DOSANJH DROPS BY OPEN DOOR MINISTRY

Federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh dropped by the Open Door street
ministry Friday.

But aside from the usual election-related photo opportunity, there
was little substance to the minister's visit.

The former B.C. premier spent about half an hour touring the Open
Door and the neighbouring Upper Room Soup kitchen with Rev. Al Tysick
and Rev. Dave Stewart, the two men in charge of the operations.

Dosanjh, along with Victoria Liberal candidate David Mulroney,
listened patiently as Stewart explained that the Upper Room serves
100,000 meals a year.

Tysick, noting that the two organizations rely on the work of close
to 150 volunteers, told Dosanjh the Open Door could employ a
half-time nurse "just to deal with feet" that have become sore or
infected due to the rigors of living on the street.

The trio spent a few minutes going over the blueprints for an
upcoming $10 million redevelopment of the Open Door and Upper Room,
which will be reborn a year from now as Our Place.

The federal government contributed more than $3.6 million to the
project, none of which came from Dosanjh's federal health ministry.

The ministry would be responsible for granting an legal exemption to
make way for a safe injection site in Victoria, the same exemption
that was granted for InSite, Vancouver's safe injection facility.

But Dosanjh admitted he hasn't kept abreast of the issues that led to
the approval of InSite or his ministry's plan to assess InSite's
success and possibly expand safe injection site programs

"I've always said if the people and the individual communities are
supportive we would look at that," he said. "We believe in harm reduction."

Dosanjh was visibly uncomfortable during a brief interview on
street-level health issues that took place the in foyer of the Open
Door's Pandora Avenue facility, especially when a brief shouting
match occurred in the main dining hall.

Shortly afterward, Dosanjh ducked out the front door and headed to
the opening of Mulroney's Blanshard Street campaign office.