Drug Data Decoded

A yellow needle drop box sits in front of the windows and security door of a building, beside some parked bicycles.

BREAKING: Alberta government to announce Calgary and Lethbridge supervised consumption site closures

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.

“A shared vision”: Public money funnelled through conference sponsorships may line pockets of UCP policy pushers

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.

Two women in formal professional attire speak in front of a podium that says "Alberta Recovery Model", with signs behind saying CoRE and Recovery Alberta.

Centre of Recovery Excellence manipulating health information of people who use drugs to undermine their safety

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.

A person wearing a large red backpack stands under the northern lights on a path in a lightly wooded area.

"Inaccurate data": How Recovery Alberta officials facilitated consumption site closures (Pt 2)

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.

A small tree painted white with a hundred or more wooden hearts hanging from it, with people's names and short messages written on them.

"We can help": How Recovery Alberta facilitated consumption site closures (Part 1)

"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.

A red brick building with Alberta and Canada flags flying above, and a dozen police vehicles parked in front.

Alberta government hiding additional drug jail plans

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.

A middle-aged man in a grey suit jacket stares despondently at a downward angle, his mouth set closed.

Paramedics union head: "How do you resource a system when you're not telling the truth about it?"

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.

A man in a suit looks toward an unseen crowd from a podium in front of provincial and national flags. Two men also in suits look on from behind.

Up to 89 percent of ambulances for overdoses concealed in record year, as Alberta health care careens into crisis

The Alberta government says it has “the most transparent data reporting system in North America" for drug toxicity. In reality, internal data manipulation causes most emergency calls to go unreported.

A man in a suit looks earnestly in the direction of the camera while standing at a podium with "DORSapp.ca" written on it.

Overdose app falters as Alberta government accelerates war on supervised consumption

Launched to government fanfare on sole-source contracts, the Digital Overdose Response System app is barely used most days and has registered just 51 ambulance dispatches over four years –– around 0.14 percent of the ministry's under-reported dispatches for opioid toxicity in that period.