Alberta building new youth recovery beds at Edmonton jail, critics question location

The Alberta government is spending millions to create new spaces for youth addiction recovery at an Edmonton jail. 

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On Tuesday, the province announced it was creating a new facility with 105 treatment beds built into the Edmonton Young Offender Centre, located in north Edmonton next to the Remand Centre.

The Northern Alberta Youth Recovery Centre will cost $23 million and bring the total of youth treatment spaces in Alberta to 170. It's expected to open in 2026.

The new live-in facility will be completely separate from the jail, the province said, and will be able to treat around 300 patients each year.

"We found existing infrastructure that we could repurpose that is going to have extensive renovations," said Dan Williams, minister of mental health and addictions. "We're going to be done years faster than we would be otherwise."

"Should we delay 300 treatment spaces a year because we have critics … that don't like the optics?" Williams said.

The facility will offer counselling, continuing education and access to opioid agonist treatments like Suboxone.

NDP shadow minister of mental health and addictions Janet Eremenko said she questions the decision to build the facility within a corrections centre.

"(These youth are) dealing with mental illness, they're dealing with trauma, they're dealing with addiction, and to associate that inherently with corrections, I think is misguided," Eremenko said.

"If they are putting it there out of efficiency's sake, why are those beds still not going to be available for another two years?"

"Those kids are already afraid of the police and they've already been stigmatized and criminalized," added Angela Welz, with advocacy group Moms Stop the Harm. 

"Having it at a young offender centre – to me, whether they do a beautiful facility and make it all beautiful with roses, it's still a jail."

A rendering of the new Northern Alberta Youth Recovery Centre, which will be built inside the existing Edmonton Young Offender Centre. (Supplied)

Welz said she does support the addition of new youth treatment beds, but she has concerns about how that programming will be managed.

Around a quarter of the beds will be reserved for minors undergoing involuntary treatment as ordered under the Protection of Children Abusing Drugs Act (PCHAT), which allows legal guardians to use a court order to force their child to undergo 15 days of detox and assessment.

Welz and Moms Stop the Harm believe involuntary substance legislation like PCHAT can cause serious harm and death.

Welz knows first-hand, because she used the legislation to force her daughter into 12 days of treatment after she started to struggle with drug use in high school.

"It was the worst thing we ever did. It destroyed our relationship. She was very angry with us," Welz said. "We got her home, we got her settled in her room.

"About four hours later, she took off."

Her daughter was arrested soon after. She died of drug poisoning the next year.

Welz wants to see the province change the PCHAT model, something that has been suggested by the Officer of the Child and Youth Advocate.

"I hope that the youth treatment centre will be a positive thing for families, and we certainly need it, because there's a lot of families who are struggling and who, you know, feel up against a hard place," Welz said.

"So they go toward PCHAT without understanding it."

Williams said updates to PCHAT are expected as part of the incoming Compassionate Intervention Act, which will allow family members, police officers or doctors to petition for a court order that would force a person into treatment.

While he did not say what those changes will entail, he did say that the 15 days total time is too short.

"Especially when you talk about the nature of addiction and the nature of the drugs that are currently in the market today," Williams continued. "That barely gets you through a detox period."

The province did not know on Tuesday who will operate the new facility, but Williams said it may be Recovery Alberta, the new provincial health authority for mental health and addictions.

CTV News Edmonton reached out to William's office for more information on the current wait times for youth addictions treatment and is awaiting a response.

The Compassionate Intervention Act is expected to be introduced in the spring.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Miriam Valdes-Carletti