HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE..ssxse0000d

Find out what to buy your loved ones for $30 or less

INSIDE LOOK
HOMELESS YOUTH....0:ccccccccssccsccesecsces

Serious theme put to a serious beat

TEDDY BEAR TOSS......:0ccccccttee8

Vancouver Giants go fuzzy for Christmas

Homeless shut out of shelter

First United Church closes its doors, leaving needy to look elsewhere

By DANIEL PALMER

ncouver’s homeless may be left
out in the cold after the city de-
cided to enforce fire code bylaws
Wednesday at a Downtown East-

side shelter.

Rev. Ric Matthews of First United
Church said he was instructed by the
city manager and fire chief to adhere to
a 240-person occupancy limit. In the
past, the 24-hour shelter has often been
30 to 50 persons over its capacity.

“You'll have to ask the city about the
timing,” said Matthews.

“During the Olympics, we had 320
people in this building frequently...and
somehow, even though the regulators
went through this building regularly,
they felt while it wasn’t conforming to
code, it wasn’t that dangerous.”

Matthews said turning away the
homeless and providing them with no
alternatives erodes a community rela-
tionship that has taken years to build.

On Wednesday evening, the doors to
First United were locked for the first
time in three years and one staff mem-
ber turned away 27 people.

“He said quite clearly that it was the
worst night of all his days at First Unit-
ed,” said Matthews.

Matthews also criticized B.C. Hous-
ing’s decision not to provide 160 winter
response beds this year.

“We see this political fight happen-
ing between the city and the province
and so what happens is that innocent
individuals that are the most vulnera-
ble in society are being caught up in
this political conflict,” he said.

“T really wish we could get beyond
that and ... create an integrated collec-
tive approach to this issue.”

Judy Graves, city of Vancouver hous-
ing advocate, said the decision to en-
force fire codes did not come lightly.

“We've made every possible attempt
over three years to modify the life safe-
ty behaviour of First United and Ric
has just refused to allow the situation
to be modified to a safe extent.”

The city has four buildings available

for shelter use that could open within
hours if they had provincial support,
said Graves.

“That’s not a political war, it’s a mat-
ter of provincial priorities. The prov-
ince has to decide whether it’s OK to
leave hundreds of people outside in
weather like this,” Graves said.

A B.C. Housing spokeswoman said

this year’s funding includes a 26-space
women-only shelter as well as 42 sea-
sonal spaces set to open in mid-month.
“While shelters play an important
role to help people break the cycle of
homelessness, the province and the
city are focused on permanent support-
ive housing,” said the official, who
asked that her name not be used.

DANIEL PALMER photos
Above left: James Witwicki protests against the city’s demand that the First United Church turn
away homeless due to capacity concerns. Bottom right: Tasha Marshall and Theo Tyson, who
have been sleeping in Stanley park for the past two months, sit outside the church Wednesday.
They say the cold weather has become unbearable and that there’s nowhere else to go.

That’s not
a political
war

JUDY GRAVES
City of Vancouver
housing advocate

VPD chief defends decision at inquiry

Doug LeP- By EMMA CRAWFORD
ard s ays ut Ihe Missing Women inquiry contin-
is normal I ued its seventh week Thursday
tice t with Cheryl Tobias, the RCMP’s
practice to lawyer, having the opportunity to
turn cases cross-examine Vancouver’s
Chief Doug LePard.
over to Tobias addressed the VPD’s reason-
the RCMP ing for turning the case over to the
RCMP without further continuing its
when th ey own investigation.
pertain to LePard responded by explaining that
1G O. it is normal practice to turn over cases
oth er Juris that occur in other jurisdictions, and it
dictions is not always the case that the two sys-
tems would work together.
“The most serious offence clearly
Sy

ue

had occurred in Coquitlam,” he said.
“The way policing works in the Lower
Mainland is that there is going to bea

primary agency.”

Deputy

Tobias questioned LePard as to why
it was believed the crimes were being
committed exclusively in Coquitlam
and said most of the evidence to sup-
port this was based on second- or third-
hand information.

She cited the example of eyewitness
reports of Pickton claiming to be able
to dispose of bodies and that he had a
meat grinder and “can make people
disappear” being used as evidence the
investigation should be focused in Co-
quitlam. LePard agreed that this is not
an explicit admission by Pickton that

he committed any crime.
Commissioner Wally Oppal prefaced
the day’s hearings by saying he had ob-

jections to some of the previous day’s

questioning.

Darrell Roberts, the lawyer repre-
senting First Nations interests at the
inquiry, suggested Wednesday that
LePard had given “false evidence” to

move the blame for the flawed investi-

gation from the VPD onto the RCMP.

“T am very troubled by some of the
allegations made yesterday...that VPD
Deputy LePard was lying,” Oppal said.
“T will ask the lawyers to be careful in
the language that is used.”

“Tt will be for me to decide who is
correct and who is not,” he said.

Rapid tests
help detect
early signs

of HIV/AIDS

Early diagnosis and
change in public attitude
towards disease needed

to end transmission of HIV

By ALEXANDRA GRANT

individuals for HIV/AIDS are

gone, according to Dr. Réka Gus-
tafson, medical health officer of Van-
couver.

“For many years we thought we
only needed to test people who are at
high risk,” said Gustafson at a rapid
HIV test hosted by UBC in honour of
World AIDS day.

“What we’ve learned is that that is a
very poor way of actually achieving
what we want to do, which is early di-
agnosis.”

She urged the general public to shift
their concept of HIV/AIDS testing from
a problem for “someone else” to one
that everybody should partake in.

Gustafson said early diagnosis not
only benefits the HIV-positive person
by providing them with early care, sup-
port and medication, but also helps
others who may have undetected HIV.

“Ending the transmission of HIV is
within our grasp, we can actually do
this,” she said. “But everyone has a job
to do, and everybody’s job is to have an
HIV test.”

Paige Zhang, 20, has spearheaded
the UBC Student Health’s Seek and
Treat for Optimal Prevention of HIV/
AIDS (STOP) campaign. She demon-
strated the ease of the test by taking it
herself.

“T felt like it was a really good way to
reach out to students and to break that
barrier,” said Zhang, a UBC physiology
student. “[It’s a way] to talk about HIV/
AIDS not as a scary life-threatening
disease, but ... if you have HIV, it’s just
a chronic, manageable illness.”

Engineering physics student Laz
Milovanovic, 28, was the second in line
to take the rapid HIV test.

Like Zhang, Milovanovic is an active
member of UBC Student Health, work-
ing as a wellness peer educator and
sexual health educator with the
school’s sexual health team.

“What we focus on is the peer-to-
peer connection, when we offer sup-
port if they need it,” he said of the
health team’s approach to sex and
health education. “The peer aspect is
really what makes it stand out.”

UBC provides pre- and post-counsel-
ling for those taking the test, and the
STOP program provides fully funded
medication for those who test positive.

Milovanovic said he would like to
eventually see more post-secondary
campuses take part in the growing
“knowledge network” of sexual health
education pertaining to HIV/AIDS.

Te: days of testing only high-risk