The Prince Albert Police Service held a media briefing Thursday morning at City Hall to discuss the recent Statistics Canada wastewater analysis results related to the city, which found Prince Albert to rank highest in the report for findings of cocaine and methamphetamine out of the eight communities tested.
Anna Dinsdale, Executive Director of People and Strategic Services for the City of Prince Albert explained that the city had miniscule data samples.
“The initial media release from Stats Canada was in 2024 and at that time, that showed elevated levels of cocaine and methamphetamine in our community. At that time that data showed less than a year’s worth of information. So the reliability was very limited and we’ve continued to participate in that project,” Dinsdale said.
Out of 10 other drugs tested and eight communities involved, including Saskatoon, Moncton, New Brunswick, Edmonton, Alberta, Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, Toronto, Ontario, Montreal, Quebec, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, of which Dinsdale explained Prince Albert’s data showcased “significant fluctuations.”
“Some of the things that I would point out are the fact that the wastewater tests were metabolites and that means that we know it’s linked to consumption,” she said. “So it’s not an instance of dumping drugs into the wastewater. It is the results of substances that have been consumed by individuals and then passed into the wastewater system.”
Additionally, she noted that the wastewater does not filter into the city’s main wastewater system, as well as emphasizing that “it is linked to our wastewater, not our storm sewage and storm system.”
The Prince Albert Police Service’s Chief of Police, Patrick Nogier, gave insight into the service’s operations around the drugs that have been found in the wastewater.
“We need to be an organization that looks at data and evidence, and does an analysis of that before we start using the resources that are available to us. Because we are an organization that has to identify efficiencies and in doing so, we cannot continue to show up to calls, disturbances in our community, the different types of situations that are traumatizing people in our community,” he said.
“The answer to that is not more police, more often. The answer is how we can be more surgical in our approach. This doesn’t fall within the realm of public safety. It falls within a public health lens.”
According to the Statistics Canada study, daily methamphetamine levels fluctuated regularly and dramatically—from 1,000 mg and over 2,000 mg per day per 1,000 people. As of March 2026, Prince Albert bypassed Toronto’s levels, surveilling nine times higher with an estimated load of over 2,003 per 1,000 people per day.
As for cocaine data, between July 2024 to March 2026, the city saw an average of 4.751.71 mg per 1,000 residents—triple the per capita of Moncton, which ranked second in the country.
“It’s unfortunate to say that success is not measured in grams. The success of some of the operations that are actually measured in kilograms, at least substances coming off the street, primarily cocaine and methamphetamine. And both of those we know are intrinsically linked to victimization, crime, disturbance within our community,” Nogier said.
He added that consumption could be for various reasons, stating, “it could be for recreational activities, It could be people using slavery, stimulants to get through day to day the pressures and demands of jobs that they’re at. It could be students using stimulants to get through the rigors of going through the academic process.”
Hence, Nogier aims to have a different approach in regards to this issue.
“If you look back to, we came back from an era where it was just saying no to drugs, we know that that hasn’t worked. I think the solution then for the municipality is ensuring that we’re not working in silos, that we are combining resources,” he said.
Through the data, Nogier said that they are able to distinguish not just what drugs are being consumed but as well as what areas in the city, which ultimately may help police track down suppliers.
“The one thing that we have been very involved with is trying to track down those that are responsible for supplying and trafficking drugs within our community,” he said. “We have provincial resources that are funded through the provincial government. Our crime reduction teams are integrated units working with the RCMP and other partners to try and identify individuals that are bringing drugs into our community.”
Nogier said that though the police are “not in a position to use the data that can help assist in the investigation”, they continue to work with their Crime Reduction Team (CRT) in order to maintain focus on individuals they identified within the community who are bringing substances in.
“Our community needs to have a voice. We need to be able to step up to the mic and provide information about who is bringing drugs into our community. I guarantee you with some certainty that someone knows something about who’s bringing cocaine and or methamphetamine into Prince Albert,” Nogier said.
The research is collected centrally, therefore unable to pinpoint exact locations of where these consumptions are found. However, Dinsdale added that they are looking into neighbourhood testing.
“That will allow us to get a little bit more brandier and to isolate, for instance, areas of the city, different neighbourhoods to be able to track,” she said. “We’re seeing elevated levels of fluctuations in a specific area that might help us account for that. There are some ethical considerations with that. And so we’ll be going very slowly in terms of our next steps, because of course, what we don’t want to do is inadvertently reinforce perceptions of any neighbourhood.”
As for the city’s perspective, Mayor Bill Powalinsky explained that City Council stepped up when funding ended and funded the Community Safety Well-being Initiative.
“We also know that we need to stand behind the police force, both financially and in a lobby to maintain the funding and increase the funding for technology,” he said. “The key point is that we need to get the meth office streets. We need to make sure that kids don’t experiment. We need to make sure that people who are desperate to change their state through drug use of other alternatives, other services. It’s not just a city of PA issue, it’s a regional issue. We need to work with our neighbouring communities. We need to work with the other cities.”
Nogier said the data validates what officers are seeing.
“We’ve seen seizures, I think one of the largest seizures in quite some time—30 kilograms of cocaine that was taken off the street. Once again, those are significant. So trying to determine, is that a significant seizure? Anywhere from two to five kilograms of cocaine doesn’t have the immediate impact that we would like it to see, which suggests that the problem is actually bigger than what we think it is,” said Nogier.
The Statistics Canada Wastewater data reports that Prince Albert ranks highest in terms of cocaine and methamphetamine findings, followed by Moncton, ranked second in the country for findings of cocaine, and Saskatoon ranked second in the country for findings of methamphetamine.
“It’s very comforting as a Chief of Police to know that our community safety and well being, folks with the municipality have taken the lead on this. We can help offer a perspective based on what we see in enforcement right now. The wastewater is not part of how we determine what our resources were allocated to,” said Nogier. “We work from intelligence, we work from trends and patterns, we work from associations. This will be another level of information that allows it to be much more surgical in that approach.”
