In October 1997, Libby Davies had just been elected as the NDP MP to represent Vancouver East, a position she held until 2015. In a telephone interview, she recounts her first meeting at the church. "It’s a long flight of stairs up to that room," she begins. "It was very dark, it was extremely crowded. There were people sitting on the floor. There were flip-chart pages all along the walls, because Ann Livingston always used to write down what people said." Davies was greeted with skepticism. "Oh, a politician," she remembers a member of the audience said as Osborn introduced her. "But I told them that I was there because I was their member of Parliament," Davies continues. "That they were my constituents, and I was hugely concerned about what was going on with the overdoses and the criminalization of users, and that I was there to help them."