'Recovery-based' care plan falling flat with addiction advocates in Sask.

Saskatchewan’s Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Tim McLeod is in Calgary this week for the eighth annual Recovery Capitol Conference of Canada.

Nearly 2,000 delegates gathered to discuss addictions and particularly focus on The Alberta Recovery Model.

In a press conference held this afternoon, the ministers spoke about plans to increase access to recovery-oriented care, and advancing partnerships with Indigenous communities.

“We are taking the entire approach to addictions treatment and are shifting to a recovery oriented system of care that really is focused on wrapping supports around the individual,” Minister McLeod said.

“So that we are treating the individual and not the addiction.”

But the sentiment of the minister’s plan of ‘recovery based’ care is falling flat with some who work directly with people struggling with addictions.

Tyllore Martelle is a harm reduction support worker at Newo Yotina Friendship Centre in Regina.

“With the shift to saying they wanna be recovery-based, harm reduction at its core is helping these people get closer to being able to recover because it keeps them alive, keeps them healthy, cuts down on the transmission of diseases,” Martelle said.

“So that they can continue living to the point where maybe they are gonna be ready to recover.”

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This conference comes three months after Minister McLeod announced that the Government of Saskatchewan will no longer provide pipes and single use needles, which it had been doing for the previous six years.

“What they need is not more drugs, what they need are supports that will address the underlying trauma,” McLeod said. “They need the supports that will get them on a path to recovery, and we will following them down that path on a full continuum of care through the recovery oriented system.”

Martelle reiterated that the government’s approach is flawed.

“Restricting the access to safe supply won’t actually impact the factors that go into people struggling with addiction,” she said.

Since the beginning of 2024, 21 people died as the result of accidental overdoses in Saskatchewan.

An additional 87 cases are considered suspected overdoses.

In 2023, 358 people died due to drug toxicity with an additional 109 deaths still under investigation.