One of the faculty members named on the Recovery Training Institute of Alberta’s website has ties to a controversial B.C. addiction recovery society that owns a tracking app that must now be used by everyone being treated in all Alberta detox and residential recovery facilities.
RTIA faculty member Jessica Cooksey’s short biography on the website of the “provincial training hub” for recovery workers provides few details about what is described as her 25 years “in the non-profit sector focusing on addiction and mental health recovery for folks, families, and the community.”
But a simple Google search reveals Ms. Cooksey’s connection to the New Westminster-based Last Door Recovery Society, where she is listed on the organization’s website as its director of operations.
The society was revealed Wednesday by researcher Euan Thomson on his Drug Data Decoded blog to be the owner of the “My Recovery Plan” app that is now mandatory for people seeking treatment in all Alberta detox and residential recovery facilities, “raising serious privacy, consent and transparency red flags.”
A recent controversy involving the society has centred around assault allegations made against a former employee in 2023, leading to complaints that the society and others in the unregulated private-sector drug recovery industry in British Columbia, which has been compared to the “Wild West” by critics, has been putting workers’ safety at risk for years.
In February 2023, Press Progress published a report accusing B.C. recovery industry groups including the Last Door Recovery Society that had attacked “safe supply” initiatives of having “numerous ties with conservative political actors.”
A January 2023 press release by the confusingly named B.C. Liberal Party, which not long before had led a conservative government in the province, seems to have been the source a Global News story in February that year claiming publicly funded safe-supply drugs were being resold on the street. The story quoted Ms. Cooksey as the Last Door Recovery Society’s spokesperson.
Getting back to the “My Recovery Plan” app, Dr. Thomson learned that its acquisition for addiction recovery support was the subject of a sole-source contract in 2021 between Alberta’s Ministry of Mental Health and Addiction and the Last Door Recovery Society. The intention at the time was for the app to be used by Alberta Health Services.
Dr. Thomson made the discovery after going through a ministry list of sole-source contracts. His report said the AHS sole-source contract list has not been updated since 2022.
“In December 2023, Drug Data Decoded flagged My Recovery Plan as a key channel through which the Alberta government is privatizing health information of people seeking substance use support,” wrote Dr. Thomson, who is a PhD microbiologist. “Responding to a request for data on reasons for patient discharge, Alberta’s Ministry of Health stated that ‘the Government of Alberta does not have access to the information held in My Recovery Plan as it is a proprietary product of the Last Door Recovery Society.’”
In other words, Dr. Thomson concluded, “My Recovery Plan’s private ownership allows the government to stonewall requests for data.”
Dr. Thomson said reports obtained through freedom of information requests also show use of the app violates the privacy of people accessing recovery services in Alberta and breaks all six of AHS’s conditions for informed consent.
As reported in this space on Tuesday, a provincial press release describes the RTIA as “a provincial training hub for those employed within a recovery community or other treatment centre in Alberta.”
However, there are many unanswered questions about its legal structure, accreditation, operation, and relationships with the government and ROSC Solutions Group Inc., the private company hired to operate the “Lakeview Recovery Community” facility west of Edmonton where the RTIA will be based.
The RTIA website includes a page devoted to its faculty, listing 10 people, none of whom appear to be residents of Alberta and half of whom have connections to the B.C. private-sector addiction recovery industry.
Likewise, the director of the RTIA, Bill Caldwell, the president of ROSC Solutions, Carson McPherson, and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s chief of staff, Marshall Smith, were all also important figures in the B.C. recovery industry in the same time frame.
Since the Smith Government clearly intends to spend many millions of dollars on a heavily privatized approach to addiction treatment using the “Alberta Recovery Model,” more transparency about the many connections among the new players coming to Alberta is obviously required for Alberta taxpayers.
This is going to get the UCP in very deep doo doo, because there are a bunch of legal ramifications that they haven’t considered. It goes right along side of the fact that forced addictions treatment has no medical or scientific backing, because it’s proven not to be successful.
That hasn’t stopped them from doing it for the last thirty-five years. The Government of Alberta began shipping adolescents and young adults to New Jersey in the 1980’s for coerced “treatment”. The scam was revealed just as Jim Dinning arranged for the US sect to receive $600k from the Government, with an amount matched by the Rotary Club. The group went underground, and established the Calgary clone in 1991. It exists today, and has received countless millions in the last three decades from taxpayers. The relationship of these programs to the US Federal Government is a third-rail topic, but the Seed, progenitor of the Calgary operation, was opened in Florida in 1970. The cult was eventually cut off from government cheese after it was assessed as part of the Ervin Senate Subcomittee on Constitutional Rights in 1974 and determined to be a behaviour modification experiment. A clone of the Seed, “Straight Inc.”, run by Republican Heavy Hitter Mel Sembler was immediatley set up, also in Florida, using staff and former subjects of the Seed. Straight at one time had a sales office in Edmonton. A quack flim-flam artist from Straight then set up “Kids” with staff and former subjects from Straight. The Alberta Government sent dozens of people to Kids in New Jersey, Salt Lake City, and El Paso. This was the flagship for privatized addiction “treatment” in Alberta. All subsequent entities basically run the same way, with a hustler leader who touts a “90% success rate” and relentlessly drums up money through charitable events. Could have been stopped long ago, a reversal that would have put privatized treatment in genreal under the microscope, but again, this is a no-touchee subject.
Rather than continue to thwart the rights of Albertans, for one putting personal information in jeopardy, perhaps conservatives ought to think about investing in people when they are children. Children need to know that the world is a safe place; that most people are actually kind hearted and have their best interests at heart; children need to know that opportunity abounds no matter where they come from, the colour of their skin, the language they speak, who they love, and that their skills are needed. Children who are well adjusted are people who have the courage to express themselves, are not afraid to undertake challenges, and have a positive outlook on life being tolerant, understanding, wanting to help others in a meaningful way and are a boon to humanity. Adults in Alberta might want to think about creating a society in which every child has a chance to thrive. Should children be given a chance, addiction for one societal problem will undoubtedly lessen. However, conservatives only want to pit people against one another and so many children, as a result, are left behind. Every addict is or was a child. Beating people into submission is the conservative way – it is an us and them world whereby few thrive and the majority suffer.
This makes sense as all homeless drug abusers have cellphones with up to date, payed phone plans. Or do taxpayers now by phones and pay the bills for homeless people.
Grifter, Grafter,
Boodler, Crook.
Steal from the poor,
UCP Thief.
(Apologies to le Carré, Caxton et al.)
The first picture is reminiscent of the shootout at the OK Corral.
I was think that the pic was more along the lines of Reservoir Dogs. You know that ultra-violent movie, where the thieves are caught up in their blown caper, and turn on each other? It’s the UCP Way.
Grifters gonna grift. I’m getting the feeling that the UCP is like one of those elderly Albertans they’re always hitting up for donations. You know, the ones that the UCP is always making fun of, who fall for any desperate scam that comes their way.
Well, if this is a successful treatment paradigm show us the research. I’m rather skeptical it exists. Addiction treatment paradigms seem more based on mumbo jumbo than quantified research.
Have to agree with your comment. I’ve seen people go to “treatment” since the 1970s. For most it doesn’t take. People tend to return to their habits because it offers them comfort at some level and for some life is so distressing staying “loaded” is the only way they can get through the day.
The drugs people are addicted to these days are not the drugs of yester year and recovery frequently is not an option. as a society we are not set up to deal with people who will never “recover”. First objections would be the bible pounders, the profitters who run the “treatment” centers, the tax payers.
I am continually amazed how gleefully the UCP and their cohorts can manipulate issues and “fix” them until they have eroded any humanity out of their self serving profit model. The conditional service to Albertans that is contingent their own personal ideology and gain is beyond my comprehension. The habitual disregard of expert qualified observation in making policy defies belief. Project 2025 lives in their hearts.
We need to work together to create a society in which opportunity abounds; where hope for all is our lived human experience. This is impossible when we have “leaders” who constantly pit people against one another, the corporate competition mantra that leaves most behind and few thrive. The idea of us is fundamentally impossible for conservatives to realize, since their entire platform is based on an only me underpinning.
It is with hope that we embrace the likes of Kamala Harris who stands against the onslaught on conservative me and wants to create a world of we. In this existential point in our shared history, we shall strive to dampen the voices of discord, contempt for people, unbridled greed, industrial murder, in short a world movement of utter insanity whereby being the human is seen as a problem, but rather we will uphold the mirror of our nature and see that well-balanced human beings are kind, thoughtful, tolerant, helpful, resourceful, aware, and desire to what is best for the planet and everything that lives on our planet.
Surely to God you do not believe that the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is going to produce a societal shift in the United States toward economic democracy.
I think Devin Dreeshen should be the Minister of the new Cabinet position of “Punching Down and Sucking Up”!
PS: But only if he installs the app on all of his phones! PPS! Devin’s some accountin’ to do!
He needs a song for his time dwelling in the new perfection of correction? Here you go Devin! https://youtu.be/hySZSpBHgsY
Just because it doesn’t work doesn’t mean corporations can’t make money off of their not so successful product. The participants most likely didn’t pray enough. Of course with some of the “dry out houses/centers” in B.C. some of them are a joke. From what I recall a lot of those places were in surrey, B.C. One writer was of the opinion these places were more like rooming houses where they collected the residents’ welfare cheques and that was about it.
Yup, and all the BC players operate their own privatized “sober houses”. You can find all the infractions on the BC ministry of Health website. It’s all about the Benjamin’s baby.
Jenni: I assume the Benjamins’ baby you reference is this case: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-coroners-service-youth-toxic-drugs-1.7217783 I’m not going to let you name names because that raises the potential for litigation by bad actors, however unjustified. DJC
Sole Source, what ever happened to free enterprise where corporations have to compete for contracts. The is nothing special about any of this. Might it be that Alberta only wanted this app because only they would have all that information on people who sought treatment or were forced to undergo treatment. Gee what could go wrong there. I’m sure most of the infro will be on computers. Just need to hack them and you’ll have all the black mail material youll need. May even supply smith and gang with information they ought not to ever see, when they want to apply a little pressure.
My sense is these people are so arrogant and stupid they think they can get away with this. Forcing people into treatment in facilities which would not meed codes elsewhere and then using a sole source app to record everything about the person. What could possibly go wrong. When there is so much money and information rolling around, it never turns out well and the lawyers will be lining up to sue the Alberta government, although they may have a lawyer who figures out how to get around that, but then it is Albert. Good luck with all of that.
14 month stays are impressive
Adults and children on one unit ? Never heard of that but not sure what’s up
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/teachers-convention-cancels-killers-session-1.5009115
The subject of this story was a “graduate” of Alberta’s flagship private faith-based treatment facility. Subsequent to that, he worked as a counselor at the facility. He then committed a gruesome murder, did a little time and went back to work there.