Addictions
New organizations for mental health and addictions to provide focused care and take pressure off health system
Refocusing health care: mental health and addiction
Alberta’s government is creating two new organizations that will support the development of the mental health and addiction system of care.
In November 2023, Alberta’s government announced it would be refocusing health care with the creation of four new organizations that will be responsible for the oversight and delivery of health care services in the province. The four new organizations include acute care, continuing care, primary care and mental health and addiction. The mental health and addiction organization will be the first of these to be established when it becomes an entity later this year.
The new mental health and addiction organization, Recovery Alberta, will be responsible for the delivery of mental health and addiction services currently delivered by Alberta Health Services (AHS). In addition, Alberta’s government is establishing the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence (CoRE) to support Alberta’s government in building recovery-oriented systems of care by researching best practices for recovery from around the world, analyzing data and making evidence-based recommendations.
“Refocusing health care enables us to better prioritize the health care and services Albertans need. Giving Albertans living with mental health or addiction challenges an opportunity to pursue recovery and live a contributing life is the responsible and compassionate thing to do. I am so proud of the work we have done to be leaders on recovery, and I am looking forward to seeing both Recovery Alberta and the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence continue this work for years to come.”
“Alberta is leading the country with the development of the Alberta Recovery Model to address mental health and addiction challenges. The establishment of these two new organizations will support the delivery of recovery-oriented services to Albertans and will further cement Alberta as a leader in the field. We are proud to establish Recovery Alberta and CoRE as part of the Alberta Recovery Model.”
“We’re making good progress on refocusing health care in Alberta. Today marks a pivotal milestone towards creating a system that truly serves the needs of Albertans. Through this refocused approach, our aim is to prioritize the needs of individuals and families to find a primary care provider, get urgent care without long waits, access the best continuing care options, and have robust support systems for addiction recovery and mental health treatment.”
Recovery Alberta
In August 2023, Alberta’s Ministry of Mental Health and Addiction began the process of consolidating the delivery of mental health and addiction services within AHS, a process that was completed in November 2023 with no disruption to services.
Recovery Alberta will report to the Ministry of Mental Health and Addiction and further support the Ministry’s mandate to provide high-quality, recovery-oriented mental health and addiction services to Albertans. It is anticipated Recovery Alberta will be fully operational by summer 2024 and will operate with an annual budget of $1.13 billion from Alberta’s government. This funding currently supports the delivery of mental health and addiction services through AHS.
The current provincial leadership team for Addiction and Mental Health and Correctional Health Services within AHS will form the leadership team of Recovery Alberta. When Recovery Alberta is fully established, Kerry Bales, the current Chief Program Officer for Addiction and Mental Health and Correctional Health Services within AHS will be appointed as CEO. Dr. Nick Mitchell, Provincial Medical Director, Addiction and Mental Health and Correctional Health Services within AHS, will become the Provincial Medical Director for Recovery Alberta.
“Recovery Alberta will build on the strong foundation of existing mental health and addiction services that staff and clinicians deliver. By working closely with Alberta Mental Health and Addiction and the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence, Recovery Alberta will continue to set a high standard of care for mental health and addiction recovery across the province, and beyond.”
“Albertans deserve patient-centered care when and where they need it. By establishing Recovery Alberta, we have an opportunity to work together in a new way to make that a reality for our patients and our communities.”
While timelines are dependent on legislative amendments yet to be introduced, the Ministry of Mental Health and Addiction is aiming to establish the corporate structure of Recovery Alberta by June 3. Following the establishment of the corporate structure and executive team, staff and services would begin operation under the banner of Recovery Alberta on July 1.
Frontline workers and service providers will continue to be essential to care for Albertans. To ensure stability of services to Albertans, there will be no changes to terms and conditions of employment for AHS addiction and mental health staff transitioning to Recovery Alberta. Additionally, there will be no changes to grants or contracts for service providers currently under agreement with AHS upon establishment of Recovery Alberta.
Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence (CoRE)
Alberta’s government has been leading the country in creating a system focused on recovery by building on evidence-based best practices from around the world. In five years, Alberta has removed user fees for treatment, increased publicly funded treatment capacity by 55 per cent and built two recovery communities with nine more on the way. Alberta’s government has also pioneered new best practices such as making evidence-based treatment medication available same day with no cost and no waitlist across the province through the Virtual Opioid Dependency Program.
To continue the innovative work required to improve the mental health and addiction system, Alberta’s government is creating the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence to inform best practices in mental health and addiction, conduct research and program evaluation and support the development of evidence-based policies for mental health and addiction. CoRE will be established as a crown corporation through legislation to be introduced this spring.
Alberta’s government has committed $5 million through Budget 2024 to support the establishment of CoRE. It is anticipated CoRE will be operational by this summer.
The CoRE leadership team will consist of Kym Kaufmann, former Deputy Minister of Mental Health and Community Wellness in Manitoba as the CEO. She will be supported by Dr. Nathaniel Day as Chief Scientific Officer of CoRE. Dr. Day currently serves as the Medical Director of Addiction and Mental Health within AHS.
“There is a need for more scientific evidence on how best to help those impacted by addiction within our society. The Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence will generate new and expanded evidence on the most effective means to support individuals to start and sustain recovery.”
“The Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence will provide the research and data we need to understand what works best when it comes to recovery. This new expertise and expanded evidence will provide us with further insight into how we can support communities, service providers and frontline staff to effectively help those living with addiction and mental health challenges.”
Quick facts
- Budget 2024 will invest more than $1.55 billion to continue building the Alberta Recovery Model.
- This includes a $1.13 billion transfer from Health to Mental Health and Addiction (MHA) for mental health and addiction services currently delivered by Alberta Health Services.
- Virtual engagement sessions for AHS staff and service providers will be held on April 11, 16, 17 and 22.
Related information
London Police Chief Thai Truong testifies to House of Commons Standing Committee on November 26, 2024.
By Adam Zivo
“Vulnerable individuals are being targeted by criminals who exchange these prescriptions for fentanyl, exacerbating addiction and community harm,” said London Police Chief Thai Truong.
Thai Truong, the police chief of London, Ontario, testified in parliament last week that “safer supply” opioids are “obviously” being widely diverted to the black market, leading to greater profits for organized crime. His insights further illustrate that the safer supply diversion crisis is not disinformation, as many harm reduction advocates have speciously claimed.
Truong’s testimony was given to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, which is in the midst of an extended study into the opioid crisis. While the committee has heard from dozens of witnesses, Truong’s participation was particularly notable, as safer supply was first piloted in London in 2016 and the city has, since then, been a hotbed for opioid diversion.
“While the program is well intentioned, we are seeing concerning outcomes related to the diversion of safe supply medications… these diverted drugs are being resold within our community, trafficked to other jurisdictions, and even used as currency to obtain fentanyl, perpetuating the illegal drug trade,” he said in his opening speech. “Vulnerable individuals are being targeted by criminals who exchange these prescriptions for fentanyl, exacerbating addiction and community harm.”
He later clarified to committee members that these vulnerable individuals include women who are being pressured to obtain safer supply opioids for black market resale.
Safer supply programs are supposed to provide pharmaceutical-grade addictive drugs – mostly 8-mg tablets of hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin – as an alternative to riskier street substances. The programs generally supply these drugs at no cost to recipients, with almost no supervised consumption, and have a strong preference for Dilaudid, a brand of hydromorphone that is manufactured by Purdue Pharma.
Addiction experts and police leaders across Canada have reported that safer supply patients regularly divert their hydromorphone to the black market. A recent study by Dr. Brian Conway, director of Vancouver’s Infectious Disease Centre, for example, showed that a quarter of his safer supply patients diverted all of their hydromorphone, and that another large, but unknown, percentage diverted at least some of their pills.
Truong’s parliamentary testimony, which mostly rehashed information he shared in a press conference last July, further corroborated these concerns.
He noted that in 2019, the city’s police force seized 847 hydromorphone pills, of which only 75 were 8-mg Dilaudids. Seizures increased after access to safer supply expanded in 2020, and, by 2023, exploded to over 30,000 pills (a roughly 3,500 per cent increase), of which roughly half were 8-mg Dilaudids. During this period, the number of annual overdose deaths in the city also increased from 73 to 123 (a 68 per cent increase), he said.
Relatedly, Truong noted that the price of hydromorphone in London – $2-5 a pill – is now much lower than in other parts of the province.
As an increasing number of police departments across Canada have publicly acknowledged that they are seeing skyrocketing hydromorphone seizures, some safer supply advocates have claimed, without evidence, that these pills were mostly stolen from pharmacies, and not diverted by safer supply patients. Truong’s parliamentary testimony dispelled this myth: “These increases cannot be attributed to pharmacy thefts, as London has had only one pharmacy robbery since 2019.”
The police chief declined to answer repeated questions about the efficacy of safer supply, or to opine on whether the experimental program should be replaced with alternative interventions with stronger evidence bases. “I’m not here to criticize the safe supply program, but to address the serious challenges associated with its diversion,” he said, noting his own lack of medical expertise.
The chief emphasized that, while more needs to be done to stop safer supply diversion, the addiction crisis is a “complex issue” that cannot be tackled solely through law enforcement. He advocated for a “holistic” approach that integrates prevention, harm reduction and treatment, and acknowledged the importance of London’s community health and social service partners.
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In response to Truong’s testimony, NDP MP Gord Johns, an avid safer supply advocate, downplayed the importance of the diversion crisis by arguing that “people aren’t dying from a safer supply of drugs; they’re dying from fentanyl.”
While it is true that 81 per cent of overdose deaths in 2024 involved fentanyl, addiction physicians across Canada have repeatedly debunked Johns’ argument as misleading. The dangers of diverted hydromorphone is not that it directly kills users, but rather that it easily hooks individuals into addiction, leading many of them to graduate to deadly fentanyl use.
Johns previously faced criticism when, in a September health committee meeting, he seemingly used parliamentary maneuvers to reduce the speaking time of a grieving father, Greg Sword, whose daughter, Kamilah, died of drug-related causes after she and her friends got hooked on diverted hydromorphone.
There is currently no credible evidence that safer supply works. Most supporting studies simply interview safer supply patients and present their opinions as objective fact, despite significant issues with bias and reliability. Data presented in a 2024 study published in the British Medical Journal, which followed over 5,000 drug users in B.C., showed that safer supply led to no statistically significant mortality reductions once confounding factors were fully filtered out.
An impending update to Canada’s National Opioid Use Disorder Guideline, which was recently presented at a conference organized by the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine, determined that the evidence base for safer supply is “essentially low-level.” Similarly, B.C’s top doctor acknowledged earlier this year that safer supply is “not fully evidence-based.”
This article was syndicated in The Bureau, an online media publication that investigates foreign interference, organized crime, and the drug trade.
From LifeSiteNews
Canadian MPs have voted 210 to 117 in favor of a proposal to decriminalize simple possession of heroin, cocaine and all other illegal drugs across Canada despite the disastrous effects of lax drug policies already observed.
Canada may be one step closer to decriminalizing hard drugs as the majority of MPs voted in favor of a proposal recommending the move.
According to information published November 25 by Blacklock’s Reporter, MPs voted 210 to 117 in favor of a proposal recommending the decriminalizing of the simple possession of heroin, cocaine and all other illegal drugs across Canada. While the proposal is non-binding, it could point to how MPs would vote on a future bill seeking to augment the law.
“Why has it come to this?” Conservative MP Jacques Gourde, who opposes such a move, questioned. “We have reached the end of the road and nothing better lies ahead if we continue down this path.”
The recommendation, which received a House majority with only Conservative MPs voting against it, suggested “that the Government of Canada decriminalize simple possess of all illicit drugs.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet was noncommittal in their response to the suggestion, saying, “The government recognizes there are increasing calls from a wide range of stakeholders to decriminalize the simple possession of drugs as another tool to reduce stigma that can lead many to hide their drug use and avoid seeking supports including treatment.”
“The government is exploring policy approaches and a broader framework that would ease the impact of criminal prohibitions in certain circumstances,” the Cabinet continued.
The Trudeau government’s consideration of nationwide decriminalization comes despite drug-related deaths skyrocketing in the province of British Columbia after decriminalization was implemented there by the Trudeau government in 2023. In fact, the policy was considered so damaging by the left-wing controlled province that it had to ask to have certain aspects of the policy, such as the public use of drugs, rescinded earlier this year.
Other soft-on-drug policies have already been implemented by the Trudeau government, including the much-maligned “safer supply” program.
“Safe supply” is the term used to refer to government-prescribed drugs given to addicts under the assumption that a more controlled batch of narcotics reduces the risk of overdose. Critics of the policy argue that giving addicts drugs only enables their behavior, puts the public at risk, disincentivizes recovery from addiction and has not reduced – and sometimes even increased – overdose deaths when implemented.
The effects of decriminalizing hard drugs have been the source of contention throughout the country, as evidenced in Aaron Gunn’s documentary, Canada is Dying, and in U.K. Telegraph journalist Steven Edginton’s mini-documentary, Canada’s Woke Nightmare: A Warning to the West.
Gunn, who has since become a Conservative Party candidate, previously noted that his film shows clearly the “general societal chaos and explosion of drug use in every major Canadian city” since lax policies were implemented.
“Overdose deaths are up 1,000 percent in the last 10 years,” he said in his film, adding that “every day in Vancouver four people are randomly attacked.”
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