The 'Alberta Model' is a Charter violation

The anti-safe supply, anti-harm reduction approach isn't just a moral evil, but an unconstitutional one

The ongoing opioid crisis has taken thousands of lives and one of the key issues identified by experts is the lack of safe supply. Some jurisdictions have moved to provide safe supply of drugs as a way of mitigating deaths. Taken in tandem with safe consumption sites - facilities where those who use drugs can self-administer under the watchful eye of health professionals, and which have been proven to reduce overdoses and prevent deaths - safe supply is now widely seen among experts as an important element of an overall strategy of harm reduction when it comes to addiction and the opioid crisis.

Unfortunately, right-wing politicians are continuing to push back against harm reduction. Presenting the challenge of addiction as a false dichotomy between harm reduction and treatment/recovery, people like Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre have denigrated and attacked harm reduction policies like safe supply as locking people into the disease of addiction and preventing them from getting treatment.

Their rhetoric defies the evidence, and Smith’s policies are already showing the harms of the so-called ‘Alberta Model’: the most recent statistics released to the public show Alberta faced a record number number of deaths (179) in April, 2023, the highest since recording began in 2016. And a report from July 6 states that emergency service calls in late June in response to overdoses also exploded to all-time highs.

Poilievre has repeatedly attacked harm reduction as perpetuating addiction and safe supply “by woke Liberal and NDP governments” as designed to “flood our streets with easy access to these poisons.” His attack is doubly ignorant, if not intentionally misleading: anyone following the opioid crisis knows the ‘streets’ have been flooded for years now. The goal of safe supply is to replace the vastly less safe, often literally poisoned, supply currently dominating the landscape.

Smith meanwhile has raised the idea of forcing people into treatment, a policy most experts condemn not only as cruel but also as counter the very goals these politicians claim to be seeking: forced treatment has been found to increase the risk of bad outcomes like overdoses, while demonstrating none of the claimed benefits.

Most importantly, by reducing harm reduction services and holding back on safe supply, governments actively engage in harm and therefore arguably violate the rights of those suffering from addiction. The leading Charter case on this remains the Supreme Court’s 2011 ruling in PHS Community Services Society, where a unanimous Court found that the federal minister of health’s decision to refuse to extend an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to Insite, Vancouver’s safe injection facility, was both arbitrary and caused grossly disproportionate harm to the right to life, liberty and security of the person of Insite’s clients.

Restricting access to safe supply, like closing down safe consumption sites (Alberta has also restricted access to them), leads directly to harm, and can be viewed as a section 7 violation akin to that identified in established caselaw (it should also be viewed as an equality rights issue). Unfortunately, on the ground evidence in Canada is already coming in to underscore the effects of these policies.

This isn’t to say that harm reduction alone is sufficient policy - it is certainly no panacea to the ongoing crisis. A multifaceted approach is needed. But it’s the critics of harm reduction, not the advocates, who oppose the sort of multi-pronged approach needed to begin to address the problem. Smith might be lauded for spending money on new treatment facilities, especially in remote and Indigenous communities, but her anti-harm reduction policy violates Charter rights.