The Alberta healthcare system is facing a “crisis” with multiple opioid deaths each day, say health advocates who represent frontline workers.

The Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) and the Friends of Medicare expressed frustration over the Alberta government’s lack of action, planning and consistency on mental health and addictions, in a press conference in southeast Calgary Thursday.

Even after a provincial announcement Tuesday around the new Recovery Alberta system, Mike Parker with the HSAA said the announcement left them puzzled.

“The meetings we had with AHS and Recovery Alberta after the press conference left us with more questions than we went in with,” said Parker. He said the changes were made without consulting the union of healthcare professionals.

The burden is growing, too. The healthcare system and its workers see approximately five to six deaths every day, Parker said.

“That is a crisis,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare.

Both Parker and Gallaway said that frontline workers are not being listened to by the government.  Parker said the Premier’s recent claims on addictions-related deaths being low contradict what healthcare professionals are seeing on the frontlines.

“Seeing them cherry-pick small pieces of data to try to validate that claim was so offensive as they disregard the big number,” said Gallaway, responding to the claim that the Alberta recovery model is successful. 

“Thousands of Albertans dying is not a success.”

The data speaks for the reality of the situation

According to data from the Alberta government, 1,800 Albertans died from drug overdose during the first 11 months of 2023 with 93 per cent related to opioids. Patients are dying daily based on how clients fail to show up to see their healthcare providers and “there’s only one answer,” according to Parker.

“This is a 148 per cent increase in deaths since 2018 and works out to six Albertans on average dying every single day,” said Parker.

Gallaway expressed that the government appears to be following an agenda for further privatization of addiction treatment by prioritizing “a system of unregulated for-profit care providers.”

The representatives of both organizations said that addictions and mental health care are part of healthcare and should be provided by skilled trained healthcare professionals in a public healthcare system as opposed to unqualified workers in the private sector.

“There is no recovery if people are dying every single day,” Gallaway said.

Urgent action needed

The organizations called for a different approach to prevent overdose-related deaths and to act before the crisis becomes worse.

The Premier’s Chief of Staff Marshall Smith admitted at the Recovery Capitol Conference yesterday that the government is not doing a good job of harm reduction as part of the recovery model. Parker said the HSAA agrees. 

“We can’t help people get better if they’re not alive. We are pleading for this government to treat it like it is a healthcare crisis,” said Parker.

“Abstinence alone is not the right strategy for a scale of a crisis this big. We need to do everything we can to prevent overdose deaths.”

In response to a question, Parker emphasized that the poor overall quality of addictions care and counselling is due to a lack of consistency in models across the province. He said that the government has cut, underfunded, and restricted harm reduction programs.

“There’s likely not a person in this province that has not been touched somehow by this tragedy,” Parker said.