Changes to addiction care won’t work, say NDP, Friends of Medicare
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on April 17, 2025.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
The Alberta NDP and Friends of Medicare advocacy organization have raised alarms about the provincial government’s proposed legislation that will allow people suffering from addictions and mental illness who are deemed a threat to themselves or others to be treated against their will.
On Tuesday, the government introduced Bill 53, the Compassionate Intervention Act, which if passed, will pave the way for treatment or care plans to be requested by family members, health care professionals, guardians, and/or police/peace officers for individuals with severe addictions.
The government says the bill will be a measure of last resort.
If the legislation passes, Alberta will be the first jurisdiction in Canada to implement compassionate care legislation for both adults and youth.
The government says the legislation is based on best practices, citing in part Norway, where 75 per cent of patients with longer care and follow-up periods found intervention helped them.
It also says more than 780 people visited the ER because of substance use more than 10 times in 2023 alone.
But Jane Eremenko, the NDP’s shadow minister for mental health and addictions, calls the legislation the result of a failed UCP drug policy.
“It will do nothing to address the public safety issues that our communities are facing,” Eremenko said in a statement.
There’s no evidence that forced treatment works.
“The UCP government has promised 11 recover communities and opened three, leading to average wait times of three months. This model will do nothing to stop homelessness, nor will it stop Albertans from starting to use drugs. The UCP has cut prevention and early intervention funding and is now turning to a measure that raises serious ethical and legal questions,” the MLA for the riding of Calgary-Currie added.
Friends of Medicare says the legislation is dangerous, ineffective and not compassionate.
“The government is stubbornly moving forward with this ideological bill despite a lack of evidence to support forced treatment. In fact, there is evidence to show this approach could very well result in further harm and more fatalities,” said a statement by Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare.
“We regularly hear stories from Albertans who voluntarily seek out mental health or addictions support, but can’t find it or are told they’ll have to wait.” Gallaway added, “The real issue we need to tackle is a lack of access to timely care, not a push to further criminalize those who use drugs.”
Gallaway said since the launch of Recovery Alberta, the UCP government’s priority has been the interests of the private recovery industry.
“The combination of forced treatment legislation, along with funding for many new private facilities, has created a market for private recovery businesses to profit off of the health and addictions care needs of Albertans,” said Gallaway.
The government believes that voluntary approaches to treatment haven’t been accessed or have been ineffective for those with the most severe addictions problems.
On Tuesday, it said compassionate intervention “will offer secure or ommunity-based care plans tailored to individual recovery needs and timelines, incorporating robust case management for clients.”
Statistics provided by the province on Tuesday show that in 2024, substances killed 1,414 Albertans and there were 10,955 EMS responses to opioid-related issues. Province-wide, there were 76,054 visits to emergency departments because of substance use and 26,082 hospitalizations.
20-19
It is telling that the UCP fail to provide adequate treatment within the health care system, but are willing to create concentration camps for addicts. Force and violence must be in their blood.
Any better ideas other than pretending you’re Kreskin.
NDP has a better idea? “Safe” injection sites so they continue their destructive habits till they kill themselves? The he@lth care system overload will benefit when the repeat offenders stop abusing the system.
I do agree with you old school, many do not realize how crippling this crisis has been on the healthcare system, yet the NDP who caused many of the shortages in healthcare by allowing the drug crisis to explode and adding to the crisis will never take the blame.
All they know how to do is criticize and blame and will never take responsibility for what they caused with their policies! Police, fire and paramedics have also been run ragged from this crisis!
The drug addiction crisis were the drivers of homeless issues, increased crime issues, first responder staffing shortages, but more we must not ignore the huge increase in child sexual exploitation/pornography that is also associated with increases in organized crime. It all is connected!
America is now the biggest human trafficker of sexual child exploitation! The great America! Many refuse to look at the darkness this crisis has brought into society!
How did the NDP cause the healthcare problems in Alberta? They didn’t do that at all. Alberta still hasn’t recovered from Ralph Klein’s senseless cuts to the public healthcare system. Ralph Klein closed down hospitals in Alberta, and he got other hospitals in Alberta demolished. Existing hospitals in Alberta were badly underfunded. Ralph Klein also laid off many nurses. The NDP couldn’t fix that in 4 years.
The UCP have made matters worse with the public healthcare system in Alberta. The UCP blew a lot of money scrapping the construction of a beneficial superlab that the NDP started to build for Alberta. The NDP were going to get Edmonton a much needed, brand new hospital, and the UCP stopped that. The NDP fixed the problems with DynaLife, and the UCP reversed those changes, and made things worse. The UCP then realized they were wrong, and blew around $100 million on the DynaLife debacle, which the UCP caused. The UCP blew $80 million on Turkish Tylenol, which couldn’t be used. The UCP blew $253,000 and $2 million on Preston Manning, to produce a covid report that is junk. The UCP blew another $2 million and added costs on other people to produce another pandemic management report for Alberta, which is also junk. The UCP hired many more of their Conservative crony friends to help dismantle AHS, which has only made matters worse, because in 2018, AHS was ranked among the best healthcare system administrators in the world. The UCP blew well over $600 million on the Corrupt Care scandal, which the R.C.M.P are now investigating. The UCP have also treated medical professionals in Alberta with disdain.
If you believe that the NDP are responsible for this, you are very mistaken. The NDP weren’t responsible for this at all.
an honest and common sense entry, but downvoted by the dark ages, intolerant folk that believe god is a conservative.
Safe injection sites were implemented in different places for the following reasons. People were encountering used needles in public places, such as parks, and even on private property, which isn’t safe. There were people who were overdosing and dying in washrooms of businesses, stores, public libraries, transit terminals, which also isn’t good. The safe injection sites were put there to counter those problems.
Forced treatment for addictions has been proven to have the least successful outcome, in comparison to other treatment options for addictions. Medical professionals, with many years of experience have concluded this. The UCP does things based on ideology, and doesn’t listen to the experts.
Forced addictions treatment has the least successful results, but the UCP, who follow ideology over expertise, would not know that.
https://harvardpublichealth.org/policy-practice/involuntary-commitment-not-solution-to-addiction-housing-instability/
https://www.harmonyridgerecovery.com/is-forced-rehab-effective-for-addiction-recovery/
quite right.
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I thought the Friends of Medicare was supposed to be non-partisan, yet they continually appear to be part of an NDP coalition by their actions!
Show me the emperical data that says it doesn’t work from the research!
I have been on the frontlines and watched people die on the streets in inhumane conditions, sleeping rough, when they could be in a shelter, losing toes, fingers, feet, etc., in winter from the addiction and watched pimps who they say are the prostitutes ‘husbands’ beat up their wives who prostitute to pay for the drugs. How in Hell is the ‘compassionate!’
I have talked to friends who have lost their sons and daughters and society could do nothing to help those parents get them off the streets because of there were no programs/laws to do so, all while they sunk deeper into the abyss of addiction. Parents now have a tool to save their children! Will it be 100% effective . . . of course not, nothing is!
I am confident this will save more lives than not having it! This same NDP/Friends of Medicare group promoted harm reduction and SCS sites that proved to increase fatal overdose death and addiction. The proof for these sites over the years shows the more sites you open the more addicts and fatal overdoses there are per capita across the Western provinces. That is easily to calculate!
Once again the fearmongers are screaming from the rooftops “it won’t work” just as they did when the UCP moved away from the failed NDP harm reduction policies into a treatment recovery model that has proven to be extremely effective and saved hundreds of Albertan lives already!
I am tired of this constant power struggle the NDP continues to employ in an effort to discredit the UCP so they can gain power again! You appear to ignore the welfare of the people and lives of the addicted or your quest to govern! Your harm reduction model failed and BC started it over 20 years ago and still will not admit it is a failure! Thousands are now dead along with families devastated!
How can a group that says they are the FRIENDS of Medicare called a program that parents can now use to save their children from the life of addiction be a compassinate group, I ask?? You ignore the state these people are living in on the streets that sucks kills their body, mind and soul, living in conditions that many non-profit animal protection organizations fight to change! You seem to think those with addictions do not even deserve the same rights as dogs, cats, cattle, etc. and want to allow their life in Hell to continue until the addiction kills them. They have no clue what it is like for these people on the streets!
Stop this attack . . . find some compassion yourselves instead of falsely accusing others! Find another hill to fight on!!
The UCP is on the right track and I guarantee many parents now are happy they have some hope in saving their addicted child that the NDP policies helped enable and encourage into this Hell!
Professionals, who aren’t blinded by ideology, like the UCP are, know that forced treatment for addictions isn’t a success.
https://harvardpublichealth.org/policy-practice/involuntary-commitment-not-solution-to-addiction-housing-instability/
https://www.harmonyridgerecovery.com/is-forced-rehab-effective-for-addiction-recovery/
in 2018 while researching alternatives to SCS sites I spoke with a person who in 2014 started a successful program in Johnson City, TN. It proved that forced treatment works if that treatment is effective and deals with issues such as ACES, PTSD or other trauma . . .That was an award winning program that spawned several other treatment programs which spread through that area of the US.
That program was taken over by TN Corrections after they witnessed an 83% reduction in recidivism . . . but once Corrections took it over, they made changes to that program and although it was still successful, it was not as effective!
I have been fully engaged in several areas of this crisis since 2016 and have done a considerable amount of research, including walking the Vancouver DTES back alleys.
I am sick and tired of hearing academics how look a books and statistics and maybe spend 2 hours walking around the impacted areas, then believe they know what will work!
The NDP has proven in BC what doesn’t work . . . since 2003 they have tried several insane polices that all failed and that is all the tangible proof anyone needs to know. . . BC is on the wrong pathway!
No argument is needed!
I have talked to people who have lost their loved ones, and how they tried desperately to get them off the streets . . . some spending over $50,000 for treatment programs, but if you don’t have an effective treatment program, it will fail!
When Alberta started the drug court program in Edmonton years ago, it was forced treatment . . . the choice was treatment or jail!!!
It had success rates of over 80%!
I could find you studies that show that forced treatment does work! So don’t bother throwing studies at me!
I have done my own research and spoke personally with people who developed successful forced treatment programs! The treatment must be effective,. . . there must be follow up, upgrading and job placement if needed and those programs are not short term and with follow up need to be at least 18 months but 2 years is better!
The UCP has had to deal with the mess the NDP harm reduction programs caused and getting treatment centers staffed with people who are qualified has been just as hard as finding people in other areas of healthcare!
If we had retained the strong stance against drug use, focused on treatment recovery programs, and didn’t defund police at such a crucial time several years ago, then as Say What stated, we would not be in this mess, because . . .”The drug addiction crisis were the drivers of homeless issues, increased crime issues, first responder staffing shortages, but more we must not ignore the huge increase in child sexual exploitation/pornography that is also associated with increases in organized crime. It all is connected! “
I know this will help save lives, but you probably think police are going to go around picking up all the addicts, throwing them in their police van and taking to some treatment center . . . that is not how it will work and it is still being implemented and will take time to get up to speed, just like building treatment centers and staffing them . . . it takes time!
We are on the right track and no academic will ever be able to prove different! Why would people be so desperate to prevent a program that has already seen positive results employed to save lives??
This is part of the problem with wokeism and the progressives!
Chronic suffering addicts have lost the choice to say ‘No’ to drugs. That is what it is like to be an addict… can’t quit when they start nor can they quit altogether; until their addiction has been treated. Is it more humane to watch them literally die before your eyes on the streets?? No. No, it’s not.
Let the people who love and know them the best make the choice for them. This isn’t a ‘forever camp’. Let them Experience sobriety in a safe environment. For many it has literally been years upon years since they were clean and sober. It is Only a beginning for them to try to live a clean and happy life.
This is their Only chance for life or death. Addiction is seriously fatal.
I totally support this initiative!
Forced addictions treatment has the least amount of success, in comparison to other treatment options. Medical professionals, with years of experience, have shown that.
From the National Library of Medicine.
Despite widespread implementation of compulsory treatment modalities for drug dependence, there has been no systematic evaluation of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of compulsory drug treatment.
So let’s give it a shot. The FOM have no proof, but screech it won’t work, and yes the local chapter are from the SACLA NDP club, etc. whine about everything.
this link provided by dwayne.w, is worth a read.
i will add that there is enough forced rehab well underway in the excited states, and we should acknowledge there is not any unbiased – as in honest – outcome that surely suggests forced rehab is a worthy approach.
as for the suggestion we should give it a try here, just to see, well, in addition to it being an infringement on one’s basic rights and freedoms, it is rather curious as to how this even rolls out: there has long been a large backlog, as in lack of services, to accommodate those whom are VOLUNTARILY seeking rehab.
what i see here is another cash cow being created for private sector opportunists who can have their pockets lined, while kicking back, in this case, to the ucp. not that such arrangements are novel by any means, but i suspect the real winners will not be addicts, but the private providers and the party giving the green light.
Cash cow? Oh please . . . if that were the case then Arches, Mom’s Stop the Harm and many other supposed ‘non-profits’ would be in that cash cow group! Arches Executive Director, I won’t name her but many know her, made over $300,000 in her last year of reign . . . from the noted on the government of Canada website.
So you propose giving everyone safe supply drugs (which they don’t take but sell, because there isn’t the ‘buzz’ from them they get from street drugs, then use that money to buy street drugs), opening another 30 SCS sites in Alberta which statistically are proven to increase drug use . . . BC has 50 sites and the highest fatal overdose numbers per capita in Canada, while Alberta has 7 and the one of the lowest per capita fatal overdoses of the Western provinces, SK has one and Manitoba, when I did the research last year had none, but all three had much lower fatal overdoses per capita than BC. . . .bring in another 40 non-profits to suck more money away from other donor driven organizations such as the Cancer Society, Heart and Stroke foundation, food banks, etc., to support all the people on the streets . . . and slowly watch themselves kill themselves on our streets. . . as they commit crimes and organized crime grows . . . increasing sex trafficking, child pornography/sexual exploitation, money laundering, gun smuggling, fraud, drug smuggling/trafficking/labs, and business slowly die downtown, leaving a void for all the addicts and criminals to burn down . . . that is what you want!!!!
That costs society and it costing the taxpayer tens of billions across annually, but you want it to continue as thousands of young lives are taken from their families and society slides into the abyss . . . All because your woke opinion is that it is my body and I can do anything I want to it because it is mine! . . . Not when it cost the taxpayers billions, destroys businesses that pay for your AISH payments, and creates tensions with our US neighbours that again, costs business . . . without businesses to employ people there are no taxes collected to pay for you AISH and other social services so you would be on the street!
Alberta has already proven their plans work, with over 60% reduction in fatal overdoses last year in Lethbridge and over 40% province wide.
It takes time to correct the mistakes of harm reduction policies the previous government put in place and if you ask the families of those who watched their kids die on the streets, they will say that they wish it was in place when their kids were still alive!
A similar program has been in place for decades where someone who is chronic in suicide attempts can be hospitalized and forced into treatment, but that is a much different scenario.
I remember you saying that the Alberta treatment recovery model would fail . . . there is now tangible proof that it succeeded in saving lives.
Many of those treated successfully are happy they are no longer on the streets, on drugs living in conditions that are hellish!