Recovery Alberta, the new mental health, addiction and correctional health agency created by the province’s United Conservative Party Government as it proceeds with its project of dismantling Alberta Health Services, officially commences operations today.

Not that anything will actually happen today, it being the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend, but as of now the 10,000 or so former AHS employees transferred to the new agency become Recovery Alberta employees – albeit working in the same facilities, doing the same jobs, covered by the same collective agreements.
A rambling news release published by the government Friday to mark the upcoming occasion tried hard to leave the impression that all is well, nothing good will change, and everything else will get better while not actually adding much information of substance about the new agency.
“There will continue to be no disruptions to service delivery,” the press release assured. “The review of mental health and addiction programs and services will continue throughout the transition and beyond to ensure they continue to be delivered effectively and are meeting the needs of Albertans.”
“Kerry Bales, Recovery Alberta’s chief executive officer, will continue working to establish a senior leadership team and ensure mental health, addiction and correctional health services continue to run smoothly with no gaps in the delivery of care,” the reassuring news release continued.
“We will continue to provide the important services Albertans rely on, and work to enhance care in every corner of the province,” said Mr. Bales in the statement’s obligatory canned quote.

Well, that’s a whole lot of continuing. So much that it’s almost continuous! But methinks the public affairs department doth protest too much.
Cheerfully describing the day as a “milestone for mental health and addiction services in Alberta,” Mental Health and Addiction Minister Dan Williams’ assigned quote contained no useful information whatsoever.
Janet Eremenko, mental health and addictions critic for the NDP Opposition, probably came closer to the real impact of the massive restructuring, which is clearly intended to make privatization easier and advance the UCP’s market-fundamentalist ideological project, not to mention Premier Danielle Smith’s continuing fury at AHS for its pandemic public health measures.
“The emergence of Recovery Alberta as the first organization to be carved away from Alberta Health Services has been a costly downward spiral into chaos and uncertainty,” the Calgary-Currie MLA said in a statement sent to media on Friday.
The Smith Government, she said, “clearly underestimated the complexity of this undertaking. … All signs indicate that the co-ordination between Recovery Alberta and, say, acute care, will worsen rather than improve. The need for patient advocacy and system navigation will become more difficult, not easier.”

Most troubling, Ms. Eremenko added, “the influence of private, sometimes for-profit, often out-of-province operators is greater than ever.
“Service delivery, operations, monitoring and evaluation, and now training of recovery coaches to be employed by Recovery Alberta, is taking place with little transparency, standardization or external oversight,” her statement concluded.
This is a reference to the creation of three “recovery communities” and plans to open at least eight more operated by private for-profit recovery industry contractors, many from B.C., and staffed by “coaches” trained in the principles of the controversial “Alberta Recovery Model” by a seemingly unaccredited institute operated by one of the contractors.
“I am saddened that in Alberta the UCP government has chosen to go back in time,” said Calgary-Varsity MLA Luanne Metz, the NDP’s health critic, in the same statement. “The UCP are moving us away from an integrated health model by treating mental health as a separate condition.
“People do not come with either mental health or physical health issues,” explained Dr. Metz, a physician. “They are completely interrelated. This will harm the ability of Albertans to get the health care they need.”
Ms. Eremenko made the same points in her statement in a social media thread on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.
Ummm, something, something Alberta Day …
While we’re at it, today is also Alberta Day, Jason Kenney’s bright idea for a sneaky way to rebrand the ideologically unsound Labour Day weekend.

Who is Jason Kenney, you ask? Why, he was Alberta’s first United Conservative Party premier, the man from the Harper Government in Ottawa who thought he could control the MAGA base he courted to create the unified right-wing provincial party.
He couldn’t. They turned on him. He’s gone away now.
Nevertheless, Alberta Day is still a thing just the same. Sort of.
Apparently Morinville-St. Albert MLA Dale Nally, the minister of Service Alberta, traditionally the least significant portfolio in the Alberta cabinet, was on hand at the Legislature grounds this morning to celebrate that factoid.
Mr. Nally, who is also the UCP’s minister of red tape reduction, seems to have nothing to say about the massive amount of red tape being created by the post-Kenney UCP Government led by Ms. Smith with her big plan to break up of AHS into multiple health agencies.
Tomorrow is Labour Day, a real statutory holiday.
Happy Labor Day, folks!
This Recovery Alberta scam is a thinly-disguised way for Marlaina and her cronies to funnel taxpayer dollars into their own pockets as fast as possible. Follow the money.
Speaking about that red tape thing, Mr Nalley might (not) want to look into this
https://www.reddeeradvocate.com/local-news/new-provincial-election-rules-will-cause-long-delays-triple-costs-states-report-to-red-deer-city-council-7512902
Seems as if local ratepayers in my city and other Alberta municipalities might be paying for David Parker’s MAGA fever dream. Codified into the Minicipal Govt Act by his UCP minions in the legislature.
It would be interesting to see how the pensions and other benefits of the employees are affected. If the new provider isn’t a Local Authority, for example, the workers might find themselves taking big hits.
Stephanie: Good question. I will attempt to find an answer. DJC
“recovery coaches” – i’ll wager included this cohort of future employee’s will be former “conversion therapists ” whose former skill sets are probably portable to this new operation.
There is both sadness and irony that many individuals in the UCP cabinet suffer from mental issues and addictions problems . Sadness that they can not put the pandemic in proper perspective and continue to suffer mental deterioration which leads to destroying the system as revenge. Ironic that the first system they want to destroy is mental health and additions from which many of them suffer and need the most help from themselves.
Well, it certainly looks like the UCP/TBA have cut the first juicy red-meat steak out of AHS’s hide. The “New & Improved” addiction-treatment system has been turned over to private enterprise. The usual shambolic chaos can be expected from the top down. And yet….
A couple of months ago, Paul Wells reported on his Substack site what he’d seen of the front lines of Alberta’s drug crisis, and how Marshall Smith’s new recovery program was working. Wells was impressed:
https://paulwells.substack.com/p/worse-than-ive-ever-seen
https://paulwells.substack.com/p/albertas-system-builder
https://paulwells.substack.com/p/a-matter-of-expectations
Could this thing actually work? Mr. Wells thinks it can. That depends on how it’s implemented from the top down. Danielle Smith’s “plan” to split the unified Alberta Health Services into four parallel corporate structures will hamstring coordination between them and multiply administrative costs. (NB: Saskatchewan and BC have both adopted the very organization Smith is busily destroying. Give it a few years, we’ll see how this works out….)
My experience as a provincial employee included 35 years at:
Alberta Research Council
Alberta Research Council Inc. (private company owned by the provincial government—go figure)
Alberta Research Council (back to crown corporation)
Alberta Innovates Technology Futures (another 4-in-1-in-4 thing like Smith’s plan to “fix” AHS)
InnoTech Alberta (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the consolidated Alberta Innovates “parent” company).
Every reorganization seemed to make the management worse. There was an occasional reset, when things really did get better; twice, as I recall. But every time, us grunts in the labs just kept doing our jobs while the vice presidents bickered and argued over who was most important. We did our best to ignore the random acts of management and keep churning out data our clients could use.
I suspect the New & Improved Recovery Alberta will work pretty much the same way. To be continued….
Mike J Danysh: More bureaucracy and complications will come here..
AHS used to be well respected at one point. It wasn’t perfect, but it was well respected, around the world. Taking AHS apart is a big mistake.
Hopefully, this story will become more wildly discussed.
https://globalnews.ca/news/10729365/federal-health-spending-provinces-analysis/
I am aware that, depending on the political parties governing the provinces, there is always disruption if the provincial government is the opposing party.
Thanks to https://mastodon.social/@PBruce/113068483507361301 for posting on this.
I was at a meeting last week in which an Assistant Head Nurse on an inpatient mental health unit in a regional hospital reported that upper management wanted them to be on hand Sunday — a day they would it normally be at work — to manage hypothetical scenarios where other hospital staff still part of AHS, like housekeeping or lab, might refuse to go into the mental health unit because “you’re now Recovery Alberta, not AHS, and we can’t/won’t provide services there”. The unit manager is on vacation, as is the director from the former AHS Zone Addictions & Mental Health portfolio, leaving only the in-scope AHN in charge. Apparently another AHS patient care director has also suggested that RA might end up having to lease the space in the hospital in which the mental health inpatient unit operates.
I don’t know today what actually transpired yesterday or if any of those fears were founded, but it’s still disquieting. This unnecessary transition won’t go as smoothly as this government claims.
I hope they have sippy cups and bibs at Recovery Alberta in case Dan Williams stops by to check things out. Wouldn’t want the addictions dude-bro to embarrass himself if he needs a glass of non-alcoholic water.
He couldn’t. They turned on him. He’s gone away now.
That’s a HELL of a paragraph DJC, art.
“Labour Day” is itself the product of reactionary efforts to exert ideological control over workers. It helps keep us clean of any of that pinko May Day filth.
Murphy: This is essentially true, but it’s a bit much of a historical slog for a Labour Day post. Another day, perhaps. DJC
We got to this point with “addictions treatment” in this province because the people who were alleged to be the adults in the room were prone to the same behaviours as the Kons. This is from an exchange I had with David Swann, a physician and former leader of the Alberta liberal party concerning a faith-based coerced treatment facility: “I also have several people in my immediate circle who believe their child’s life was hanging by a thread and was saved. This is not a ‘black and white’ issue.” So because Swann knew some cult members who were quite fond of the Sacred Science of their particuar sect, he seemed to feel that it was important to take the sentiments of the members of that particular socio-religious organization into account when assessing the medical efficacy of such groups. Great Calgarians™ overwhelmingly come from Saskatchewan, and treat the Alberta economy and government as if it’s essentially the equivalent of the Yorkton Chamber of Commerce. Folks in Taber seem to like the Swift Current model of government, too.