“Very, very soon. Don’t go on holidays.”
The answer given Wednesday to a simple question.
When is the government of Premier Danielle Smith going to roll out the date the drug site at Calgary’s Sheldon Chumir Health Centre will close?
They will announce the date of the drug site closing very soon. The smart money says the announcement will be within days.
Like Rick Wilson, Smith’s point man on the addiction file, says: Don’t go on holidays.
The smart money also says you wouldn’t lose your shirt if you bet that by the start of the summer the site will be gone for good
Finally. Going on nine years for the gong show in Calgary’s Beltline neighbourhood and we can now see that light at the end of the tunnel.
All those long years after the likes of former NDP premier Rachel Notley and former Calgary mayor and now NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi sung the praises of the drug site.
The long years of crime and social disorder where a neighbourhood was victimized and too few gave a damn.
The long years where those who fought to close the drug site were scolded by those who would never dream of putting out the welcome mat for addicts in their neighbourhood but, from a distance, they could sound all high and mighty virtuous while letting others endure the consequences.
We were slimed as heartless, inhuman creeps willing to let people die by those promoting what they called harm reduction looking a whole lot more like harm production.
And, to their great shame, but no surprise to those paying attention, the gutless Calgary city council refused to endorse closing the drug site, right to the bitter end.
But then there is news.
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The final piece of the puzzle comes out this week. Ground-breaking revelations. Real research. Real number crunching. No pie-in-the-sky claptrap.
Closing drug sites is a good thing not a bad thing. The world does not fall apart when a drug site is shut down. Quite the opposite.
Respected researchers get their findings published.
They look at the Red Deer drug site that was closed.
They look at the users of the drug site.
There was no increase in deaths after the closing. There was no increase in emergency room visits or ambulance calls.
Wait! This is the real game-changer.
More users sought treatment for their addiction. It was a statistically significant increase in the number of people who wanted to turn their lives around.
And just announcing a closing date for the drug site caused more individuals to look to recovery.
The Smith government says the findings are clear. They oppose a system where people are “trapped in perpetual addiction.”
“It was welcome news for me,” says Wilson, who rides herd on the drug addiction file.
Wilson says it is not just him talking now, it is skilled researchers looking at the facts.
“This justifies what I want to do. This gives me the evidence to move forward.
“The bottom line. I want to get people into recovery. I want to save people. Enabling people is not getting them into recovery. Instead of enabling them, I want to help them.”
Alberta Mental Health and Addiction Minister Rick Wilson speaks alongside Premier Danielle Smith for the grand opening of a recovery community in Calgary on Aug. 21, 2025.
Wilson is well aware the neighbourhood around the drug site, those living there, those running businesses there, will breathe a long-awaited sigh of relief.
“They need to feel safe where they live and work. They have to be able to do that without the disturbance from the social disorder,” says Wilson.
How did we get here? How did this happen and how did the drug site hang on so long when anyone who opened their eyes saw it was not working and was doing more harm than good?
“The problem was we’re in a crisis and people just didn’t know what to do and that’s what was out there,” says the man willing to pull down the curtain on the drug site.
“You get to the point where you’re afraid to speak up because you were put down for speaking up.”
In the last couple of years Wilson says he has seen the tide turning. The madness could only last so long before common sense prevailed.
Yes, Wilson says as the drug site at the Chumir closes the Alberta government will put other services in place, people on the street helping addicts where needed, including getting them off the street and getting them well.
But, as for the drug site, Wilson is clear.
“It was a failed experiment.”