Will the media, opposition MPs apologize to the Canadian taxpayers for feamongering and excessive demands in spending on H1N1?
The reserve requested all those body bags, Health Canada was simply filling the order October 8, 2009
October 28, 2009 -Liberal MPs apologized Wednesday for distributing a household flyer that attacks the government’s handling of H1N1 among aboriginals with the slogan “No vaccines, just body bags.”
The flyer, mailed as a message from Liberal health critic Dr. Carolyn Bennett, features a picture of body bags in a lab and a sick aboriginal child.
Grand Chief Ron Evans of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs told a parliamentary committee the flyer was “very disturbing...it’s really troubling to our people.”
Dr. Bennett, the Liberal health critic, raised questions about the details of the contract between the federal government and GlaxoSmithKline, the producer of the vaccine. It is the only supplier for the Canadian government, but no details of that contract are available. Nov 3, 2009
On November 3, 2009 I asked if the CBC and the Liberal Party were staging events.
I posted on November 5, 2009 and asked if the Liberals were playing games. ...delivery of the shots is lagging because of Ottawa's quicker than expected approval of the H1N1 vaccine. The infrastructure for administering the inoculations, which includes volunteers and vaccinators, was ready to begin rolling on Nov. 9, but Health Canada gave its approval the week of Oct. 26,2009.
In smaller provinces and cities that did not have confusing or mixed messaging from the opposition, media they were able to adminster the program. In large cities the local health officials in Toronto and Hamilton were unable to execute the program smoothly. Alberta did not follow the plan and allowed everyone who showed up to get shots.
The responsibility of putting the needle, running the clinics is a provincial responsibility run by local health officials.
The Liberal opposition this week blasted the decision to hire GSK as the “only supplier for Canada,” but CTV News reported last night that the $323-million contract was actually awarded in 2001 by the previous Liberal government. The contract was awarded to Shire BioChem, a company that gave $57,000 to the Liberal Party in 2001 and has since been bought out by GSK. - November 6, 2009 Last week, the House of Commons adopted a Liberal motion calling for the allocation of the $400 million in pandemic response funds to help the provinces deliver vaccines to Canadians, plus additional planning support, and the diversion of partisan Economic Action Plan advertising funding towards a large-scale H1N1 awareness campaign. -November 10, 2009 Reports accuse WHO of exaggerating H1N1 threat, possible ties to drug makers
"It is particularly troubled by some of the consequences of decisions taken and advice given leading to distortion of priorities of public health services across Europe, waste of large sums of public money, and also unjustified scares and fears about health risks faced by the European public at large," according to the report.
Health experts say the low rates point to failings on the part of provinces. Alberta, for example, initially ignored an agreed-upon priority list and said it would vaccinate anyone who showed up, forcing clinics to close abruptly. Ontario did the same, resulting in waits as long as six hours. Experts say confusion reigned, and the lack of co-ordination shook public confidence in how the pandemic was being handled.
The Liberals, liberal media have been busy playing political games with the maternal health priority of the Government of Canada in the G8-G20.
The Liberals, Canadian media have ignored the bias, errors in the UN IPCC, the organized crime involved in the European Carbon Exchange market, in-action of China and the US that account for over 40% to single out Canada's 2.3% contribution again.
More than half of vaccine doses sitting in storage and Liberal MP's don't know?
Daniel Leblanc and Caroline Alphonso
Ottawa and Toronto — From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Nov. 05, 2009
Perry Kendall, British Columbia's public health officer, said delivery of the shots is lagging because of Ottawa's quicker than expected approval of the H1N1 vaccine. The infrastructure for administering the inoculations, which includes volunteers and vaccinators, was ready to begin rolling on Nov. 9, but Health Canada gave its approval the week of Oct. 26
Just the Facts: Conservative Pandemic Incompetence
Published on November 4, 2009
The facts: There is a shortage of vaccine in Canada, but the Canadian vaccine producer has been permitted to ship its product around the world, because the government decided that they wouldn’t be able to handle the rollout of surplus vaccine to the population. They could have made plans to ramp up. Another Canadian or foreign producer could bottle excess antigen.
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VACCINATIONS / PROGRESS THUS FAR
Of the 5.8 million doses of vaccine delivered so far across Canada, less than half had been administered. The federal government also bought 200,000 doses of unadjuvanted vaccine, produced by the Australian company CSL Ltd., for pregnant women. That vaccine is being distributed to provinces and territories this week.
Only between 5-11% are buying into the hysteria or fearmongering by the media and opposition parties. Anyone shocked the highest rate of disinformation is in Quebec?
Liberal MPs apologized Wednesday for distributing a household flyer that attacks the government’s handling of H1N1 among aboriginals with the slogan “No vaccines, just body bags.”
The flyer, mailed as a message from Liberal health critic Dr. Carolyn Bennett, features a picture of body bags in a lab and a sick aboriginal child.
Grand Chief Ron Evans of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs told a parliamentary committee the flyer was “very disturbing...it’s really troubling to our people.”
The pamphlet arrived on doorsteps after an investigation into an incident in which an official ordered 100 body bags for a First Nations community in Manitoba struggling with an H1N1 outbreak. The investigation concluded there was no ill will and the number was a miscalculation.
Evans said the fact the flyer was apparently sent after the incident was resolved suggested the affair is now being politicized.
Bennett apologized
"It seems to me their was alot of lag time and we knew this was coming down the pipe for a long time so I wonder why is this so disorganized"-Mark Sakamoto
Fall out:
The Lib-CBC Mutual Admiration Society
The first ethical lapse was Sakamoto's: He should have told the reporter who he was and declined to do the interview. When I worked in Ottawa -- for the Liberals -- we refused all the time. We weren't impartial players and it would have been dishonest to affect the public debate by pretending we were, so we were instructed to refuse participation even in opinion polls.
Then there is the lapse at the CBC. It seems hard to believe that no one in the production cycle recognized Sakamoto as a former network lawyer and insisted his brief appearance be snipped out. Maybe no one did, but if someone did and did not insist on editing him out, then this is an ethical lapse on par with Sakamoto's.
This incident adds to the impression that the Liberals and the CBC are too cozy with one another, even if it was entirely accidental.
Your Constitution and the flu - Ottawa is responsible for supply while the provinces control the delivery By L. IAN MACDONALD, The Gazette November 4, 2009
This is a grown-up moment we're living in, one in which the Liberals are in need of adult supervision.
In Ottawa, the political class doesn't seem to be checking much of anything, except checking its common sense at the door.
For example, the production line at GlaxoSmithKline was stopped and restarted to enable the production of unadjuvanted vaccine for pregnant women, understandably concerned about the effects of the higher doses of the adjuvanted version on their unborn children.
But the World Health Organization, which had advised pregnant women to get the unadjuvanted shot, especially in the first term, reversed itself on Monday and declared there was no risk from the higher dosage.
No time to play politics - or jump queues
The Gazette November 4, 2009
A crisis brings out the best in people, and the worst in people. So far the H1N1 swine flu seems to be bringing out mainly the less admirable side of some Canadians, starting with queue-jumpers and including those politicians who are stretching common sense badly out of shape in an effort to profit from public concern.
Votes don't spring from misery - John Ivison
But those Liberals who think votes may spring from misery would do well to watch NDP leader Jack Layton, whose tone has been much more measured. Yesterday in Question Period, he suggested Ottawa should commit to picking up the tab for 90% of costs incurred fighting H1N1, as it would in the event of natural disasters. Mr. Layton learned the hard way that trying to profit from the misfortune of others doesn't work -- during the 2004 election, he was roasted for blaming then-prime minister Paul Martin for the deaths of homeless people because of lack of funding for affordable housing.
The Liberals have tried to make the most of the squally conditions but having sown the wind, they may yet reap the whirlwind if voters judge they have been more concerned about their own welfare than with that of the people who elect them.
Yes, there are legitimate political questions to be asked. But the rehearsed question period variety, soaked in a combustible mix of faux fury and disingenuous indignation is irresponsible. Instead, questions rooted in fact and posed with a measured tonality are needed.
For example, what is the real story with the “alleged” shortage of vaccine? Last Friday I tweeted and asked: With almost 6 million doses of H1N1 vaccine — as per the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) website — distributed, have 6 million doses been administered?
A national tally today would likely indicate less than 2 million injections, at best, so what is the status of the other 4 million doses? This is where provincial and territorial health ministers must step up and demand answers and assurances from their respective medical officers of health.
They need to explain how they are estimating demand in concert with cities and towns and their logistics approach to regional distribution, security, refrigeration, etc. And if these public health officials are having problems, then reach out to the military or any national grocer for best practices in supply chain management, specifically, the flow of date limited product.
Liberal launches political storm by comparing H1N1 response to hurricane Katrina
By David Akin, Canwest News Service Liberal party president Alfred Apps suggested Monday that the H1N1 crisis is Prime Minister Stephen Harper's "hurricane Katrina," a metaphor that outraged many Conservatives — and also had some Liberals suggesting Apps may have hurt his side with an overheated analogy. In an e-mail circulated to dozens of Liberals — including the party's public health critic Carolyn Bennett, other MPs, and members of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's inner circle of advisers — Apps also lambasted Harper for gambling with the health of Canadians and for failing to act quickly enough to make sure any Canadian who wanted a vaccine for H1N1 had access to one.
You're an idiot. What's worse, you're a partisan idiot who doesn't appear to have an original idea in your head.
The problem isn't Conservative or Liberal government. The problem is what government has become thanks in part to partisans like you and your Conservative counterparts, who lie awake nights figuring out not how you can help Canadians, but how you can blame the other guys for everything.
Canadians are sick of it. Want to know why barely half of them bother to vote anymore? Look in the mirror.
One reason Canada is ill-prepared to deal with a pandemic, as my July column noted, is that hundreds of thousands of Canadians don't have a family doctor.
Maybe you should talk to Liberal MP Bob Rae, smugly blaming the Conservatives for HIN1 deaths now, about how, when he was the NDP premier of Ontario, he was instrumental in cutting back medical school enrolments -- as did politicians of all stripes across the country -- in a knee-jerk, disastrous attempt to save money.
Why? Because it led to today's doctor shortage and the fact that far too many Canadians don't have a family doctor -- one of the things you need to fight a pandemic effectively.
On Sept 3, 2009 Bob Rae had no problem, would not change how he conducts himself including if that includes having a campaign during H1N1 pandemic. What has led to the change of his perspective? His comments are around the thirty minute mark of this clip linked below.
Two of Canada's most senior bureaucrats said the Conservatives broke no federal rules or guidelines when MPs handed out prop cheques plastered with the party logo or political signatures at funding announcements.
Treasury Board Secretary Michele d'Auray told MPs on the Commons government operations committees Tuesday that MPs who used "ceremonial cheques" as props at such funding events weren't covered by the federal communications and wordmark policies, so they were free to use them the way they did.
Opposition MPs shook their heads in disbelief. Liberal MP Martha Hall-Findlay said she was "astounded" because the Conservatives advertising campaign had the "look and feel" of party advertising, which only confused the image of party and government in the eyes of Canadians "to benefit the party."
Hudson's Bay Co.'s 2010 Olympic uniforms prompt political, military comparisons -Thursday October 1st, 2009 James Keller, THE CANADIAN PRESS
A stretch for some, but close enough for inflammatory political fodder in the House of Commons.
"Here is another embarrassing example of crass politics," Liberal MP Hedy Fry said during question period shortly after the uniforms and their retail counterparts were released on Thursday.
"Can the prime minister at least stop trying to politicize the Canadian Winter Olympics?"
The suggestion was promptly dismissed by Conservatives - and was met with laughter from the woman who oversaw the designing of the uniforms.
"That was a first for me," said Suzanne Timmins, the Hudson Bay Co.'s fashion director, who chuckled when asked about the comparison with the Conservatives. "Certainly, that wasn't any intention on our part, not at all."
As for the air force logo, Timmins acknowledged the Olympic graphic is similar.
She insisted it was strictly a coincidence, but they were close enough that lawyers for the company and the air force sat down to talk about the resemblance. In the end, they decided the Olympic uniform logo was different enough that it could be used.
What is next on the Liberals list of priorities, is the letter "C" safe anymore in a Liberal world?
Nik Nanos Graph may demostrate the results of foot and mouth behaviour by some in the Liberal Party.
"From the beginning I have said the crisis has been about people, not politics," Ron Evans, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs told MPs today at the Commons health committee studying preparedness for the H1N1 influenza pandemic. "(Our children were) used as props in political theatre."
Evans held up a black-and-white photocopy of a pamphlet distributed by the Liberal Party of Canada with the headline "No vaccines, just body bags."
The Provincial Liberals led by Dalton McGuinty have begun to distance themselves from their Federal cousins. This is just one more reason to seek a divorce.
Why is a senior Liberal staffer making negative comments about the Clinic and local health officials?
