Alberta government to close Red Deer overdose prevention site, add new recovery services

The Alberta government plans to close Red Deer's only overdose prevention site (OPS) next year and replace it with "options focused on health, wellness and recovery."

The mobile site where people can use drugs, with health workers available to respond to overdoses if necessary, has operated in Alberta's third-largest city since 2018.

The province announced Monday afternoon that once other supports are up and running, OPS operations in Red Deer are expected to stop by spring 2025.

Its removal would mark the first time an Alberta community has entirely scrapped its supervised consumption services.

Lethbridge's former supervised consumption site closed after the province cut off funding to the non-profit running it, but it was replaced by a mobile OPS. OPS Services are also available in Calgary, Edmonton and Grande Prairie.

Alberta Health Services took over the Red Deer site from non-profit Turning Point last year, and now runs it out of a trailer in the parking lot of the Safe Harbour homeless shelter.

In addition to supervised consumption services, the Red Deer OPS also offers sterile injection supplies, drug poisoning and harm reduction education, naloxone kits and connections to substance use treatment services.

Substance use statistics reported by the province show the Red Deer OPS saw nearly 7,000 visits in the first three months of the year, with about 200 unique visitors each month.

The provincial government plans to introduce a "mobile rapid access addiction medicine clinic," in its place, operated by Recovery Alberta, the new addictions and mental health arm of the province's health system.

"With this and the new outreach services being put in place, Recovery Alberta will provide opportunities for those facing addiction and mental health issues to access support on an ongoing basis," Kerry Bales, CEO of Recovery Alberta, said in a news release.

An overdose response team made of paramedics and nurses will work in and around Safe Harbour, and "recovery coaches" will also do outreach work in the area, according to the province. The shelter will additionally get more support for its detox services.

The government is allocating $3.4 million for the work, which it says will amount to a net increase in staff and programs.

"This is a well-thought-out plan that aligns with Red Deer's needs and requests, which is why the province is making these changes and increasing support for the community," Alberta Minister of Mental Health and Addiction Dan Williams said in a news release. 

Council request for change

The pending OPS closure comes after Red Deer city council voted in favour of asking the province to phase out the site and increase other resources and medical supports.

Red Deer Mayor Ken Johnston said Tuesday that he's pleased to see the response.

"The sorrow is opioid addiction is in neighbourhoods, it's on our streets and so on. But this allows us to be able to say there are more resources, there are more ways out, there are more ways of establishing your life."

Elaine Hyshka, Canada Research Chair in health systems innovation at the University of Alberta's School of Public Health, said she's worried about the consequences of removing the OPS.

"We know that amongst 20- to 39-year-olds, almost 50 per cent of deaths are from drugs. And so we're essentially losing a generation of working Albertans, of family and friends and loved ones, and it's not OK," she said.

"I think that until we can bring down that death rate, there's no reason we should be considering closing what is a front-line intervention for saving lives."

Last year was Alberta's deadliest on record for opioid poisoning deaths, with close to 1,900 people losing their lives. But the numbers are down for the first five months of 2024, with 431 opioid-related deaths over that period, compared to 788 deaths over the same time in 2023.

In Red Deer, 347 people have died due to opioid poisoning since 2016, according to Alberta's substance use surveillance dashboard. Last year was Red Deer's deadliest in terms of numbers, with 53 opioid poisoning deaths in total.

The city recorded 18 opioid poisoning deaths in the first five months of 2024.

Red Deer Coun. Cindy Jefferies was one of two votes against asking the provincial government to close the overdose prevention site in February.

She told CBC News that getting rid of the OPS will leave a gap in services, even if others are being added.

"The obvious question is, so then where will they consume their drugs?" she said.

"We already see use in library washrooms, we see use in public vestibules of banks. So I don't think that because we move the facility where people consume drugs in a safe, supervised space, that the problem's going to go away."

Coun. Vesna Higham introduced the original motion asking for the OPS to close, with a corresponding increase in other health services.

"It really was a signal to everyone that we as a community need to focus on recovery … versus what we've been doing, which is that enabling cycle of addictions maintenance that has been, honestly, so harmful and so devastating to individuals who are caught in the grasp of addiction, and to our broader community as a whole," she said Tuesday.

The Alberta government has been pursuing what it calls recovery-oriented systems of care, and says the changes in Red Deer will increase that access. The city is home to one of the province's residential addictions treatment "recovery communities," and the province has allocated more funding for 20 new treatment beds at the Red Deer Dream Centre.

Hyshka said supervised consumption services have been studied and proven to reduce mortality, but there isn't the same kind of publicly available evidence about Alberta's recovery programs.

She said once the Red Deer OPS closes, the province should monitor the mortality rates and number of EMS calls in the surrounding area, and make the data public.

"It's really important to know what the impacts of such a massive policy change are going to be in Red Deer for people that are extremely vulnerable and marginalized," she said.