Ryan Turley lives a block away from New Dawn Medical, a private safe-supply clinic in Chinatown, and ever since it opened, he said he’s seen a spike in disruption in his community.
“I think it’s a pill mill,” said Turley, who chairs the Dalhousie Community Association’s peaceable neighbourhood committee. “I don’t think they are looking after the best interests of their patients.”
Ottawa Centre MPP Catherine McKenney and Somerset Ward Councillor Ariel Troster wrote a joint letter recently calling on the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to investigate New Dawn Medical. They are asking the regulator to review the clinic’s prescribing model and decide whether it meets provincial standards.
In the open letter, they allege doctors aren’t on-site and prescriptions are being given through iPad video visits. They also allege the amounts prescribed are large enough to allow “diversion”, meaning people could trade or resell the drugs for stronger opioids like fentanyl.
“You walk in and you talk to an iPad, and the Dilaudid is delivered to you from a pharmacy,” McKenney said. “So you walk out with a handful of narcotics.”
New Dawn Medical opened in the summer, a week after Northwood Recovery, a controversial safe-supply clinic, shut down in the exact same location. Northwood Recovery faced months of community complaints about remote prescribing and a lack of patient monitoring before announcing its closure.
McKenney said they supported the Somerset West supervised consumption site and they allege that ever since it closed, there have been more problems in the area.
In March 2025, the Ontario government forced the closure of 10 supervised consumption sites across the province, including the Somerset West site that had operated in Chinatown for years.
“The closure of the consumption and treatment site, coupled with the opening of this clinic, has definitely created chaos in the community,” McKenney said. “Within a day, there was a tremendous amount of open drug use in the community and people had no one watching out for them.”
In a statement, New Dawn Medical denies these allegations, saying they provide “evidence-based medical care to patients living with substance abuse disorders.”
“Patients in our safe supply program must visit the clinic daily to receive their medications, where a significant portion is administered under the supervision of a pharmacist,” the statement reads. “They also undergo regular testing to monitor for program compliance and diversion.”
The statement added, “physicians at our clinics do a combination of virtual and in-person care. All patients are in the direct care of one of our specialized physicians.”
Business leaders in the community, meanwhile, said New Dawn Medical has led to more crime in the area and less foot traffic.
“We strongly urge New Dawn to take responsibility for these impacts and to close its operations as soon as possible,” reads a statement from Yukang Li, the executive director of the Ottawa Chinatown BIA. “The operating model of the New Dawn Clinic has created significant negative impacts for the community while consuming taxpayer dollars, and in some cases even putting people at risk.”
New Dawn Medical rejects these claims and said they employ private security guards and use security cameras to monitor the area around the clinic.
“There are multiple clinics in the area providing similar services, so activity in the area cannot be automatically attributed to New Dawn Medical,” a statement from New Dawn Medical reads. “We cooperate with law enforcement when there is a concern.”
For Turley, who witnesses the everyday impacts of this clinic, he said he hopes New Dawn Medical closes up shop before things get even worse.
“We’d like to see successful safer supply programs, but I think one thing we can all agree on is that this particular model is just not working.”
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