Le Devoir reports that some 20 Canadian journalists camped out on the grounds of our Embassy in Port-au-Prince - which is being protected by members of the Canadian Forces - have been asked by staff to leave as soon as possible.
A Québec journalist, reached by Le Devoir's Helene Buzzetti - president of the parliamentary press gallery - says: "It's a warning, but I don't think they'll move on it. They're just urging us to find some other place. They see us as getting in their way."
For his part, Prime Minister Harper's spokesperson, Dmitri Soudas, told Ms. Buzzetti:
"The priority for our diplomats is to help those in greatest need… those who've been affected by the earthquake… Water and food will be given to everyone… and the journalists can stay, but if they can find some other place, it would be greatly appreciated."
In La Presse, columnist Vincent Marissal notes that Denis Coderre has resurfaced from purgatory and has been popping up everywhere in the media - which he says is a good thing for the Liberals who've lost profile in the province since his resignation as Québec lieutenant. Though he has no official mandate from his leader, Mr. Coderre - who was immigration minister in the Martin government, speaks Creole and has thousands of constituents from Haiti - could not stay on the sidelines, according to M. Marissal.
Mr. Coderre is proposing that Ottawa create a temporary refugees program - as it did in the case of the Vietnamese boat people and during the Kosovo crisis - and that it, not Quebec, pay for it.
In Le Monde, Haitian-Québécois writer Dany Laferrière - this year's winner of France's prestigious Prix Médicis and whom English-speaking Canadians may remember from a cameo appearance in this film - explains why he climbed aboard the first of the military transport planes bringing Canadians back home:
"When the Canadian embassy proposed that I leave on Friday, I accepted because I feared that this catastrophe would provoke a very stereotypical reaction. We must stop saying that Haiti is cursed. It's an insulting word that implies that Haiti did something wrong and is now paying for it."
(In Le Devoir, Denise Bombardier writes that the international community will save the country, not elite expatriates like Laferrière, who - she writes - have betrayed Haiti over the years. Ouch.)
In a front-page article, datelined Port-au-Prince, The Guardian's Ed Pilkington reports this exchange on the ground:
"When they grew aware that there were some foreign journalists in their midst, they surrounded us. 'I want you to listen to us! Stop! Just listen to what we have to say!' shouted one particularly agitated man dressed in a white shirt.
"We stopped, and we listened.
"'It has been four days since this thing,' the man, Jean-Claude Hilaire, began. 'And nobody has come yet. My area, Bel Air, is devastated. About 200,000 people have lost their homes. Twenty thousand - kids, pregnant women - are sleeping hungry in the local park. That's long enough. I need to know: is anybody coming? Is anybody going to do anything?'
"Hilaire's anger spoke for itself, but who did he direct it against? 'I am very angry with Obama. We are the first black people who put an end to slavery. We need the first black president of the U.S. to help us - not in four days, not in five or 15. Now.'"
(Notably, Mr. Hilaire also appears in today's Times of London report, but his answer to this last question is not included in that paper.)
Not surprisingly, The New York Times' report on the U.S. role is somewhat more positive:
"The United States, in fact, took firmer control of the emergency operation on Friday. After three days of chaos and congestion at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's government ceded control of it to American technicians, to speed the flow of relief supplies and personnel."
The Washington Post reports on what President Obama and one of his predecessors - now serving as the UN Special Envoy for Haiti - will be up to for the next few days:
"Shaken by polls showing Republican Scott Brown surging in the Senate race that could decide the fate of President Obama's agenda, Democrats on Friday scrambled to shore up the battered candidacy of Martha Coakley, the state attorney-general whose once-commanding lead appeared to vanish in the space of two weeks.
"The White House announced that Obama will campaign here Sunday. Former president Bill Clinton broke away from promoting Haitian relief to rally the Democratic faithful, which polls show has taken a victory by Coakley as much for granted as analysts say her campaign clearly did."
Finally, The Washington Post is also reporting today that Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation is under fiscal scrutiny.