Addictions
Province providing $17 Million to double crisis teams in Edmonton adding support throughout the city
Helping people in need, keeping Edmonton safe
Alberta’s government is partnering with the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) to help address the addiction crisis by connecting more people to much-needed supports.
Alberta’s government is continuing to take action to keep communities safe while treating mental health and addiction as health care issues. Through Budget 2023, an investment of $17 million over three years will double the number of Human-centred Engagement and Liaison Partnership (HELP) teams in Edmonton and provide recovery-oriented health supports to people in EPS custody.
“We are continuing to take a fair, firm and compassionate approach towards addressing addiction and mental health issues while keeping communities safe. Police are vital partners in addressing the complex social challenges facing Edmonton, and our government is proud to be partnering with them to help connect Albertans to the supports that they need.”
“Edmonton police are serving on the front lines of the addiction crisis and have an important role to play. This funding brings together health professionals, community partners and police through partnerships that share a common goal: helping more people get well and pursue recovery while keeping our communities safe.”
“As MLA for Edmonton-South West, I am pleased to see that our government has allotted much needed funding to create more HELP teams to support the Edmonton Police Service. The new support will help address the public safety, mental health and addiction crisis in the city. The safety of the people of Edmonton is paramount. No one should be afraid to walk alone in our streets. We all share a common goal of providing adequate supports while keeping our communities safe”.
This funding includes:
- $3.5 million for 12 new social navigator positions and two team leads, which will double the number of HELP teams in Edmonton
- $2 million for eight new social navigator positions to support the EPS Divergence and Desistance Branch
- $2.4 million for eight mental health therapists to support Edmonton’s 911 Dispatch Centre and EPS officers over the phone with clinical expertise
- $6.3 million to add the following health professionals:
- two full-time health care practitioners, two paramedics, two recovery coaches and 12 community safety officers at EPS Downtown Division
- two paramedics at EPS Northwest Division
- $2 million for equipment, training, administrative and other related costs
- $858,000 in one-time capital funding for six new HELP team vehicles and facility upgrades
These initiatives are part of ongoing efforts led by the Edmonton Public Safety and Community Response Task Force to improve public safety while treating addiction and mental health as health care issues. These efforts also include tripling the number of Police and Crisis Teams (PACT) in Edmonton to support people experiencing a mental health crisis.
Expanding outreach teams in Edmonton
Like many large cities, Edmonton has been hard hit by the addiction crisis, and this is especially evident in the downtown area. Expanding outreach teams in Edmonton will help respond to an urgent need to connect people struggling with mental health and addiction to critical services and mitigate social disorder.
“Community wellness and community safety go hand in hand. The HELP team has shown impressive results, and we are proud to continue building on their good work and introduce more integrated health services for people in police custody. We are grateful for the support of the government. These actions are important steps in responding to the complex social issues facing our city.”
“Additional support for the HELP teams is positive news for Edmonton. This investment is key in breaking the cycle, by shifting the focus on mental health and addiction away from enforcement and directing individuals to programs and services that can help them live with hope and dignity.”
Alberta’s government is doubling the number of HELP teams in Edmonton. These teams pair police officers with social navigators from local community organizations who can help Albertans access recovery-oriented supports. The province is also providing funding to add social navigators to the EPS Divergence and Desistance Branch, which works with individuals who most frequently interact with the health and justice systems, and to place AHS mental health therapists in Edmonton’s 911 Dispatch Centre and to have mental health therapists available to support EPS officers over the phone with clinical expertise.
Providing addiction and mental health support in police custody
Police officers frequently respond to calls related to addiction and mental health. By offering a range of services and supports for people in police custody, Alberta’s government can support Albertans with complex addiction and mental health challenges while improving public safety for everyone.
People detained on a public intoxication charge will be assessed and provided options for treatment and support in a secure environment at the Edmonton Police Service Downtown Division. This location is close to both the downtown core and Chinatown, which are areas of Edmonton where significant public safety concerns have been identified by the city, local businesses, business associations and Edmontonians. Health professionals will offer medical support, connect clients with other social and mental health and addiction supports, and provide referrals to programs like the Virtual Opioid Dependency Program, which provides same-day access to life-saving medications.
In December 2022, Alberta’s government established two cabinet task forces to bring community partners together to address the issues of addiction, homelessness and public safety in Calgary and Edmonton. The two Public Safety and Community Response Task Forces are responsible for implementing $187 million in provincial funding to further build out a recovery-oriented system of addiction and mental health care. The initiatives being implemented are part of a fair, firm and compassionate approach to keeping communities safe while treating addiction and mental health as health care issues.
Budget 2023 secures Alberta’s future by transforming the health care system to meet people’s needs, supporting Albertans with the high cost of living, keeping our communities safe and driving the economy with more jobs, quality education and continued diversification.
Quick facts
- Health services staff at the EPS Downtown Division will be able to assess and help up to 17 people at any given time.
- This funding is part of the $63 million for initiatives that specifically increase access to addiction treatment and support in Edmonton, implemented through the Edmonton Public Safety and Community Response Task Force.
- Albertans experiencing addiction or mental health challenges can contact 211 for information on services in their community. 211 is free, confidential and available 24-7.
- Albertans struggling with opioid addiction can contact the Virtual Opioid Dependency Program (VODP) by calling 1-844-383-7688, seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. VODP provides same-day access to addiction medicine specialists. There is no wait list.
Addictions
Ontario to restrict Canadian government’s supervised drug sites, shift focus to helping addicts
From LifeSiteNews
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government tabled the Safer Streets, Stronger Communities Act that will place into law specific bans on where such drug consumption sites are located.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is making good on a promise to close so-called drug “supervision” sites in his province and says his government will focus on helping addicts get better instead of giving them free drugs.
Ford’s Progressive Conservative government on Monday tabled the Safer Streets, Stronger Communities Act that will place into law specific bans on where such drug consumption sites are located.
Specifically, the new bill will ban “supervised” drug consumption sites from being close to schools or childcare centers. Ten sites will close for now, including five in Toronto.
The new law would prohibit the “establishment and operation of a supervised consumption site at a location that is less than 200 meters from certain types of schools, private schools, childcare centers, Early child and family centers and such other premises as may be prescribed by the regulations.”
It would also in effect ban municipalities and local boards from applying for an “exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (Canada) for the purpose of decriminalizing the personal possession of a controlled substance or precursor.”
Lastly, the new law would put strict “limits” on the power municipalities and local boards have concerning “applications respecting supervised consumption sites and safer supply services.”
“Municipalities and local boards may only make such applications or support such applications if they have obtained the approval of the provincial Minister of Health,” the bill reads.
The new bill is part of a larger omnibus bill that makes changes relating to sex offenders as well as auto theft, which has exploded in the province in recent months.
In September, Ford had called the federal government’s lax drug policies tantamount to being the “biggest drug dealer in the entire country” and had vowed to act.
‘No’ new drug sites in Ontario, vows Health Minister
In speaking about the new bill, Ontario Minister of Health Sylvia Jones said the Ford government does not plan to allow municipal requests to the government regarding supervised consumption sites.
“Municipalities and organizations like public health units have to first come to the province because we don’t want them bypassing and getting any federal approval for something that we vehemently disagree with,” Jones told the media on Monday.
She also clarified that “there will be no further safe injection sites in the province of Ontario under our government.”
Ontario will instead create 19 new intensive addiction recovery to help those addicted to deadly drugs.
Alberta and other provinces have had success helping addicts instead of giving them free drugs.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, deaths related to opioid and other drug overdoses in Alberta fell to their lowest levels in years after the Conservative government began to focus on helping addicts via a recovery-based approach instead of the Liberal-minded, so-called “safe-supply” method.
Despite public backlash with respect to supervised drug consumption sites, Health Canada recently approved 16 more drug consumption sites in Ontario. Ford mentioned in the press conference that each day he gets “endless phone calls about needles being in the parks, needles being by the schools and the daycares,” calling the situation “unacceptable.”
The Liberals claim their “safer supply” program is good because it is “providing prescribed medications as a safer alternative to the toxic illegal drug supply to people who are at high risk of overdose.”
However, studies have shown that these programs often lead an excess of deaths from overdose in areas where they are allowed.
While many of the government’s lax drug policies continue, they have been forced to backpedal on some of their most extreme actions.
After the federal government allowed British Columbia to decriminalize the possession of hard drugs including heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, meth and MDMA beginning January 1, 2023, reports of overdoses and chaos began skyrocketing, leading the province to request that Trudeau re-criminalize drugs in public spaces.
A week later, the federal government relented and accepted British Columbia’s request.
Addictions
BC Addictions Expert Questions Ties Between Safer Supply Advocates and For-Profit Companies
By Liam Hunt
Canada’s safer supply programs are “selling people down the river,” says a leading medical expert in British Columbia. Dr. Julian Somers, director of the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction at Simon Fraser University, says that despite the thin evidence in support of these experimental programs, the BC government has aggressively expanded them—and retaliated against dissenting researchers.
Somers also, controversially, raises questions about doctors and former health officials who appear to have gravitated toward businesses involved in these programs. He notes that these connections warrant closer scrutiny to ensure public policies remain free from undue industry influence.
Safer supply programs claim to reduce overdoses and deaths by distributing free addictive drugs—typically 8-milligram tablets of hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin—to dissuade addicts from accessing riskier street substances. Yet, a growing number of doctors say these programs are deeply misguided—and widely defrauded.
Ultimately, Somers argues, safer supply is exacerbating the country’s addiction crisis.
Somers opposed safer supply at its inception and openly criticized its nationwide expansion in 2020. He believes these programs perpetuate drug use and societal disconnection and fail to encourage users to make the mental and social changes needed to beat addiction. Worse yet, the safer supply movement seems rife with double standards that devalue the lives of poorer drug users. While working professionals are provided generous supports that prioritize recovery, disadvantaged Canadians are given “ineffective yet profitable” interventions, such as safer supply, that “convey no expectation that stopping substance use or overcoming addiction is a desirable or important goal.”
To better understand addiction, Somers created the Inter-Ministry Evaluation Database (IMED) in 2004, which, for the first time in BC’s history, connected disparate information—i.e. hospitalizations, incarceration rates—about vulnerable populations.
Throughout its existence, health experts used IMED’s data to create dozens of research projects and papers. It allowed Somers to conduct a multi-million-dollar randomized control trial (the “Vancouver at Home” study) that showed that scattering vulnerable people into regular apartments throughout the city, rather than warehousing them in a few buildings, leads to better outcomes at no additional cost.
In early 2021, Somers presented recommendations drawn from his analysis of the IMED to several leading officials in the B.C. government. He says that these officials gave a frosty reception to his ideas, which prioritized employment, rehabilitation, and social integration over easy access to drugs. Shortly afterwards, the government ordered him to immediately and permanently delete the IMED’s ministerial data.
Somers describes the order as a “devastating act of retaliation” and says that losing access to the IMED effectively ended his career as a researcher. “My lab can no longer do the research we were doing,” he noted, adding that public funding now goes exclusively toward projects sympathetic to safer supply. The B.C. government has since denied that its order was politically motivated.
In early 2022, the government of Alberta commissioned a team of researchers, led by Somers, to investigate the evidence base behind safer supply. They found that there was no empirical proof that the experiment works, and that harm reduction researchers often advocated for safer supply within their studies even if their data did not support such recommendations.
Somers says that, after these findings were published, his team was subjected to a smear campaign that was partially organized by the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU), a powerful pro-safer supply research organization with close ties to the B.C. government. The BCCSU has been instrumental in the expansion of safer supply and has produced studies and protocols in support of it, sometimes at the behest of the provincial government.
Somers is also concerned about the connections between some of safer supply’s key proponents and for-profit drug companies.
He notes that the BCCSU’s founding executive director, Dr. Evan Wood, became Chief Medical Officer at Numinus Wellness, a publicly traded psychedelic company, in 2020. Similarly, Dr. Perry Kendall, who also served as a BCCSU executive director, went on to found Fair Price Pharma, a now-defunct for-profit company that specializes in providing pharmaceutical heroin to high-risk drug users, the following year.
While these connections are not necessarily unethical, they do raise important questions about whether there is enough industry regulation to minimize potential conflicts of interest, whether they be real or perceived.
The BCCSU was also recently criticized in an editorial by Canadian Affairs, which noted that the organization had received funding from companies such as Shoppers Drug Mart and Tilray (a cannabis company). The editorial argued that influential addiction research organizations should not receive drug industry funding and reported that Alberta founded its own counterpart to the BCCSU in August, known as the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence, which is legally prohibited from accepting such sponsorships.
Already, private interests are betting on the likely expansion of safer supply programs. For instance, Safe Supply Streaming Co., a publicly traded venture capital firm, has advertised to potential investors that B.C.’s safer supply system could create a multi-billion-dollar annual market.
Somers believes that Canada needs more transparency regarding how for-profit companies may be directly or indirectly influencing policy makers: “We need to know exactly, to the dollar, how much of [harm reduction researchers’] operating budget is flowing from industry sources.”
Editor’s note: This story is published in syndication with Break The Needle and Western Standard.
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Dr. Julian M. Somers is director of the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction at Simon Fraser University. He was Director of the UBC Psychology Clinic, and past president of the BC Psychological Association. Liam Hunt is a contributing author to the Centre For Responsible Drug Policy in partnership with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
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