Bob Broughton's Blog about British Columbia politics

I was out on the 200 block of Royal Avenue on Wednesday afternoon, with a group of volunteers. We were waving signs that said, "the Liberals closed Saint Mary's Hospital".

If the reaction we got from the passers-by is any indication, the Liberal strategy, which is, everyone would have forgotten about the Saint Mary's closure by now, has failed.

It's also worth mentioning that during the April 25 all candidates meeting at the Burr Theatre, I said, "I'm surprised that the Saint Mary's closure hasn't come up more often tonight." The response I heard from the Liberals sitting in the front rows was, "we're sick of hearing about it".

Well, it's very inconvenient for these people that the demolition of Saint Mary's Hospital is under way right in the middle of the election campaign, and that the location is next to a very busy street.

Just to reinforce this inconvenient reminder further, there was a front-page story in the May 4 News Leader with the headline, "Saint Mary's plan on hold." The first sentence of the article reads, "The former Saint Mary's Hospital is coming down to make way for - nothing, at least in the near future."

The substance of the story is that Embassy Developments has taken their plans for the site back to the drawing board, and they won't have a proposal available for another year.

Well, if Embassy Developments is uncertain about what they should do with this property, here's a friendly suggestion; put a health care facility on it.