Calgarians can hold two truths at once.

The Supervised Consumption Site at the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre has had real impacts on our community. People have raised serious concerns about disorder in the area, and those concerns deserve a response.

At the same time, the Chumir has saved lives by providing a supervised place where overdoses could be reversed while connecting people to care.

The province has confirmed the Chumir supervised consumption services will close on June 30 along with the complete shutdown of Safeworks Connect Team. That is a major decision with major consequences for Calgary’s inner city. It cannot be treated like a simple facility closure.

People struggling with addiction are not suddenly leaving on June 30. Drug use will not evaporate. If current services disappear before functioning alternatives exist, overdoses will move into parks, transit areas, alleys, and doorways. That increases risk for the person in crisis, and the public.

It also increases demand for emergency services. Shutting down the site without a coordinated plan risks more overdoses and open drug use, putting additional strain on local emergency services. Firefighters have seen a significant increase in opioid related calls in Red Deer following the closure of their supervised injection site.

From the perspective of firefighters and frontline responders, this matters because crews are already stretched to the limit, responding to more complex calls, more often, in less controlled environments. When one overdose call ties up a crew, that crew is not available for the next medical emergency, fire, or rescue. That’s the reality residents feel when response times grow, and it’s the reality responders live every shift.

This is why collaboration is not a nice-to-have. It is the difference between an orderly transition and a preventable crisis.

Coordination required to deal with Calgary SCS closure

The Province has outlined replacement elements such as expanded Rapid Access Addiction Medicine services at the Chumir, enhanced intake support, increased withdrawal-management capacity at the Renfrew Recovery Centre, and 24/7 outreach recovery response teams downtown.

Those could be valuable pieces of a better system but they are not the same as a coordinated plan that brings local partners into design and execution.

Without collaboration, municipal services will be forced to absorb the consequences of provincial decisions without being treated as a true partner in what comes next. Waiting to see what gaps emerge and increasing City budgets accordingly will not work, especially with the dramatic increase in the provincial portion of our property taxes and what we know will be significant funding asks by our emergency services for our next 4-year budget in November.

After all, there is only one taxpayer.

Calgarians deserve a systematic approach where the Province works with the City, emergency responders, health providers, and community agencies to answer practical questions before June 30:

• What capacity will exist on day one, and what ramps up later?
• How will “on demand” care work after hours?
• How will 24/7 outreach teams be staffed, deployed, and supported?
• What safeguards prevent a service gap that pushes overdose response onto streets and emergency rooms?
• What additional resources will be made available to first responders in the event of increased demand?

It’s not too late to get this right. Between now and June 30, the Province should convene a transparent transition table with the City of Calgary and frontline partners, collaborate on operational details, and commit to rapid adjustments if data shows worsening outcomes.

We are ready to have those collaborative conversations and bring local knowledge and operational readiness to the table. We need the Government of Alberta to work with Calgary so we can reduce deaths, reduce disorder, and protect the emergency services Calgarians rely on.