Supreme Court dismisses bid for injunction on Alberta supervised consumption site policy
CBC
An Edmonton lawyer has failed in his bid to have the Supreme Court of Canada weigh in on pausing a policy to ask clients of supervised consumption site to provide personal health-care numbers.
Avnish Nanda said he was disappointed the country's highest court dismissed the case.
"It's unfortunate on many levels," Nanda told CBC News Thursday. "Mark my words, we're going to see an uptake in overdose deaths in Alberta."
The plaintiffs, Moms Stop the Harm and the Lethbridge Overdose Prevention Society, are suing the Alberta government over a new rule, which took effect at the beginning of February, that requires supervised consumption site staff to ask for provincial health care numbers.
The policy states services can still be provided if the client refuses to provide personal information or if they do not have a health-care card.
Mike Ellis, Alberta's associate minister of mental health and addiction, expressed his pleasure with Thursday's court decision in a written statement that referred to "activist organizations" that launched the lawsuit.
"While activists have tried to assert that usage of supervised consumption services would decline once the requirement came into effect, that is not what we have seen," Ellis said in the statement.
He said the average daily number of unique clients at a Calgary supervised consumption site increased 12 per cent in the first month after the Feb. 1 implementation of the health-care card requirement.
"These quality standards will improve community safety in the areas surrounding supervised consumption sites, improve the quality of services that are being offered to people with addiction, and ensure that clients are better connected to the health-care system," Ellis added.
Nanda said a full hearing may not be held for two or three years, which prompted the application for a temporary injunction. The request was dismissed by a Court of Queen's Bench Justice and subsequently by the Alberta Court of Appeal.
The Alberta courts decided that even though deaths may occur as a result of clients avoiding supervised consumption sites due to the identification requirement, the extent of the harm could not be determined, so did not meet the threshold to grant an injunction.
"One of the things we asked the Supreme Court of Canada to address is the test for injunctive relief against the government in Alberta," Nanda said. "I think there have been three requests in the last three years for the court to clarify this law because the Court of Appeal keeps coming up with different frameworks."
Alberta recorded its deadliest year on record in 2021 for drug overdoses with 1,758 deaths.
Nanda fears that the Supreme Court's reluctance to hear the case will contribute to an ever-increasing death toll.
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.
The toxic drug crisis has taken more than 47,000 lives in Canada since 2016 and the synthetic opioid fentanyl has become a household name. But now, what's believed to be an even more potent class of synthetic drugs is showing up in drug busts across the country: nitazenes.
The Liberal government and the NDP have agreed to introduce a two-month GST vacation on certain items before the holiday season, Radio-Canada has learned.
Veterinarians are warning Londoners to make sure their dogs are vaccinated and keeping clean after a deadly virus outbreak was declared in London this week.
Registered nurses rallied in St. John's Wednesday as part of a week-long convention, again calling on the Newfoundland and Labrador government to create permanent solutions to staff shortages and workplace violence.
New poll results released by Narrative Research suggest the Progressive Conservatives are heading into Tuesday's provincial election with a commanding lead over their political rivals.
A measles outbreak in New Brunswick is set to push Canada's annual case count to the highest it's been in five years, highlighting how infectious the disease is and how low vaccination rates have allowed it to take hold, says an immunologist.