To the editor:
Re: Flu problems should not be politicized, Wilfred L. Camilleri letter, Nov. 11.
Wilfred L. Camilleri's criticism of Michael Ignatieff utterly fails to address or even acknowledge the real issue.
The matter of low vaccine stocks, in turn caused by the long-standing sole-source contract and by the Conservative government's decision to order the vaccine weeks after the U.S. and the U.K., is but part of the problem.
During a pandemic, the primary responsibility of the federal government after ensuring the provinces are properly resourced, is to provide public information and education about the illness and the steps the government is taking to deal with it.
H1N1 has been around since the spring, but until last week, the Conservatives were mostly silent on the issue. There was no major information campaign about H1N1 and what few statements were made by government officials were conflicted and confusing.
The public was ill-informed about the vaccine program and few understood the nature of the pandemic itself.
Perhaps if the Conservatives had spent even one-tenth of the taxpayer money on H1N1 information as they did on illegal partisan "action plan" advertising, we wouldn't have had panic in the first place.
Michael Maynard
Oshawa
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