Calgary’s lone safe consumption site has officially closed, and while some city leaders don’t foresee there being a substantial impact, the area’s city councillor stresses a different solution to drug use and overdoses. 

The provincial government announced on March 20 that Calgary’s supervised consumption site (SCS) at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre would close on June 30, along with an additional location in Lethbridge. 

When Deputy Premier Mike Ellis made the announcement, he explained that the sites were meant to be temporary when they were first opened in 2023. 

At that time, Alberta was experiencing high overdose rates, and since then, he said that there has been a 39 per cent decrease in drug-related deaths. 

Come tomorrow, the province’s only standing SCS will be the Grande Prairie location, following the earlier closure of the Edmonton and Red Deer sites last year.

When asked about the impact the Calgary closure would have on the state of social disorder downtown, Calgary Police Service Chief Katie McLellan said she believed it would be minimal, given the outcome of other municipalities.  

“We saw that there was very little impact in Red Deer,” Chief McLellan told reporters during the fourth installment of Operation Order last week. 

“So, I’m confident that we will see a positive impact. This will be just another way to engage as other individuals and provide other services.”

Supervised site closure won’t fix the problem, says downtown city councillor

On Tuesday afternoon, Ward 8 Coun. Nathaniel Schmidt told reporters that the impact of the SCS closure is currently unknown, but that he is concerned that the decision won’t go toward healing drug use and overdose rates. 

“The thing that’s worrying to me is that, although the site itself is going away, the people who are using that site are not going away,” he said. 

“My concern is that we don’t have a real concerted plan between the municipality [and] the provincial government, moving forward with that to see what we will do to still address the problem that’s still going to exist.”

Coun. Schmidt said that no longer having the SCS as a resource will likely put more pressure on first responders, specifically those employed by the Calgary Fire Department who respond to calls in the downtown core. 

“The stress of doing multiple revivals in a day is something that really weighs on them in my conversations with them, as well,” he said. 

“Because they will just be going back, and back, and back to the same folks.”

Schmidt referenced the city’s Safer Together plan as a strategy he hopes the provincial government would consider matching the city council’s resources to obtain a more fulsome solution. 

The strategy, which was approved by the city council on May 26, seeks to address issues such as public safety, homelessness, domestic violence, poverty, and social isolation through an approach that emphasizes prevention and root-cause analysis. 

“Let’s work together,” said Schmidt. 

“If we can get the province to come to the table and we can match what we’re doing to use our resources more effectively, but also to more effectively address the problem, then that’s what I would like to see moving forward.”

Mayor Jeromy Farkas said that he was pleased to hear that a rapid access addiction medicine clinic would still be provided at the same location.

Still, he’d like to see more contributions in mental health and addictions from the Government of Alberta.

“We’re going into a big unknown right now about what the future of that looks like. However, looking at some of the peer-reviewed research from other municipalities, it seems to show that as long as there’s a replacement provided in terms of the services that our most vulnerable Calgarians need, then we don’t skip a beat in terms of the public safety elements,” he said.

“But again, it has to be net new contributions from the provincial government to match the net new contributions that we’ve been making at the city level.”