Should the province’s 2025 budget get passed, both Calgary and Edmonton will share in a bundle of cash to build two new drug addiction treatment centres.

The announcement was made by Premier Danielle Smith and Dan Williams, Minister of Mental Health and Addiction, on Monday in Calgary. The premier said that the projects will receive $180 million over the next three years to build 150 secure beds each, laying the groundwork for the implementation of the planned Compassionate Care Act.

Construction would begin in 2026, and the facilities would be operational by 2029, Premier Smith said.

Premier Smith said she didn’t want to go down the path of creating policies that tolerate and facilitate addiction.

“There is no compassion in leaving people to suffer in the throes of addiction,” Premier Smith told reporters.

“We will not sacrifice our communities or give up on those suffering from addiction.”

 The premier touted the work they’ve already done, saying that it led to a 39 per cent decrease in opioid-related fatalities for the first 10 months of 2024, compared with the same timeframe in 2023.

Amy Schiffner, the mom of an adult who is dealing with addiction, said that her son’s challenges started when he was 14. Her family faced incidents of self-harm, suicide attempts, and emergency calls, including an overdose she said haunts her to this day.

“My heart shattered as my son stepped away from the sanctuary of our home, choosing the grip of drugs over the stability of our home, family, school, and a future,” she said.

“Each night, the silence of his absence pressing down on us as we lay awake overwhelmed by worry and fear of where he might be and whether he was safe, I found myself making the unbearable call that no parent ever wishes to make reported my son missing.”

They searched for weeks until EMS responded to an overdose call on the LRT and it was her son, she said. From there, they sought more program, more help and detox.

“Yet we found ourselves trapped in a relentless cycle of setback, each more devastating than the last,” Schiffner said.

“It is essential to understand that those suffering from severe addiction may not be able to choose treatment rationally.”

Complex, and perhaps causing more harm than good: Dr. Ghosh

Earlier this month, LWC was the first to report that a mandatory drug addiction treatment centre was coming to Calgary. It was coming alongside the introduction of the aforementioned Compassionate Care Act.

Dr. Monty Ghosh, internist and drug addiction specialist and assistant professor at both the University of Calgary and University of Alberta said that the outcomes of these types of programs are difficult to evaluate, largely because there are a variety of therapies.  When you mix that in with the patient’s rights, legal concerns and ethical concerns, the outcomes are questionable.

“There’s a lot of complexity and are we causing more harm than good to this patient population with those complexities added, especially knowing that a large portion of population experiences substance use has a history of trauma,” he said.

“So, we would be re-traumatizing them by placing them in a space where they’re involuntarily being treated.”

Minister Williams said that this is a health care policy, not a justice policy. He said that there will be the ability of family members, guardians, peace officers and law enforcement, along with health care professionals to petition for treatment. That petition will go to a commission whose responsibility will be to protect civil liberties.

“Then these facilities will be a first touch point with secure treatment capacity that integrate into a wider continuum of care when it comes to addiction treatment,” he said.

Williams said that the centres would be operated by Recovery Alberta and would not be operated by the private sector.

In a prepared media release, the Alberta NDP tried to tie this announcement to the recent allegations surrounding AHS procurement irregularities.

“Given the UCP’s CorruptCare scandal, Albertans have every reason to question this government’s ability to deliver addiction services—or, frankly, any sort of health care—in an ethical way. We cannot trust any of it,” read a statement from Janet Eremenko, shadow minister for mental health and addiction for the Alberta NDP.

“The Minister of Mental Health and Addiction is alleged to have been aware of the CorruptCare allegations and did nothing to stop them. Furthermore, the Premier’s former Chief of Staff is also named in the allegations, someone who has been instrumental in the development of the Alberta Recovery Model.”