Health
Update… Improved And Expanded Health Care Coming To Sylvan Lake… With Full Announcements
By Sheldon Spackman
It’s been six years in the making. Finally, improved and expanded health care for Sylvan Lake. The province has announced it will create an “Advanced Ambulatory Care Clinic” at the Sylvan Lake Community Health Centre.
The long-awaited announcement was made at the Sylvan Lake Municipal Government Building Monday afternoon with numerous dignitaries on hand to celebrate. Among them, Alberta’s Health Minister Sarah Hoffman who says the government will provide $2 Million for start-up costs and renovations to the current health facility. She says work will begin this Spring, with the enhanced facility to open early next year. Hoffman says these enhanced health care services will allow the Advanced Ambulatory Care Clinic at the Sylvan Lake Community Health Centre to offer treatment for urgent care and injuries like stitches and basic fractures up to 16 hours a day / seven days a week. Hoffman says “It’s actually really good timing that when he have a bit of a downturn in the economy, you can stretch your capital money a little bit further and we want to get people working as much as possible, so this is a really good fit time-wise.”
Sylvan Lake Mayor Sean McIntyre says he’s very proud and extremely happy to see this project become a reality, both for the town and surrounding region. He says “It’s been a long road, six years that we’ve been advocating very strongly and persistently for this increase in services and now for that need to be acknowledged and met by the Health Ministry and by Alberta Health Services, we have a lot to celebrate in Sylvan Lake today.” McIntyre also points out how incredible the community has been in supporting this initiative, saying “They’ve been fundraising, they’ve been advocating, writing letters, they’ve been both active and patient with our advocacy efforts and this celebration today really belongs to them!”
Former Sylvan Lake Mayor and current Chair of the Sylvan Lake Urgent Care Committee Susan Samson says it’s almost hard not to cry tears of joy, adding “These services are desperately needed. We’re talking about medical services for non-life threatening injuries and our deal was we were always plugging up the Emergency Rooms at the Red Deer Regional Hospital and at other nearby Emergency Rooms with things that should be treated at home. Things like your child with an ear ache or broken bone or just the simple things. We need to treat them at home and take the pressure off the system and that’s what we’ve got today.” Samson speculates the hours of the new services would likely be roughly 8:00 am to 10:00 pm seven days a week but that’s yet to be decided.
Samson says the first part of the renovations will involve relocating physiotherapy at the Sylvan Lake Community Health Centre, as they have a large, open space that will be easy to work in. Samson adds the community helped raise $197,000 for this project over the past six years. She says it will be turned over to AHS to purchase equipment and be added to the $2 Million the Province is providing.
(Photo by Lindsay Wiebe)
armed forces
Yet another struggling soldier says Veteran Affairs Canada offered him euthanasia

From LifeSiteNews
‘It made me wonder, were they really there to help us, or slowly groom us to say āhereās a solution, just kill yourself.’
Yet another Canadian combat veteran has come forward to reveal that when he sought help, he was instead offered euthanasia.Ā
David Baltzer, who served two tours in Afghanistan with the Princess Patriciaās Canadian Light Infantry,Ā revealed to theĀ Toronto SunĀ that he was offered euthanasia on December 23, 2019āmaking him, as theĀ SunĀ noted, āamong the first Canadian soldiers offered therapeutic suicide by the federal government.ā
Baltzer had been having a disagreement with his existing caseworker, when assisted suicide was brought up in in call with a different agent from Veteran Affairs Canada.Ā Ā
āIt made me wonder, were they really there to help us, or slowly groom us to say āhereās a solution, just kill yourself,ā Baltzer told theāÆSun.āI was in my lowest down point, it was just before Christmas. He says to me, āI would like to make a suggestion for you. Keep an open mind, think about it, youāve tried all this and nothing seems to be working, but have you thought about medical-assisted suicide?āāĀ
Baltzer was stunned. āIt just seems to me that they just want us to be like āfāk this, I give up, this sucks, Iād rather just take my own life,āā he said. āThatās how I honestly felt.āĀ
Baltzer, who is from St. Catharines, Ontario, joined up at age 17, and moved to Manitoba to join the Princess Patriciaās Canadian Light Infantry, one of Canadaās elite units. He headed to Afghanistan in 2006. TheĀ SunĀ noted that he āwas among Canadaās first troops deployed to Afghanistan as part Operation Athena, where he served two tours and saw plenty of combat.āĀ
āWe went out on long-range patrols trying to find the Taliban, and thatās exactly what we did,ā Baltzer said. āThe best way I can describe it, it was likeāÆBlack Hawk Down āāÆall of the sudden the sāt hit the fan and I was like āwow, weāre fighting, who would have thought? Canada hasnāt fought like this since the Korean War.āĀ
After returning from Afghanistan, Baltzer says he was offered counselling by Veteran Affairs Canada, but it āwas of little help,ā and he began to self-medicate for his trauma through substance abuse (he noted that he is, thankfully, doing well today). Baltzerās story is part of a growing scandal. As theĀ SunĀ reported:Ā Ā
A key figure shedding light on the VAC MAID scandal was CAF veteran Mark Meincke,āÆwhose trauma-recovery podcastāÆOperation Tango RomeoāÆbroke the story. āVeterans, especially combat veterans, usually donāt reach out for help until like a year longer than they shouldāve,ā Meincke said, telling theāÆSunāÆhe waited over two decades before seeking help.Ā
āWeāre desperate by the time we put our hands up for help. Offering MAID is like throwing a cinderblock instead of a life preserver.ā Meincke said Baltzerās story shoots down VACās assertions blaming one caseworker for offering MAID to veterans, and suggests the problem is far more serious than some rogue public servant.Ā
āIt had to have been policy. because itās just too many people in too many provinces,ā Meincke told theāÆSun.āÆāEvery province has service agents from that province.ā
Veterans Affairs Canada claimed in 2022 that between four and 20 veterans had been offered assisted suicide; Meincke āpersonally knows of five, and said the actual numberās likely close to 20.ā In a previous investigation, VAC claimed that only one caseworker was responsibleāat least for the four confirmed casesāand that the person āwas lo longer employed with VAC.ā Baltzer says VAC should have military vets as caseworkers, rather than civilians who canāt understand what vets have been through.Ā
To date, no federal party leader has referenced Canadaās ongoing euthanasia scandals during the 2025 election campaign.Ā Ā
2025 Federal Election
Study links B.C.ās drug policies to more overdoses, but researchers urge caution

By Alexandra Keeler
A study links B.C.ās safer supply and decriminalization to more opioid hospitalizations, but experts note its limitations
A new study says B.C.ās safer supply and decriminalization policies may have failed to reduce overdoses. Furthermore, the very policies designed to help drug users may have actually increased hospitalizations.
āNeither the safer opioid supply policy nor the decriminalization of drug possession appeared to mitigate the opioid crisis, and both were associated with an increase in opioid overdose hospitalizations,ā the study says.
The study has sparked debate, with some pointing to it as proof that B.C.ās drug policies failed. Others have questioned the studyās methodology and conclusions.
āThe question we want to know the answer to [but cannot] is how many opioid hospitalizations would have occurred had the policy not have been implemented,ā said Michael Wallace, a biostatistician and associate professor at the University of Waterloo.
āWe can never come up with truly definitive conclusions in cases such as this, no matter what data we have, short of being able to magically duplicate B.C.ā
Jumping to conclusions
B.C.ās controversial safer supply policies provide drug users with prescription opioids as an alternative to toxic street drugs. Its decriminalization policy permitted drug users to possess otherwise illegal substances for personal use.
The peer-reviewedĀ studyĀ was led by health economist Hai Nguyen and conducted by researchers from Memorial University in Newfoundland, the University of Manitoba and Weill Cornell Medicine, a medical school in New York City. It was published in the medical journal JAMA Health Forum on March 21.
The researchers used a statistical method to create a āsyntheticā comparison group, since there is no ideal control group. The researchers then compared B.C. to other provinces to assess the impact of certain drug policies.
Examining data from 2016 to 2023, the study links B.C.ās safer supply policies to a 33 per cent rise in opioid hospitalizations.
The study says the provinceās decriminalization policies further drove up hospitalizations by 58 per cent.
āNeither the safer supply policy nor the subsequent decriminalization of drug possession appeared to alleviate the opioid crisis,ā the study concludes. āInstead, both were associated with an increase in opioid overdose hospitalizations.ā
The B.C. government rolled back decriminalization in April 2024 in response to widespread concerns over public drug use. This February, the province also officiallyĀ acknowledgedĀ that diversion of safer supply drugs does occur.
The study did not conclusively determine whether the increase in hospital visits was due to diverted safer supply opioids, the toxic illicit supply, or other factors.
āThere was insufficient evidence to conclusively attribute an increase in opioid overdose deaths to these policy changes,ā the study says.
Nguyenās team had published an earlier, 2024Ā studyĀ in JAMA Internal Medicine that also linked safer supply to increased hospitalizations. However, it failed to control for key confounders such as employment rates and naloxone access. Their 2025 study better accounts for these variables using the synthetic comparison group method.
The studyās authors did not respond to Canadian Affairsā requests for comment.
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Correlation vs. causation
Chris Perlman, a health data and addiction expert at the University of Waterloo, says more studies are needed.
He believes the findings are weak, as they show correlation but not causation.
āThe study provides a small signal that the rates of hospitalization have changed, but I wouldnāt conclude that it can be solely attributed to the safer supply and decrim[inalization] policy decisions,ā said Perlman.
He also noted the rise in hospitalizations doesnāt necessarily mean more overdoses. Rather, more people may be reaching hospitals in time for treatment.
āGiven that the [overdose] rate may have gone down, I wonder if weāre simply seeing an effect where more persons survive an overdose and actually receive treatment in hospital where they would have died in the pre-policy time period,ā he said.
The Nguyen study acknowledges this possibility.
āThe observed increase in opioid hospitalizations, without a corresponding increase in opioid deaths, may reflect greater willingness to seek medical assistance because decriminalization could reduce the stigma associated with drug use,ā it says.
āHowever, it is also possible that reduced stigma and removal of criminal penalties facilitated the diversion of safer opioids, contributing to increased hospitalizations.ā
Karen Urbanoski, an associate professor in the Public Health and Social Policy department at the University of Victoria, is more critical.
āThe [studyās] findings do not warrant the conclusion that these policies are causally associated with increased hospitalization or overdose,ā said Urbanoski, who also holds the Canada Research Chair in Substance Use, Addictions and Health Services.
Her team published aĀ studyĀ in November 2023 that measured safer supplyās impact on mortality and acute care visits. It found safer supply opioids did reduce overdose deaths.
Critics, however,Ā raised concernsĀ that her study misrepresented its underlying data and showed no statistically significant reduction in deaths after accounting for confounding factors.
The Nguyen study differs from Urbanoskiās. While Urbanoskiās team focused on individual-level outcomes, the Nguyen study analyzed broader, population-level effects, including diversion.
Wallace, the biostatistician, agrees more individual-level data could strengthen analysis, but does not believe it undermines the studyās conclusions. Wallace thinks the researchers did their best with the available data they had.
āWe do not have a ācopyā of B.C. where the policies werenāt implemented to compare with,ā said Wallace.
B.C.ās overdoseĀ rateĀ of 775 per 100,000 is well above the national average of 533.
Elenore Sturko, a Conservative MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, has been a vocal critic of B.C.ās decriminalization and safer supply policies.
āIf the government doesnāt want to believe this study, well then I invite them to do a similar study,ā she told reporters on March 27.
āShow us the evidence that they have failed to show us since 2020,ā she added, referring to the year B.C. implemented safer supply.
This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant toĀ Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.
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