When Calgary’s only supervised consumption site (SCS) closed at the end of June, Sydney Boa says she didn’t have an answer for clients asking why it was shutting down or where they could go instead.
Boa, a former peer support worker at the site, said clients lost access to a range of social, mental health and medical services when it closed, and that just over two months later, there’s still a gap in addiction supports.
“It was a safe space for a lot of people who otherwise have nowhere else to go,” said Boa on an episode of CBC’s This is Calgary podcast.
“A lot of the folks who access the site are so deeply alienated from mainstream services, social services, health care services, public spaces in general, that it took years for us to build that trust with them to the point where they actually choose to come back.”
The SCS at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre in Calgary’s Beltline neighbourhood was the first site of its kind in Alberta, opening in 2017. It was both lauded as a life-saving service, and targeted with criticism from people who blamed it for public drug use and calls to police in its vicinity.
Before closing on June 30, the SCS offered a place for people to use pre-obtained drugs, while being monitored by staff in a hygienic environment. In the first quarter of this year, the site averaged 380 unique visitors per month.
Boa said the site also provided supports like crisis management, wellness checks, wound care, basic first aid, information about potential contaminants being mixed into the city’s drug supply and how to watch for them, and even offered reminders to clients about medical appointments.
“It was a window to discuss things with them that otherwise nobody else was going to in a space that was safe and medically supported,” said Boa, a co-lead of Street Cats YYC, a grassroots outreach group.
Boa said she’s worried she’s seeing adverse overdose reactions since the SCS closed, especially with more contaminants in Calgary’s drug supply, like the veterinary-grade tranquilizer medetomidine.
Opioid overdose deaths declining in Alberta
The province said it’s reinvested funding for the SCS into expanding addiction treatment, medical detox, recovery supports and 24-hour outreach teams.
“Alberta’s approach to addiction focuses on helping people recover and rebuild their lives,” the Ministry of Mental Health and Addiction said in an emailed statement to CBC News.
“Evidence shows that connecting individuals to treatment and recovery services leads to better long-term outcomes than systems that leave people trapped in cycles of addiction.”
Provincial statistics indicate opioid-related deaths in Alberta decreased by nearly 40 per cent last year from when that figure peaked in 2023. The decline in opioid overdose deaths is even higher over the same time period, at 65 per cent, the province said.
But Alberta also saw a steep rise in EMS responses to opioid-related events around Alberta in 2025 compared to the previous year, provincial statistics show. And the Calgary Fire Department said as of July, it had responded to 143 per cent more overdose calls this year compared to the same period last year.
“These trends are consistent with the growing complexity and severity of substance-related emergencies,” said the Calgary Fire Department (CFD) in an emailed statement.
“Contributing factors may include an increasingly toxic and unpredictable drug supply, heightened vulnerability among at-risk populations during winter months, and an increase in medical emergencies occurring in public spaces.”
The CFD said it cannot speculate on how the SCS shutting down affected incident calls, that overdose calls were already trending upward in March before the site closed, and that the number of substance-related calls it responds to varies over time.
Kate Colizza, an addiction medicine and internal medicine physician, told This is Calgary she’s concerned not solely about the effect the site’s closure had on its clients, but also the further strain it placed on the health-care system in Calgary.
“How that would impact emergency services, EMS, the emergency department, hospital admissions — all of the trickle-down effects from closing this one site that have a huge impact on service availability not only for folks using the site but Calgarians at large,” said Colizza.
Waitlists for treatment
Alberta’s government has overall shifted its addiction services to focus on recovery-oriented care rather than harm reduction. As part of that shift, the province passed the Compassionate Intervention Act, which legalizes forcing people with severe substance addictions into involuntary treatment.
The province said new compassionate intervention centres in Edmonton and Calgary are scheduled to open by 2030, and beds serving the same purpose will begin operating in other facilities next year.
On Tuesday, the Safeworks supervised consumption site at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre permanently closed. The program was the first of its kind to open in Alberta in 2017. As CBC’s Brendan Coulter explains, the province says it plans to roll out a 24/7 rapid response team with a focus on more recovery-oriented care.
But Boa and Colizza said patients seeking care for substance use still face barriers like Calgary not having enough detox beds, a lack of housing supports for unhoused people after they’re discharged from a hospital or treatment facility, and waitlists to access voluntary treatment that can be weeks or months long.
“There’s a lot of talk right now and a lot of investment going into the compassionate intervention or involuntary treatment, when many of us are frustrated on a daily basis that the existing voluntary treatment system is still really hard to access for a lot of people,” said Colizza.
