Alberta
Red Deer to have a drug treatment court to help break the cycle of crime and addiction
From the Province of Alberta
Supporting recovery and combatting drugs in Red Deer
A new drug treatment court in Red Deer will help support addiction treatment and recovery, while increased support for law enforcement will target drug traffickers and suppliers.
Red Deer will have one of five drug treatment courts outside of Edmonton and Calgary as part of government’s four-year investment of up to $20 million toward expanding the program across the province.
The government is also providing Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams (ALERT) with a $50-million budget increase for initiatives to disrupt and dismantle organized crime. A portion of this new funding will allow ALERT to expand regional organized crime units across the province, including the addition of three new investigators to the regional unit based in Red Deer.
“Our government will be opening a drug treatment court in Red Deer to reduce crime by offering treatment to those struggling with addiction to help get their lives back on track. We are also ensuring law enforcement in central Alberta have the resources they need to disrupt and dismantle the organized crime groups that traffic and supply the illegal drugs that fuel addiction and take a terrible toll on our communities.”
“Our government has made several important investments in mental health and addiction services across the province over the last year to ensure all Albertans have access to the supports they need to get on the road to recovery. This announcement is no exception. Drug treatment courts are an important way to help Albertans on the road to recovery. We are committed to ensuring people everywhere, including in Red Deer, get the support they need now and in the future.”
“I am pleased that our government has chosen Red Deer as one of the locations for five new drug treatment courts in Alberta. This provides a new avenue for Albertans struggling with substance abuse in central Alberta. I look forward to seeing the positive impact it has on its participants, their families, and our broader community.”
“The City of Red Deer welcomes news that the Government of Alberta has selected our city for a drug treatment court. With the significant public safety and health issues our community and region are facing, this will help to break the systemic cycle of addiction and crime as a much-needed alternative legal mechanism, as well as alleviate backlog pressures currently facing our justice system locally. Additional capacity in the local justice system will also help support the interests of victims of crime.”
Expanding drug treatment courts
Drug treatment courts help break the cycle of crime motivated by addiction by giving people who commit non-violent offences access to judicially supervised treatment and recovery. Treatment is supplemented by frequent drug testing, incentives, sanctions and social services support.
“A drug treatment court in Red Deer will be an integral part of a positive, fundamental course correction in the public interest, providing opportunities for us to support individuals choosing to forsake crime, make restitution, and seek freedom from addictions, while respecting businesses and families in our wonderful community. Better days are ahead.”
“Rehabilitation of offenders is part of the sentencing regime courts must follow. Those people who are motivated to commit offences because of their addiction to drugs are often most in need of rehabilitation. A drug treatment court serving Red Deer and surrounding areas will assist the court in meeting this objective and we very much look forward to this addition to the court in central Alberta.”
“Drug treatment court is the reason I am alive today. I was facing four years in jail for trafficking methamphetamine in Camrose and was so sick and deep into my addiction that my life was falling apart. My children and I were near death. Today, I am proud to say that I continue my life in recovery and advocate for others who struggle with addictions and mental health.”
“Drug treatment court was an integral part of my recovery journey. Like many, I caused a tremendous amount of harm while in active addiction. Without this program, I might not be alive today and I certainly wouldn’t be living a quality life in recovery. I am grateful for this government’s continued expansion of this program so others get the same opportunity for recovery that it gave me.”
“Parents Empowering Parents (PEP) has built a strong partnership with the drug treatment court program over the years. This innovative program and the partnership we’ve built has meant that participants and their families are supported through their long-term recovery. We are excited to hear about the expansion of this program across the province and look forward to seeing its positive impacts.”
“The announcement of the Red Deer Drug Treatment Court is an indication of the innovative and progressive work that Minister Schweitzer has undertaken to combat rural crime in Alberta. Drug treatment courts have proven success in creating the opportunity to change the lives of those who are caught in this cycle of addiction and crime.”
New funding will be used to establish drug treatment courts in five locations outside of Calgary and Edmonton. The court in Red Deer, along with a new program in Lethbridge announced earlier this year, is expected to be operational by late 2021. Three additional sites have yet to be determined.
Drug treatment courts have been operating in Edmonton since 2005 and Calgary since 2007, and part of the $20 million in additional funding is also being used to double the total combined capacity of the two existing courts to about 80 participants a year.
Expanding ALERT
As part of a build-up of regional organized crime units around the province, ALERT is adding three positions to an existing team of 15 investigators based in Red Deer.
“The added resources, and enhancement of our ALERT team in Red Deer, will create more opportunities for collaboration, intelligence sharing, and provide a more versatile response to serious and organized crime in the central Alberta region.”
This move will expand ALERT’s geographic reach in rural areas. It also creates opportunities for investigators from smaller law enforcement agencies to gain experience working on complex cases, which they take back to their respective organizations.
Alberta
Sylvan Lake high school football coach fired for criticizing gender ideology sends legal letter to school board
From LifeSiteNews
The letter on behalf of Alberta high school volunteer football coach Taylor ‘Teej’ Johannesson mentions ‘workplace harassment’ while demanding his job back.
A Sylvan Lake high school football coach who was fired for sharing his views opposing transgender ideology on social media in a video discussing his Christian faith sent a legal demand to his former school board demanding he get his job back.
H.J. Cody High School volunteer coach Taylor “Teej” Johannesson, as reported by LifeSiteNews, earlier this month was fired by his school’s principal because he spoke out against gender-confused youth who “take their hatred of Christians” to another level by committing violent acts against them.
School principal Alex Lambert fired Teej, as he is known, as a result of a TikTok video in which he speaks out against radical gender ideology and the dangers it brings.
In a recent update involving his case, local media with knowledge of Johannesson’s issues with the principal at H.J. Cody High School in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, confirmed a legal demand letter was sent to the school.
The letter reads, “From his perspective, this opposition is consistent with the Alberta government’s position and legislation prohibiting prescribing prescription hormones to minors and providing care to them that involves transition surgeries.”
In the letter, the school board’s “workplace harassment” procedure is mentioned, stating, “Any act of workplace harassment or workplace violence shall be considered unacceptable conduct whether that conduct occurs at work, on Division grounds, or at division-sponsored activities.”
The legal demand letter, which was sent to school officials last week, reads, “Given that Mr. Johannesson’s expression in the TikTok Video was not connected to his volunteer work, the principal and the division have no authority to regulate his speech and punish him by the Termination decision, which is ultra vires (“beyond the powers.)”
Johannesson has said, in speaking with local media, that his being back at work at the school as a volunteer coach has meaning: “It’s about trying to create some change within the school system.”
He noted how, for “too long,” a certain “political view, one ideology, has taken hold in the school system.”
“I’m hoping that this demand letter, and all the attention that they’ve gotten over this, causes them to make some change,” he stated.
Johannesson has contacted Alberta’s Chief of Staff for the Minister of Education about his firing and was told that there is a board meeting taking place over the demand letter.
According to Teej, Lambert used his TikTok video as an excuse to get rid of someone in the school with conservative political views and who is against her goal to place “safe space stickers” all over the school.
Teej has been in trouble before with the school administration. About three years ago, he was called in to see school officials for posting on Twitter a biological fact that “Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina.”
Alberta’s Conservative government under Premier Danielle Smith has in place a new policy protecting female athletes from gender-confused men that has taken effect across the province.
As LifeSiteNews previously reported, the Government of Alberta is currently fighting a court order that is blocking the province’s newly passed ban on transgender surgeries and drugs for children.
Alberta also plans to ban books with sexually explicit as well as pornographic material, many of which contain LGBT and even pedophilic content, from all school libraries.
From LifeSiteNews
By
The revised rules no longer place restrictions on written descriptions of sexual content.
Some parental rights advocates have taken issue with the Conservative government of Alberta’s recent updates to a ban on sexually explicit as well as pornographic material from all school libraries, saying the new rules water down the old ones as they now allow for descriptions of extreme and graphic sexual acts in written form.
As reported by LifeSiteNews last week, Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides of the ruling United Conservative Party (UCP) released revised rules outlining the province’s ban on sexually explicit content in school libraries.
The original ban included all forms of sexually explicit as well as pornographic material. However, after a large public school board alleged the ban applied to classic books, the government changed the rules, removing a clause for written sexual content that has some parental rights groups up in arms.
Tanya Gaw, founder of the conservative-leaning Action4Canada, noted to media that while she is happy with Premier Danielle Smith for the original book ban, she has deep concerns with the revised rules.
“We are very concerned about the decision that no longer places restrictions on written descriptions of those acts, which is problematic,” she said in an interview with The Epoch Times.
Gaw noted how kids from kindergarten to grade 12 should “never” be “exposed to graphic written details of sex acts: incest, molestation, masturbation, sexual assaults, and profane vulgar language.”
According to John Hilton-O’Brien, who serves as the executive director of Parents for Choice in Education, the new rule changes regarding written depictions “still shifts the burden onto parents to clean up what should never have been purchased in the first place.”
He did say, however, that the new “Ministerial Order finally makes catalogs public, and what we see there is troubling.”
Alberta’s revised rules state that all school library books must not contain “explicit visual depictions of a sexual act.” To make it clear, the standards in detail go over the types of images that are banned due to their explicit pornographic nature.
All Alberta schools have until October 31 to provide a list of books that will be removed under the new rules, with the ban taking effect on January 5, 2026.
As reported by LifeSiteNews in May, Smith’s UCP government went ahead with plans to ban books with sexually explicit as well as pornographic material, many of which contain LGBT and even pedophilic content, from all school libraries.
The ban was to take effect on October 1.
The UCP’s crackdown on sexual content in school libraries comes after several severely sexually explicit graphic novels were found in school libraries in Calgary and Edmonton.
The pro-LGBT books in question at multiple school locations are Gender Queer, a graphic novel by Maia Kobabe; Flamer, a graphic novel by Mike Curato; Blankets, a graphic novel by Craig Thompson; and Fun Home, a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel.
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