In their own words: Conservative pandemic incompetence

Published on November 4, 2009

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(Quotes are included in their original language)

"People get sick every day and people die. It is too bad, but not an emergency... The government was bullied by the World Health Organization and by the media into going for, you know, what I think is a crazy policy of universal vaccination." (Tom Flanagan, CBC's Power and Politics, November 3, 2009)

PANDEMIC: THERE'S NO PLAN (Toronto Star, November 4, 2009)

WHETHER TERRORISM, FLU OR EARTHQUAKE, CANADA LACKS A PLAN, FRASER FINDS (Globe and Mail, November 4, 2009)

PUBLIC SAFETY CANADA IS ITSELF A DISASTER, FRASER CHARGES (Montreal Gazette, November 4, 2009)

PANDÉMIE ET AUTRES CRISES; OTTAWA N'A PAS DE PLAN D'URGENCE (Le Devoir, 4 novembre 2009)

"The Auditor General really paints a depressing picture of the federal government as a kind of bumbling giant with constantly changing priorities and leadership. She says it often has no clue whether its programs work and she says it has no real emergency plan. That's not what you want to hear in the middle of a flu pandemic." (Terry Milewski, CBC The National, November 3, 2009)

"Auditor General Sheila Fraser's latest compendium of federal misdeeds calls into question the basic competence of a Conservative government already under fire over stimulus squander and the current flu-shot fiasco." (Greg Weston, Toronto Sun, November 4, 2009)

"If swine flu got worse and erupted into a national crisis, it might be a struggle to cope because Ottawa's emergency response plan is said to be unfinished and ineffective." (Roger Smith, CTV News, November 3, 2009)

"Les ratés de la campagne de vaccination contre la grippe A(H1N1) ont rattrapé le gouvernement fédéral cette semaine." (Gaétan Chiasson, L'Acadie Nouvelle, 4 novembre 2009)

"There should have been a national protocol saying this is the priority list. These are the people who get it first." (Don Martin, CBC Power and Politics, November 3, 2009)

"Most ordinary Canadians probably believe that preparing and dealing with catastrophe is rather fundamental to the whole concept of government. Apparently not." (Greg Weston, Toronto Sun, November 4, 2009)

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