Sheila Fraser strikes again

Auditor General Sheila Fraser is one of the most influential and powerful figures in Ottawa. In her role, she gets to call out the government of the day who feel her condemnations of indignation and contempt. First it was the Martin government which received proverbial beat downs from Frasier, with her reports on the ill-fated Chretien government's Sponsorship Program and resulting scandal. But now, Steve and the gang are in Fraser's sights. For the Harper government, it's their failure to conceive emergency plans and responses to a national emergency, such as a pandemic, which we're seeing aspects of in the current rush to receive the H1N1 vaccine, in which people have been turned away due to vaccine shortages.

Fraser blasted the Harper government in her latest report which deals with the federal government's emergency management plans and preparedness. Specifically, Fraser said a federal emergency response plan has not been employed, that it is still in the development stage while Public Safety Canada has been waiting close to six years to get it approved by cabinet (right back to the Chretien government). Fraser's report singled out Public Safety Canada (created in 2003 to coordinate the government's response to emergencies) which has not exerted itself in a leadership position, despite noting that the government body had made "considerable progress" in national emergency management with its Government Operations Centre.

For H1N1, coordination ... is not as efficient as it could be. We found that the plan has not been formally endorsed by the government or other federal departments. Canada needs to have a planned and coordinated approach in place so that federal, provincial and municipal agencies know what part they will play in managing a crisis. Until it is clearly established how Public Safety Canada will work with other departments, it will be difficult for it to truly coordinate the federal response to emergency situations. The centre produced regular situation awareness reports for issues such as the H1N1 virus pandemic.

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan responded that the emergency draft plan has been in operation, despite not being formally approved (keystone cops anyone?), and took exception to criticisms regarding a plan not being in place and the government's vigilance, arguing that six million vaccine doses have been manufactured, and that there will be enough of it to go around for everyone, despite the delays, long line-ups and people being turned away.

Right now, Canada is operating under the pandemic management plan. Health Canada is the lead on that. That plan ... sets out the federal responsibilities, (including) the production of the vaccine in agreement with the provinces.

Former Liberal leadership candidate Dominic LeBlanc, MP for Beausejour, weighed in with his thoughts on Fraser's report:I think we are seeing a rather flagrant example of their lack of preparedness for national emergencies like pandemics with the complete botch-up of the swine flu vaccinations process across the country.

NDP Leader Jack Layton went a step further and addressed what many of us thinking, and questioned whether the vaccine is even necessary, that it: matches what we are seeing right now, which is an unfolding chaos on waiting lines and people having questions about whether they should get vaccinated or not. This should have been addressed through a properly executed plan.

The auditor general's report also had doubts about the government's response capability to a chemical, biological or nuclear strike due to a lack of an efficient response and training, and asks why plans don't exist to protect the country's crucial infrastructure, like power and water treatment plants. This is what I find most troubling, that eight years after 9/11, our federal government is this disorganized and ill-prepared. We should have acted immediately to such a dramatic (and proverbial) wake-up call, despite America being the target of Al-Qaeda's attack, because after all we are still in Afghanistan and can't completely wash our hands clean of this, lamenting that we are loved around the world as a force for peace.