For the first time, the Manitoba government will provide funding to keep the province’s only mobile overdose prevention site on the road.
Sunshine House will receive $589,000 from the province to fund its Mobile Overdose Prevention Site. MOPS is an RV fitted with a drug-testing machine where staff members hand out harm reduction tools and provide people a safe, private space to use drugs.
Addictions Minister Bernadette Smith announced the funding in question period Monday, calling the investment a “different approach” to the previous Progressive Conservative government.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES
Peer support worker Dawn Lavand as the Mobile Overdose Prevention Site operates in the parking lot of Nine Circles Community Health Centre in August.
“We’ve inherited the heartbreaking legacy of the failed PC government — surging rates of overdose deaths and HIV transmissions. These are preventable deaths and preventable transmissions,” she said.
The RV has been in operation since 2022. Sunshine House began fundraising for $270,000 last year to keep MOPS moving after learning federal funding for the site was expected to expire.
The organization announced in December it had received $250,000 from the Winnipeg Foundation and $73,000 in funding from the federal government through an amendment to an existing agreement with Health Canada and the Substance Use and Addictions Program.
An additional $55,000 was raised through community fundraisers.
MOPS received more than 26,000 visits in its first year, with 20 overdoses and no deaths, a report released by Sunshine House in April stated.
The province has committed to funding a supervised consumption site in downtown Winnipeg next year.
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
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