Council asks minister to close overdose unit

By Lethbridge Herald on December 16, 2025.

Alexandra Noad
Lethbridge Herald
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

City council has decided Lethbridge is in a position to close the local Temporary Overdose Prevention Unit (OPS) and has sent a letter to the provincial government in hopes of keeping the funding currently being used to operate the facility to put towards other programs.

Council, sitting as Special Policy Committee last week, passed a motion to send the letter, with a vote of 7-2.

Mayor Blaine Hyggen emphasizes that the decision to close the OPS isn’t a municipal decision, but a provincial one.

“A decision to remove the OPS is not a decision of council; it’s not a decision we can make that is a provincial responsibility.”

He adds that since 2023 there has been an 89.7 per cent decrease in substance abuse-related deaths, and none of the deaths in 2025 have been in public spaces.

In addition to the decline of substance abuse-related deaths, EMS opioid related events have declined by 80 per cent since 2023.

The OPS has also seen a decline of visits of 91 per cent in the last year.

Hyggen says he believes the reason for the decline in usage is thanks to other programs such as the City’s encampment strategy.

“We got here because of some of the strategies that council put in place and some of those strategies were our encampment strategy, connecting outreach workers to those that are struggling on the streets and that’s an extremely important part.”

The OPS costs more than $3.8 million annually to run and the letter was asking the minister to have the opportunity to reallocate those dollars into a federal program, which the City will be losing funding for in the upcoming year.

“We have a federal program that we’re losing funding on and it’s helping those that are in school to keep them out of this type of a lifestyle and so, if we can take some of those dollars and continue that program, there’s about 20 at-risk youth that are in this program right now.”

Council Al Beeber, who voted against this motion along with Counc. Belinda Crowson, says he did so due to lack of information on how this will impact those currently on the streets.

“This is a complicated thing and for me, as a person who’s representing a community of 110,000, I wanted to make sure I did due diligence, had all the answers before me, but I didn’t have the answers so I don’t want to make a decision that could have a negative impact.”

Beeber adds he had concerns how those on the streets would get supports, since 30 per cent of those using the OPS use it to access reports, along with their clean needle program, which affects the city as a whole.

Despite voting against the motion, he says he fully supports the rest of council’s decision to send the letter to Minister Richard Wilson of Mental Health and Addictions.

“I’m going to trust my colleagues on this thing; they obviously felt this was the right thing to do and these are intelligent people, they do their research, they know what they’re doing (and) their hearts are in the right place.”

Wilson says he looks forward to receiving the letter and helping the city move forward with more of a recovery focused mindset.

“We’re really focused on recovery and I think enabling somebody to stay in a situation like that is a tough thing to do, so if we can help people get into that recovery mode and give them hope and get them out of that cycle of despair, I think that’s what we want to focus on.”

Due to the closure being outside of the control of city council, public consultation was not required.