Edmonton - November 24 - 30, 2024 marks National Addictions Awareness Week (NAAW), meant to be an opportunity to learn and highlight ways to address harms related to substance use. As we mark NAAW this year, Alberta continues to see multiple deaths per day due to drug poisoning. This week must be a time to commit to treating addictions care as health care, and to putting patients ahead of profits.
“We should be providing addictions care to Albertans through the public health care system. Instead, at every turn, our government has been signing contract after contract with for-profit providers,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “We’ve seen them dole out multi-million dollar contracts using our public health care dollars to fund private recovery centres, private training and curriculum development, private addictions treatment in our correctional institutions, the private My Recovery Plan app, and more.”
Friends of Medicare remains concerned that the government’s health care restructuring agenda is a guise to siphon off our public health care dollars towards under-regulated, for-profit providers. It has become increasingly clear that the transition to Recovery Alberta, the new sector entity for mental health and addictions, alongside a new crown corporation to validate their ‘Alberta recovery model, is really just an aggressive push towards privatization of our addictions care.
“Addictions care is health care, full stop. Albertans need to know that their mental health and addictions services are being delivered as part of our public health care system, not contracted out to those seeking to profit off of Albertans struggling as a result of this drug toxicity crisis,” said Gallaway. “We must ensure that these health care services are evidence-based, publicly delivered and well regulated, with the full transparency and accountability that Albertans and their families deserve.”