Alberta’s government is allocating $7.5 million to create about 100 secure beds in hospitals throughout the province to accommodate people detained under the province’s controversial involuntary treatment program.
The Compassionate Intervention Act, which became law in May 2025, allows a family member or guardian, health-care professional or police officer to apply for an order to have a person who uses drugs apprehended and involuntarily committed to treatment if it’s determined they are likely to cause harm to themselves or others because of their substance use or addiction.
$318.6 million in spending
Alberta’s 2026 budget allocates $318.6 million in capital funding over three years to build involuntary treatment facilities. Most of this funding, $291 million, is dedicated to constructing two 150-bed centres in Edmonton and Calgary, which are scheduled to open in 2030.
The remaining $27.7 million in infrastructure funding wasn’t itemized in the ministry business plans for either the infrastructure or mental health and addictions ministries.
Nathaniel Dueck, press secretary to the Minister of Mental Health and Addiction Rick Wilson, told the IJF that $20.2 million will be used to complete the Northern Alberta Youth Recovery Centre. And $7.5 million “is for needed upgrades within existing facilities and hospital units to establish about 100 secure beds for adults to support the implementation of compassionate intervention programming” prior to the dedicated centres opening.
The upgrades required to convert the existing hospital units into secure beds for use with compassionate intervention legislation include “new doors, paint, safety and security enhancements, mechanical and electrical improvements and furniture,” Dueck said.
The province has identified five existing facilities where it plans to establish the 100 secure beds: Alberta Hospital Edmonton, the Centennial Centre in Ponoka, the Claresholm Mental Health Centre, the Peter Lougheed Centre in Calgary and the Grande Prairie Regional Hospital.
The Northern Alberta Youth Recovery Centre in Edmonton will also be approved for involuntary treatment protocols when it opens in 2027.
Concerns about introducing new services to already strained health-care system
Dr. Kate Colizza, a general internal medicine and addiction medicine physician who practices in Alberta, said that at a time when hospitals in the province are regularly sitting at over 100 per cent capacity, introducing any new service into an already strained health-care environment is a cause for concern.
“I think the idea of taking hospital beds away from hospital patients and using them to launch this program is going to have some potential negative implications for patients who are just waiting for a regular hospital space,” Colizza said.
The types of secure beds that will be used with compassionate intervention orders are specialized spaces that are in quite short supply, she said.
“We regularly have people with significant mental health concerns spending extended periods of time in the emergency department, because these secure beds are so limited,” Colizza said.
Elaine Hyshka, an associate professor at the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health, said the plans to integrate involuntary treatment spaces into health-care facilities raise a bigger question: Will allocating resources to compassionate intervention in general drain resources from public and voluntary treatment settings?
“It’s not just a matter of having space in beds. It’s also a matter of having staff. And the trained staff that have expertise in addiction and substance use, as far as I’m aware, there is a shortage of those types of professionals in the province. And it’s very challenging to hire into those roles,” Hyshka said.
Colizza said the types of medical patients that will be created through the forced detox system would also require considerable time and attention of staff in these facilities.
A person who is detained under the Compassionate Intervention Act can be held for up to 72 hours while a three-person commission — made up of a lawyer, a physician and a member of the public — determines whether they should be sent to a compassionate intervention treatment facility, a community-based recovery or addiction centre, or if they should be released.
Within those 72 hours, the person apprehended under the act will develop withdrawal symptoms, Colizza said. And depending on the substances they are using, that withdrawal can be “extremely dangerous and uncomfortable and traumatizing.” How these complex patients will be managed within the health-care system is still unclear, but it is likely a number of them will require hospital level or emergency department level care.
“The implementation of the Compassionate Intervention Act will place additional strain on health-care resources, not only by taking beds from the hospital system, but by potentially putting people into polysubstance withdrawal that will require that they be brought to hospital for assessment,” she said.
Moving forward despite concerns
Dueck dismissed the concern that using approximately 100 hospital spaces would impact existing capacity, saying these units are still considered acute-care psychiatric beds but are specialized for compassionate intervention treatment.
In the long run, with the centres in Edmonton and Calgary coming online in 2030, implementing compassionate intervention services “is only going to add to the number of acute care beds within the mental health and addiction system.”
Alberta Health Services’ most recent annual report shows there were 742 acute care psychiatric beds in the province at the end of the last fiscal year.
Though the province plans to have involuntary treatment spaces open and compassionate intervention services up and running by early 2027, Hyshka said there are many details missing about who will staff these specialized hospital spaces and what professional guidance will be provided to health-care workers.
“I think there’s potential that some staff may feel uncomfortable treating these patients that are involuntarily confined and being treated, potentially, without their consent, even when they do have decision making capacity,” she said.
“And so there should be quite clear guidance for health-care providers about how to function in those contexts and what their responsibilities are under the legislation, and whether they have the right to object or not work in those kinds of settings.”
Dueck said that as the ministry prepares to implement compassionate intervention services in a phased approach starting in 2027, Recovery Alberta will determine how these units are staffed, as well as when and how staff training will be delivered.
This story was produced by the Investigative Journalism Foundation.