Thorne Rochons says addictions is not just a big city problem
Christian Gammon-Roy
Tribune
West Nipissing mayor Kathleen Thorne Rochon represented the municipality at the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addictions (CCSA) national conference in Halifax, from November 17 to 19. The conference is held every two years and brings together experts, organisations and policy makers to share best practices in dealing with substance abuse. While municipal officials often attend conferences like these to learn and to help inform decisions at home, the mayor was not there simply as an attendee. Thorne Rochon was invited by the CCSA to sit on the Small Cities Initiative panel at the conference, along with other key speakers who have been working together for many months. She says the initiative is culminating into a Playbook for Action, coming soon.
“Maybe a year-and-a-half ago, AMO (Association of Municipalities of Ontario) put out an email announcing their partnership with the CCSA on this initiative. It was kind of spearheaded by Michelle Boileau, the mayor of Timmins, and Blaine Hyggen, the mayor of Lethbridge, Alberta,” Thorne Rochon recounts. In those initial days, she says the size of a “small city” had been set at 50,000 to 150,000 in population – quite a bit larger than the size of West Nipissing.
Initially disappointed with this criteria, Thorne Rochon decided to write to AMO and the CCSA and offered some local perspective. “We have people who are homeless and drug addicted; we have substance use impacting our youth as users or in their families; we have untenable pressures on our paramedics; we have pressures on our healthcare system and emergency department. I said that we are 15,000, and we have issues here that we need help with too,” she describes, adding that she concluded by asking to “let us know when communities like ours are big enough to be invited to the table.”
Perhaps it was the “strong wording” of her email, as the mayor puts it, that caught their attention. Shortly afterward, Thorne Rochon was invited to sit on a Small City Initiative panel during the first summit in Timmins, in September 2024. Then, a second Small Cities Initiative conference was held in Lethbridge, Alberta, during April 2025. The mayor was again invited to be there for the Municipal Leaders Table. “Every mayor involved was invited to bring a community partner that worked within the field of substance use. So, I brought with me Lynn Perreault from the Alliance Centre,” she recalls.
