Kelowna’s mayor wants the doors at a downtown drug consumption site closed after outcry from the business community and repeated emergency calls to the building.

Mayor Tom Dyas sent a letter to Ottawa asking Health Canada to deny a drug-use licence for the site, citing an “absence of timely provincial action.”

In the Aug. 26 letter, Dyas used a tally of emergency calls to the area to justify the request to shutdown Interior Health’s Outreach Urban Health Centre.

It comes after months of heightened concern from the business community about repeated downtown property crime and social disorder.

According to the mayor’s letter, police have been called to the supervised consumption site “or its immediate surroundings” 3,466 times since it opened in March 2021. That’s fewer than two calls per day.

Firefighters have been called for 371 medical incidents and 24 outdoor fires, while bylaw officers were called 420 times for “service beyond routine daily interventions” in almost six years.

“These incidents extend well beyond nuisance concerns,” the letter reads, describing incidents in the area like assaults, intimate partner violence, drug trafficking and people fencing stolen property.

It’s not clear how many people have visited the site since it opened, but there were more than 100 visits per day last year alone, according to Interior Health.

Chief medical health officer, Dr. Sue Pollock, said Kelowna’s only supervised consumption site is downtown because that’s where the drug users are.

“People experiencing substance use, homelessness and other complex health and social challenges are already present in these areas. The role of the health centre is not to create these challenges, but to provide care, reduce harm, save lives and connect people to treatment and support services,” she said in an emailed statement.

She said dozens more people likely would have died in Kelowna if it wasn’t there. Of the 37,000 visits in 2025, 75 overdoses were reversed and there have been no deaths.

“These are lives that may otherwise have been lost to the toxic drug supply,” she said.

Interior Health was using an RV for the city’s only supervised consumption site before taking over the former Vancouver Community College location on Pandosy Street.

Pollock said Interior Health will continue working with the city, police and social service agencies, but remained committed to prioritizing the health of drug users at the downtown site.