I Went Looking for Opioid Data. What I Found Was a Bigger Problem.
It started with a simple question:
How serious is the opioid problem in Norfolk County?
That should have been an easy question to answer.
It wasn't.
I started with the latest Norfolk OPP report. It contains pages of statistics, including traffic charges, cannabis enforcement, mental health occurrences and fatal overdoses. But it does not tell us how many overdose calls police attended, how often officers administered naloxone or whether those numbers are increasing or decreasing.
Next, I turned to Grand Erie Public Health’s opioid surveillance information.
There is a considerable amount of data available, anything current is for Brant County or Brantford and only historical data for Norfolk County. Some indicators go back more than ten years, including Ontario Drug Benefit opioid usage from 2015. Historical trends have value, but they do not tell residents what is happening in Norfolk County today.
Norfolk County has two representatives on the Board of Health, yet I found the Finance and Audit Committee information still points to 2024, and several meetings have been cancelled without any public explanation.
After searching through all of these sources, I still could not answer the question that started my search.
How many overdoses occurred in Norfolk County? How many were reversed with naloxone? How many involved repeat calls? How many people moved between police, EMS, hospital emergency departments, Public Health and social services?
Most importantly, are we making progress, or are we simply responding to the same crises over and over again?
The information is fragmented across several organizations, and nobody appears to be bringing it together.
Ironically, both the OPP and Grand Erie Public Health already use Microsoft Power BI to present information. Power BI is business-intelligence software that takes information from different sources and turns it into charts, reports and interactive displays that are easier to understand. Microsoft describes its purpose as “empowering better decisions through better information.”
The OPP report demonstrates why that matters. It recorded 116 mental health occurrences during March and April, including 18 attempted suicides and 10 Mental Health Act apprehensions. Attempted suicides alone represented more than 15 per cent of the reported mental health occurrences during those two months.
Those are serious numbers.
The technology already exists. The challenge is deciding what information should be collected, connected and shared with Council and the public.
This matters because mental illness, addiction, homelessness, public disorder, emergency-room pressures and policing demands are often different symptoms of the same underlying problems.
Police may respond to a crisis. EMS may transport the person. The hospital may stabilize them. Public Health may record part of the trend. Social services may help with housing or income support.
Yet the individual is still moving through a disconnected system.
One Door. One Team. One Plan.
That is why I proposed One Door. One Team. One Plan.
Instead of asking someone in crisis to navigate multiple organizations, waiting lists and intake processes, services should be coordinated around the individual. Mental health treatment, addiction support, housing assistance, medical care, employment services and community partners should be working from one plan rather than operating as separate stops along the way.
This is about compassion, but it is also about public safety, healthier neighbourhoods and using public money more effectively. It is closely connected to the future of Downtown Simcoe, where public safety, housing, business confidence and community well-being are all linked.
Comparing Priorities Across the Community
Council is currently prepared to invest almost $12 million in two roundabouts in the name of safety. Safety matters, and every life matters. But every major investment also carries an opportunity cost.
One of the most important responsibilities of a mayor is helping Council decide where limited public funds will do the most good. That means looking beyond individual projects and comparing their costs, risks and potential benefits across the entire community.
Before committing almost $12 million to two intersections, Council should also consider what that same level of investment could accomplish in mental health, addiction, homelessness and downtown safety.
Those funds could go a long way toward creating a coordinated response that helps people before their situation becomes another police call, ambulance trip, emergency-room visit or tragedy. An investment like that could produce benefits across several public services at once while strengthening our downtown.
That does not mean every dollar should be redirected from roads to social services. It means Council should compare priorities across the entire organization instead of considering each issue in isolation.
To do that properly, Council needs current, understandable and connected information.
I am pushing for better use of data throughout Norfolk County government because good decisions depend on seeing the complete picture. Reports should not simply record activity. They should help Council understand whether conditions are improving, where services are failing and where public money will have the greatest impact.
I started this week looking for opioid data.
Instead, I found fragmented reporting, disconnected systems and no clear picture of what is happening in Norfolk County.
In the information age, that should not happen.
Good government starts with good information.