Labour Rights
Final part of a twelve-month investigation: records reveal additional organizations party to the takeover of Out of the Cold shelters as the Nova Scotia government plays favourites with service providers. Meanwhile, worker paranoia about surveillance by security guards proves true.
Upon taking control of the former Out of the Cold shelters, Atlantic Community Shelters Society got a 72% bump in provincial funding to the facilities. The agency had so much surplus cash in its first year, it transferred more than $1 million to its sister agency, Quest Society.
Halifax Police
Out of the Cold staff were criminalized while running low-barrier shelters in Halifax, until they were terminated. This hit a crescendo as Halifax police were 'alerted' to union organizing – by the agency getting their contracts. Why and how did police help dismantle Out of the Cold?
Nova Scotia
Part 1 of an 11-month investigation: The dismantling of Halifax-based Out of the Cold Community Association followed the Nova Scotia government's coordinated criminalization of the organization and its staff – including the country's earliest documented use of the SCAN Act to surveil a nonprofit.
Surveillance
The Toronto Star is reporting on a $3.7 million contract providing Palantir access to Canadian military data – "a big piece of Canadian sovereignty data-exposure,” as one expert said. This may enable Palantir to leverage ongoing social media monitoring, including facial recognition.
supervised consumption
As provinces like Manitoba resume harm reduction as usual, the Alberta government's coup against supervised consumption appears to be crumbling underfoot with no medical or public health experts coming to bat. Can an American economist in Italy save the government's case against consumption sites?
Calgary Police
Sixteen years ago, Raheleh Tarani’s brother was killed by Iranian authorities during a protest. Her May 9, 2024 assaults and arrest at UofC by Calgary police brought back flashbacks – this time, frenzied concern for the safety of her sons attending that protest on Canadian soil.
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Drug Data Decoded writer/editor joins eight other plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking damages and vindication that Charter rights were violated during the brutal police operation to remove a peaceful demonstration at the University of Calgary on May 9, 2024.
The Ministry of Public Safety, working to prevent the release of files related to surveillance of nonprofit organizations by government police, has admitted that it holds 300 pages of records related to investigations of nonprofits across the province.
The Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act allows any citizen to trigger an investigation of a neighbour for drugs on the property. Since its adoption across Canada two decades ago, the snitch legislation has never been used to attack a nonprofit agency – until now.
A conservative provincial government is writing off Alberta's Compassion Intervention Act as a violation of disability rights, favouring community-based treatment over residential rehab. However, a trip out west last June shows its evolving interest in privatized inpatient facilities.
The Research Review Council formed in early 2025 with government authors of a recent fraudulent study on supervised consumption services. But, when asked for records of the council's authorized projects, the Centre of Recovery Excellence inexplicably denies its existence.
Nine days after it announced a fraudulent study published by its staff, the Alberta government is moving quickly to dismantle what remains of supervised consumption services in the province.
From 2021 to 2025, the Alberta government gave at least $745,000 in conference sponsorships to Last Door Recovery Society. The deliverables were redacted but appear linked to conflicts of interest among authors of a recent government study attempting to justify supervised consumption site closures.
The Alberta government's Crown corporation has published its first study using personal health numbers of people accessing supervised consumption sites. While its findings fail to hold up, it offers a case study of how conflicts of interest and privacy oversight are at a crisis point in Alberta.
Selective data sharing by some of Alberta's top health officials may backstop plausible deniability for government negligence in closing sites – with impacts all the way to Ontario.
"No other sites shutting down," Recovery Alberta leaders told staff in late 2024, as the Red Deer site closure was announced. A year later, the Royal Alex Hospital site was closed. New documents reveal both closures relied on suppression and distortion of service usage data by Recovery Alberta.
Newly obtained documents reveal a hidden plan to build a drug jail in Grande Prairie, raising questions about how many additional facilities are in the works.
Mike Parker, the president of the Alberta union that includes paramedics, reacts to reporting by Drug Data Decoded showing the Alberta government under-reports ambulance dispatches to drug toxicity by as much as 89 percent.