The mayors of the five largest Northern Ontario centres held a virtual meeting today and one issue dominated it: mental health and addictions.

The chair of the meeting, North Bay Mayor Al McDonald says the mayors say they all need help in their communities from the senior levels of government on this issue.

“We will be writing a letter to the province and the federal government requesting help and support and a meeting to address mental health and addiction,” he says.

He says they’re not blaming Ottawa and Toronto but they’re not currently equipped to deal with the problem.

McDonald says they don’t have the infrastructure necessary to make a dent in this challenge and that includes medical people on the city payroll to deal with the problem.

He says there were other items on the agenda but this is so pervasive they never got to them.

Communities represented at the meeting include North Bay, Sudbury, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay.

Timmins Mayor George Pirie says they’ve had 29 related opioid deaths

“Those are real people, real deaths, real parents and real grandparents and the pain is very real. For these reasons we’re asking for the resources,” he says.

(photo by station staff)

Filed under: addictions, al-mcdonald-north-bay, mental-health