great,” she said. “I think it’s very proactive. I think it’s something that businesses have been asking about.”
Christopherson has been busy lately with her grocery store seeing more foot traffic than usual. As she navigates utilizing her small space and organizing increased deliveries, she knows responding to someone experiencing an overdose isn’t her job. However, she feels she can’t ignore the people in her community.
“As a member of the Broadway community, I do think it’s part of my responsibility to care about the other people who are around,” she said.
“I do think that, everybody has a right to belong to the Broadway community.”
Cey says there is space for roughly 200 people in the event, and Naloxone may be limited to oner per business.
