Alberta leading way on drug policy
Setting national agenda on addictions and recovery
Alberta, a province that’s most often in the headlines for setting firewalls around its own jurisdiction, finds itself an unlikely leader in setting the national agenda on addictions and recovery policy.
Any lingering doubts surrounding the momentum behind the fledgling Alberta model of recovery-oriented addictions care were put to rest this week as more than 1,900 Canadians congregated in Calgary for the eighth annual Recovery Capital Conference. Among those in attendance were elected officials from across Canada, including the respective ministers in charge of addictions services in Ontario and Saskatchewan.
“We’re aligned with what’s happening in Alberta,” Michael Tibollo, Ontario’s Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, told me on Wednesday. “The focus in Ontario is on recovery ... and meeting people where they’re at with the supports they need.”
Saskatchewan Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Tim Mcleod added, “Alberta has been a great neighbour and partner” on the addictions file. Mcleod reiterated that Saskatchewan is in the process of transitioning toward a “recovery-oriented system of care,” as outlined last fall in the province’s new Action Plan for Mental Health and Addictions.
“The work being done by Alberta and Ontario certainly aligns with Saskatchewan and the approach that we’re taking there.”
The vote of confidence comes at a time when critics of the Alberta model, which explicitly rejects safe supply, are casting doubts on its efficacy in curbing drug-related deaths linked to powerful street opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil. Illicit drugs claimed the lives of at least 1,706 Albertans last year, the highest number on record, with an average of four people killed daily by opioids.
Alberta addictions minister Dan Williams acknowledged, on Wednesday, that the province needs to do more to combat toxic street drugs but emphasized the “great improvements” that have been made in reducing fatalities related to other substances, including prescribed opioids. According to the province’s substance use surveillance system, deaths linked to commonly prescribed pharmaceutical opioids like codeine and methadone have dropped by 70 per cent since 2018. There have also been significant decreases in deaths related to alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamines and benzodiazepines.
Williams also told me he expects the forthcoming Compassionate Intervention
Act to lead to a reduced death toll among transient and unhoused drug users.
“If somebody is a danger to themselves or others because of their drug use, we as a society need to find appropriate ways to intervene,” Williams told me. Adding, “It is un-canadian to leave (drug-addicted) individuals to live intermittently homeless in minus-40 weather in northern Alberta.” While he was unable to give me a precise timeline for the introduction of the act, he insisted it remains a top legislative priority.
For his part, Williams is embracing Alberta’s role as a national trendsetter. When asked why the province is calling a new provincial Crown corporation dedicated to addictions and recovery research the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence, or CORE, Williams had the following to say:
“We have a proudly Canadian national view of how we can positively influence the addiction and mental health recovery space and the name of our new crown corp reflects that.” Williams said he hopes CORE will be an incubator of interprovincial research partnerships.
WE’RE ALIGNED WITH WHAT’S HAPPENING IN ALBERTA.
Williams and his Ontario and Saskatchewan counterparts all said that the federal government needs to do more to improve the substandard living conditions that have allowed addictions to flourish in Indigenous communities across Canada.
“When we’re addressing treatment and recovery, we have to also look upstream in terms of what’s causing some of the issues we’re seeing in First Nations,” Tibollo told me. “When they don’t have adequate water supply and housing ... it begs the question why aren’t they (the federal government) doing more?”
The ministers nevertheless expressed optimism in the level of engagement in the recovery movement they’re seeing from Indigenous communities. According to Williams, Roughly half of the Recovery Capital Conference’s attendees, for example, represented First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities.
So while Alberta still carries something of an independent streak, the steady diffusion of its recovery-oriented model to other provinces is showing, in real time, just how much it can accomplish when it embraces a position of national leadership.