Alberta government to close Calgary’s sole supervised consumption site in 2026
CBC
The Alberta government has confirmed it will follow through with a longtime pledge to shutter Calgary’s only supervised drug consumption site.
“We are moving to close the Calgary drug consumption site located in the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre in 2026, and transition to treatment services on demand,” said a statement from the Ministry of Mental Health Addiction.
The ministry said there is no timeline yet for when exactly that might happen. The closure was first reported by the Calgary Herald.
The province first announced its intention to close it back in 2021, with the plan at that point to replace it with two new sites. For years though that did not happen, as city council called for more details on the replacements and advocates warned about the repercussions.
The site opened about eight years ago as the first of its kind in Alberta, serving as a harm-reduction space for people to bring and use drugs under the supervision of staff.
Since then, its presence has been the source of both support from those who argue it minimizes risk of overdose, and criticism from others who disagree with the policy or worry about increased social disorder in the vicinity.
Dr. Monty Ghosh lives in the Beltline, and says he has not seen an increase in disorder or discarded needles near the site.
He works as a physician in addiction medicine and teaches at both the University of Calgary and University Alberta. He thinks the stigma against supervised consumption sites is unwarranted.
“A lot of these sites are operating in places that already have high crime rates, that already see a large amount of homelessness,” he said.
Peter Oliver with the Beltline Neighbourhood Association supports the site, and worries the closure will hurt members of the community who rely on it.
“We will ultimately just see drug use move from within the [site] to parks, to alleyways, to doorways of businesses, and with it will come, I think, the deaths that [supervised consumption] has been preventing for years and helping mitigate,” said Oliver.
During her speech at the recent United Conservative Party AGM, Smith said supervised consumption sites are one of the “woke ideological policies” her government would move away from.
“We will replace enabling continued drug use for the addicted with providing treatment and a means to recovery,” Smith said.
Earlier this year, the province closed Red Deer’s sole overdose prevention site in favour of a mobile unit that moves through the community to respond to overdoses.
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