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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.
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.
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.
Drug Data Decoded: Top Stories of 2025
Drug Data Decoded had a breakthrough year in 2025, topping 2,000 subscribers and winning an Alberta Magazine Award for drug policy coverage.