The Alberta government introduced its promised and controversial bill on Tuesday to force people with severe substance addictions in involuntary treatment.
Bill 53, the Compassionate Intervention Law, establishes the criteria, guidelines and the process for a family member or guardian, health professional or police officer for someone to receive treatment.
“This program is not for the vast majority of Albertaos suffering from addiction,” said Dan Williams, Alberta’s Minister of Health and Mental Addiction, at a press conference in Edmonton.
“This program is not a criminal justice program either. This is a medical care program … Medical care should lead to healing and not damage those who suffer from addiction.”
The government intends to start opening compassionate intervention beds in existing facilities next year.
The construction will begin in 2026 in facilities dedicated to the north and south of Alberta. They are expected to open for 2029.
If the bill becomes law, it will be possible that eligible people as a family member or a health professional complete an online application for someone to stop.
Audience within 72 hours
An independent compassionate intervention commission will be responsible for making legally binding treatment decisions.
If a commission lawyer decides that the subject has shown that he is in danger of causing severe damage to themselves, a police officer would apprehend them and take them to a compassionate intervention center for an evaluation and detoxification of the complete health.
It would be required that a hearing before the entire commission of three people, composed of a lawyer, doctor and member of the public, occurs within 72 hours.
The members of the Commission would have to unanimously agree to the person to a safe compassionate intervention treatment center for a maximum of three months, send them to a community -based recovery or addiction center for up to six months, or download them completely.
The bill says that care plans would be reviewed every three weeks on the process. The subjects of the orders could appeal decisions. They could also request legal advice or an defender of the mental health patient to represent them at the audience.
The Commission would review the progress of patients with safe facilities at the end of their mandate. Then they could be discharged from a recovery community.
According to the law, if approved, a patient will not be able to reject the medications that the commission has decided that it will take to treat its addiction.
The decisions of the commission could be challenged in the Court.
Prime Minister Danielle Smith said the government is taking care of legislation.
“We present enough protections to not only comply with the Declaration of Rights of Alberta, but also section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” said Smith on Tuesday.
“We will make sure that we are cautious as we advance, but we also know that this is something that must be done.”
The government intends that the law also applied to minors, which would be sent to a Youth Recovery Center in Edmonton that will open next year.
Looking for solutions desperately
The idea for the Compassionate Intervention Law was one of Smith’s promises during the 2023 electoral campaign. The government has taken its time when observing if the law would be allowed under the letter.
Eric Adams, Professor of Law at Alberta University in Edmonton, hopes that the bill in front of a charter challenge once it becomes law because it will stop people and force them to take medications against their will.
Adams said the government has framed the bill as a medical care intervention.
“They are not stopping people to punish them. They are stopping people to help them,” Adams said.
“If they have the evidence to support the statements that this can, in fact, help people, then they can have an argument that, although it interferes with the rights of people … it is a reasonable limit of those rights.”
MLA Janet Eremenko, the OPPOSITION CRITICISM OF THE NDP for Mental Health and Addiction, also expects the bill to be challenged in the courts after approved.
Eremenko said that families desperately seek solutions when a loved one is struggling with substance consumption, but there is very little evidence that involuntary treatment works. She said that people who go through an involuntary treatment have a greater probability of relapse and overdose when they return to use drugs after they leave.
Eremenko said that Williams frequently talks about people who experience multiple overdose as someone who would be helped by their legislation, but “what this person needs is medical attention.”
“They need permanent support housing. They don’t need forced treatment,” he said.
“They require dignity and connection with our medical care and social services. And unfortunately, forced treatment provides the opposite of that.”
Dr. Monty Ghosh, a professor and researcher at the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta, said there is a lack of published evidence that shows that the involuntary treatment model works and some of the most robust models, such as in Massachusetts, have led to more overdose, he said.
He also said that there has never been a study that compared the results since the forced treatment with what would happen if there was no available treatment.
Ghosh also warns of Australia where a disproportionate number of indigenous peoples was placed in a mandatory treatment.
“We have to take that into account, have checks and balances instead,” he said. “A robust evaluation carried out independently would be very crucial.”
The system is coercive, non -compassionate: Health defender
Ian Culbert, Executive Director of the Canadian Public Health Association, said that involuntary treatment causes trauma, creates distrust of the medical care system and addresses disadvantaged people.
He said the province would better spend his money on more solid volunteer programs based on the community.
Culbert said that safe compassionate intervention treatment facilities seem jail to him.
“As much as this is undercover as a medical care program, it seems that it is a program of laws and order for me that is disguised as sheep clothes,” he said.
“There is really nothing compassionate about it. Everything feels very coercive.”
