News

1. The politics of H1N1. Did the Ignatieff Liberals really plant one of their own to complain on national television about the shortage of vaccine? Indeed, the accusations are flying today with the Harper PMO sending out an alert to all of its MPs, Senators and staffers urging them not to respond or comment about a news story on CBC's The National last night “in which an employee of Michael Ignatieff’s office appears in a ‘street interview’ as an ordinary citizen concerned about the supply of H1N1 vaccine.”

The notice, sent via email, goes on to “urge MPs not to respond to the transparent attempt to pass off an Ignatieff staffer as a non-partisan Canadian. We will not be commenting on the incident. It is very sad and unfortunate that the Ignatieff Liberals are desperately attempting to politicize the H1N1 preparedness efforts of the federal and provincial governments.”

The staffer in question is Mark Sakamoto, formerly a lawyer with the CBC. He is one of Mr. Ignatieff’s senior strategists and part of the so-called Toronto gang who have been with him since 2006. Mr. Sakamoto and his wife have a newborn. In a note to a colleague, Mr. Sakamoto denied he was a plant: “Not a plant. My wife and I were in line because my 6-week-old baby cannot be vaccinated. Caregivers for parents with children under 6 months are one of the priority groups. That's the sole reason that I was there.”

All of this on the same night MPs held, at Liberal request, an emergency debate in the Commons on the government's handling and distribution of the vaccine.

2. Like a hurricane? Not only are people upset over the CBC piece but also over a note sent by Liberal Party President Alfred Apps late yesterday, comparing the H1N1 controversy to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

“Is the H1N1 pandemic the ‘Hurricane Katrina’ of our own laissez-faire, fend-for-yourself government?” Mr. Apps asks in a long and well-written account of where he feels the federal government messed up in its handling of the crisis. Not surprisingly, however, the letter has provoked controversy and criticism, even among some Liberals.

Wrote one veteran Grit: “This is great. Apps want to accuse Harper of a Katrina. He forgets health is a provincial fief. He circulated it widely. No fingerprints pls.”

This morning, Mr. Apps defended his position. He told The Globe and Mail in an email that his point was not “to compare the devastation of H1N1 and Katrina, which I have explicitly NOT done. The scope and scale of these two situations are vastly different. It is to analyse the underlying values of the government in question and the contribution of that approach to the overall failure. It is not just a question of incompetence or weak communications, it’s about priorities, focus and commitment to the welfare of the citizenry as job 1.” S

till, some Tories are miffed at the amount of Liberal chatter around the flu story. One veteran Conservative strategist sent this to The Globe today: “There is talking then there is offensive insensitive bafflegab in the middle of a national health crisis,” he wrote. “Just look at this gem from Rocco Rossi's twittering on the weekend. [Mr. Rossi is the national director of the Liberal Party], which was being forwarded around on Twitter by Iggy's speech writer Adam Goldenberg: 'New Conservative slogan--Pork before Swine'."

3. A royal icebreaker. Much of the commentary around the visit of Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, is about whether Canadians still believe we should even have a Queen. Some even say the royals are pointless. Well, it seems they are very useful - at least for federal-provincial relations. The talk around the arrival of the royal couple yesterday in St. John's focused more on the vibe between Premier Danny Williams, who ran an-anybody-but-Harper campaign in the last election, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper than what Camilla was wearing. The two men were on stage together.

Said one Newfoundland Tory observer: "The buzz was the body-language among the Harpers and the Premier. The PM was laughing at some of Danny's jokes during his speech. Danny and Laureen appeared to be having a cheery conversation on stage. They were all seen smiling when leaving. And they said royal visits were meaningless?"