How Canada Wins: Offering humanity to marginalized people

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Editor’s note: This is Part 3 in our contribution to Postmedia’s national series “How Canada Wins.” Over the next five weeks we’ll chronicle our community’s place in the country, the promise of greater prosperity, and the blueprint to get there. See the series intro here.

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Kayla DeMong has been a strong voice of advocacy in Saskatoon for years.

She is the executive director for Prairie Harm Reduction, and has worked with the organization for 13 years.

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PHR was previously known as AIDS Saskatoon, which was founded in 1986. It was created in response to HIV/AIDS related deaths and focused on care and support.

DeMong said that name change came in 2020 after the opening of the safe consumption site.

“We were doing far more than just HIV support,” DeMong said.

The shift to support people who used substances stemmed from rates of people passing HIV/AIDS through intravenous drug use.

She said HIV and hepatitis rates continue to rise in Saskatchewan.

DeMong started her work with Prairie Harm Reduction as part of the family support department.

“It was fairly new. It was a pilot project with the Ministry of Social Services to provide harm reduction-based care, or support to families who were involved with the child protection system or who were at risk of involvement.”

She said her movement into management was quick, noting she’s now PHR’s most senior staff member.

When PHR moved into the location on 20th Street they had roughly 30 staff, DeMong said. That number has since risen to 149. She said they now run five departments and operate out of seven city locations.

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The departments include support services, the family support department, the community support program, youth homes and education

She said the idea of support without question that helped create AIDS Saskatoon continues to be the crux of how Prairie Harm Reduction operates today.

“Everybody deserves support, and everybody should have access to resources,” she said. “They deserve to do so with dignity and respect and without judgement.”

DeMong herself had a history of struggling with addiction, having used crystal meth and alcohol in the past. During her recovery she decided she needed to do something different.

“I went to the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies to take their addictions course, with a plan that I’d work in the detox,” she said. “The coolest people I knew were at the detox.”

She worked for a number of organizations and got to see a different side of things she hadn’t considered before.

DeMong said she was deemed hard to manage, adding, “in a big part because I’m not good at keeping my mouth shut.”

She’d speak up if she felt something wasn’t right, and DeMong said many people didn’t appreciate that.

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Her time at PHR started as a casual staff member, working her way up quickly.

In that line of work education isn’t always the greatest representation of someone’s ability, she said, adding that they look for certain traits, one of which is a common belief on how people should be treated.

“Everyone deserves support. It’s up to them what that looks like.”

PHR staff range from people with no education, to those with a number of degrees.

The family support department is actively working with about 350 families, she said, adding that the safe consumption site serves somewhere around 500 people.

“We have massive case loads because people like to be treated that way, and they like not to be pushed into things.”

DeMong gave some additional statistics, saying between April 1, 2024 and Feb. 2025, they provided training to over 1,500 people.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in businesses wanting us to come,” DeMong said, noting there’s a trend of business owners wanting staff to know how to respond if there’s an emergency.

She said they’ll also take many practicum students, adding that it’s important for them to see a different side of the world that isn’t so focused on paperwork or scheduled engagement.

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DeMong said they are also creating a standardized training for frontline workers on harm reduction and people who use substances, thanks to federal funding.

“We are set to start piloting very soon,” DeMong said, adding that it’ll be taught in some colleges.

Saskatoon has a great network of services in the city that they collaborate with, Demong said, and they try not to duplicate.

She said COVID-19 pushed them into a new era of community collaboration, noting they had around 100 organizations coming together to provide some sort of service during that time.

Despite this, DeMong said they still have massive gaps in services, saying they don’t have the proper political support to help people using substances.

“We had a massive surge of overdoses in the new year … we have no proper alert system.”

DeMong said rural services were atrocious, saying they’ve spoken with smaller municipalities that see issues in their communities, but there are no support services available.

She’s been a strong advocate fighting for more support from the provincial government, but DeMong has been critical of changes the Saskatchewan government has implemented, such as the stronger drug-related penalties made available for law enforcement.

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“It’s been a harder fight than we’ve ever had to fight before.”

DeMong said she will often have people reach out after seeing these gaps and wondering what to do, but she said she doesn’t have an answer for them.

“We’ve seen this across Canada. I sit on a few national boards and groups, the story doesn’t get any better most places. That investment back into the community isn’t there.”

Despite what your beliefs are, the cost to taxpayers to operate this way is huge, she said.

“Not even when you talk about just support for substance users. If we had a proper healthcare system we would save so much money.”

The cost of one person living with HIV is over $1 million, she said, so she wondered what would happen if we invested $200,000 to address HIV transmission.

“The logic is there … I would love for my taxes to be lower, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t.”

DeMong said service providers are there, they just aren’t provided the resources to do what they need to.

“So much of us, our work is just keeping people alive.”

When asked what keeps her fighting for change and proper funding, DeMong had four words.

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“Because someone has to.”

She said they need a lot of voices to say this isn’t okay, and said they are seeing that with things like the community funded safe-consumption site.

“We’re the only safe-consumption site in Canada, and possibly the world, that operates that way.”

She said that support speaks loudly about where the province is at, versus where the politicians are at.

A wide variety of donors come to PHR, DeMong said, noting they’ll see donations from people in rural parts of the province who are in their 60’s.

Despite the economy not getting any better, she said businesses will still run fundraisers for PHR.

“They still believe they can donate a month’s worth of something back to the community.”

She said money is nice, but not always possible, and the most important thing is to use your voice to fight.

“Everybody has a choice to stand up. Nothing has ever changed in our world without people really standing for things.

“We can set a different precedent for what humanity should look like.”

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