Calgary Beltline residents have their say on safe consumption site

(originally published in the Press - Oct. 2019)

Emotions ran high as the supervised consumption site review board heard from residents of the city’s Beltline on Sept. 11 and 12.

From 5pm to 9pm, at the Boyce Theatre in the BMO Centre, residents of the neighborhoods near Safeworks Supervised Consumption Services (SCS) in the Sheldon Chumir Centre, and Alpha House, voiced their experiences since SCS opened in 2018.

Greg Tufford, who managed an office building on 10 Ave. SW, said that the SCS has caused a dramatic rise in crime, vandalism and harassment.

“I keep being told I need to have empathy for these people, but on my part, empathy has left the building.”

Several other residents and people who work in the area echoed this feeling.

Marie Chiem, the owner of Leno Jewellery, spoke at length about the financial costs that her business’ proximity to Alpha House caused.

“We are losing clients because they don’t feel safe,” said Chiem. 

She said that groups of the SCS’s clients loiter around her front door.

“It’s never just one or two people. It’s groups of four, five, or six.”

She also claims that the rent for her building has dropped and as the building’s owner, she is losing $28,000 annually.

Some speakers did not share the view of these business owners, and said that putting a price on a life-saving service was callous.

Ellen Charge has been a paramedic in Calgary for 33 years, spending the last ten years in Calgary’s downtown core. 

She most recently began working with a street medicine team that works with the SCS.
“With the SCS, they’re given a chance to be seen and respected as people,” she said in her submission to the review board.

“The amount of trauma that is behind what those addictions show is something that you’d never want for any of your children.”

Charge continued by saying that SCS offers the people using their service a way out of addiction.

Several other speakers questioned the lack of time and consideration given to the people most affected by the centre in a positive way—the people who use the services of the SCS.

Joan Farkas, a social worker in the Beltline, was struck by the extent of misery in the area when she started working there.

She said that curiosity and respect are the only ways to break down the barriers in the neighborhood.

“When we speak of all of these behaviors that make us all so very uncomfortable, we need to ask why are our fellow human beings living without dignity,” said Farkas.

“The people I interviewed know how people feel about them, and they know people would rather they just go away.”

The solution that was put forth most often was the city needs more sites, to lessen the impact on the Beltline communities, and the strain on the existing centre’s resources.

Calgary currently only has one safe consumption site.

Edmonton has four safe consumption sites.

Vancouver has six.

Premier Jason Kenny said that his government will fund 4000 more recovery and treatment beds in Alberta in a press conference on Wednesday, but he said that harm reduction is not enough.

“We need to provide a way out of the trap of addiction that destroys far too many lives.”

The supervised consumption site review board consists of eight committee members including retired law enforcement officers, medical professionals and a parent of an addict that died due to overdose.

Two members were absent from the event, but it was recorded for the committee to review later.

The committee is chaired by former Edmonton Police Chief, Rod Knecht.
“We’ve heard every suggestion you can imagine,” said Knecht.

“It’s all valuable information and it will lead to better decision making.”

The report on what the committee finds was originally planned for submission in December, but, due to a larger than anticipated online response, that date may be pushed back, according to Knecht.

Due to the emotional nature of the issues around the consumption site, Alberta Health had members of the psychosocial response team on hand to help anyone who needed to talk after their presentation.