‘They’re just illegal drug sites’: Premier pushes back on supervised consumption

CALGARY (660 NEWS) — As results of a provincial review continue to be awaited, Alberta’s Premier made it clear he has a lot of concerns around supervised consumption sites.

“They’re now more than injections, by the way, they’re just illegal drug sites,” Jason Kenney said during a press conference on Tuesday in Calgary.

Kenney was asked about the future of the sites, including Calgary’s facility at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre, following comments published in a Postmedia editorial where he talked about issues around rising crime and social disorder.

It also follows reports from Calgary police in 2019 that they saw a rise in calls for service at the site, which opened in 2017.

Alberta Health Services reported that as of November 2019, there had been close to 117,000 visits to the Beltline site, including more than 1,200 overdoses reversed.

October and November also saw some of the highest numbers of visits to the site, averaging at close to 200 per day.

But along with police data, some residents and business owners in the community have expressed that they feel less safe, and those concerns were echoed in the comments made by Kenney.

“I think we see, pretty much everywhere, a marked increase in crime in the area of those sites and social disorder,” he said, also referring to the three other sites in Alberta, which are in Lethbridge, Red Deer and Edmonton.

A panel is still looking into if the sites should continue operation, sparking concern from advocates as to what the consequences would be if they shut down.

Kenney criticized the past NDP government for putting a focus on these sites in managing mental health and addiction problems in Alberta, as he believes there are better strategies.

“Folks who are facing addiction need to know that there is a way out,” he said. “We must place a much bigger emphasis on opportunities for detox, treatment, and recovery.”

During the United Conservative Party’s tenure so far, efforts have been made to improve access to treatment and recovery services — including spending $80 million to fund 4,000 addiction treatment beds and spaces.

But as the Premier passes along sharp criticism of the sites, he does leave the door open to the possibility of them either being shut down or relocated.

“It’s never been our intention to shut all of the sites, but we’re taking a very close look based on the data.”

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi also commented on the matter following a committee meeting on Tuesday and said while he is open to relocating the consumption site, he maintained the position it is necessary.

“It is very, very, very clear that we need a supervised consumption site in the city,” Nenshi said. “We have to understand that the social disorder that is caused by people with addiction — it’s not caused by the supervised consumption site — it’s caused by the fact they are meth addicts. We have to make sure it doesn’t become centralized in a different neighbourhood.”

He added that possibly the issue is not simply the fact the consumption site exists, but rather that there is only one.

“I’m the one who said when we first started, Edmonton is going to open three or four of them at the same time, we should only open one and see how it works. In retrospect, this may have been a mistake. What you don’t want to do is take the social disorder away from two blocks in the Beltline and put it somewhere else downtown. What you want to do is figure out a model that actually doesn’t have that concentrated social disorder.”

Nenshi said he is open to the panel, and looks forward to seeing what their findings are.