https://calgarysun.com/opinion/columnists/bell-danielle-smith-the-calgary-drug-consumption-site-at-the-chumir-is-closing
Bell: Danielle Smith — the Calgary drug consumption site at the Chumir is closing
'It was an experiment. It didn't work,' says Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, revealing the Calgary drug consumption site will be closed

The site will close Alberta premier Danielle Smith said in an end-of-year interview.

It is as official as it gets. Finally.

No precise date has been set yet but it is coming.

Calgary’s drug consumption site at the inner-city Sheldon Chumir Health Centre is closing.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith broke the good news at the end of our Christmas interview.

In fact, at the end of the interview, the premier mentioned I hadn’t asked about the fate of the drug site at the Chumir.

It was on my list, at the very bottom, to be asked if time allowed.

But after years of stonewalling I was resigned to non-answer answers, more kick the can down the road responses when politicians refused to face up to the ugliness of the drug site failure or seemed too cowardly to act.

This time I turned the recorder back on.

This time it was the answer we were waiting for, those who have seen and had to endure for years the crime and social disorder in the shadow of the drug site.

Those who were the collateral damage, the residents and the small businesses, who suffered for years while activists with their failed schemes imposed their will on the neighbourhood and the addicts used us as their playground.

No more.

“We are going to shut down the drug consumption site. It was an experiment. It didn’t work,” says Smith, then talking about how her UCP government had wanted to hear support for shutting down drug sites from local politicians.

“I can tell you we have heard enough and we have seen enough and there is a better way.

“We were waiting for Calgary city council to give us a motion to do that, as Red Deer has, as Lethbridge has.”

The Calgary city council majority then led by Mayor Jyoti Gondek did not respond to the Smith government and show support for shutting down the drug site.

Now it doesn’t matter. Smith and her government will act.

“We did shut down the consumption site at the Royal Alex in Edmonton because we want the Royal Alex to return to being a hospital. We want the site at the Chumir to do the same.”

“It is causing too much harm, not only to the people who are suffering from addiction but also too much harm to the community.”

Smith says Rick Wilson, her point man on the mental health and addiction file, is firmly committed to a different pathway.

A pathway not wallowing in a cesspool of psychosis where the rest of us are expected to just suck it up and live with the crazy and dangerous and destructive streets.

Instead it will be a pathway where the drug consumption site is shuttered and the focus is to get people into recovery.

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“We are committed,” says the premier.

“I’d like to know that the City of Calgary is not going to fight us on shutting it down. I’d like to know if they have come to the same conclusion we have.”

Could city hall be that stupid as to actually fight to keep the drug site open after all the evidence showing the harm it has caused?

It is not harm reduction, as the drug site true believers insist. It is harm production.

Calgarians presented to city hall and outlined all the awfulness and the drug site prevailed.

There was a provincial panel who made the rounds and heard Calgarians pleading for the drug site to be closed, a mess imposed on an unsuspecting neighbourhood when the NDP were the provincial government.

It is a mess also backed by Naheed Nenshi, then the Calgary mayor and now the Alberta NDP leader.

For years we were told the drug site wasn’t bad we just perceived it was bad. It was in the eye of the beholder.

We were called heartless for wanting the drug site shut, called heartless by people who felt they were so much more compassionate and enlightened but sure didn’t want a drug site in their neighbourhood.

There were those in the press, no doubt graduates from Woke University with a degree in Virtue Signalling, who didn’t even want to cover the story of the mayhem and madness on the streets, preferring to preach at us from a safe distance.

But now the drug consumption site in Calgary will close. It will no doubt close sooner rather than later. We have waited long enough.

Dan McLean is one councillor who pushed to punt the drug site at the Chumir.

McLean says it is a great Christmas announcement.

“Not having to step over needles and feces and risk getting mugged or stabbed. This is good news. Very, very good news.”