HINI stands for Harper Won the confidence of No One.

An inspirational leader Stephen Harper is not. In fact, it’s a stretch to even consider Harper a leader at all, unless of course you consider being able to carry a tune to be the true mark of leadership. In that case perhaps, Canada should elect Michael Buble as our next Prime Minister, or perhaps Paul Anka?

No, true leadership is something that only emerges in difficult situations, or not, as the case may be. On that score. Stephen Harper has shown a complete lack of leadership. Look at his handling and response to the Chalk River nuclear leak that endangered many, many Canadians’ lives and their health. His reaction was to fire the Head of Canada’s nuclear regulatory body. Linda Keen, and for what? For doing her job. Harper’s solution to that potentially enormous public safety issue was to attempt to manipulate and brow beat Linda Keen into lowering her standards and looking the other way. This is how catastrophes start and reveals the same reckless regard for rules and regulations that brought Wall Street crashing to the ground. In the Chalk River episode, it was Linda Keen who showed leadership by standing up for her principles and for doing the job she was entrusted to do on behalf of the public she serves and had the conviction and fortitude to stand up to the tyrant, Stephen Harper. Harper won the confidence of no one. Linda Keen did.

Harper’s heavy-handed and cavalier handling of the Chalk River matter should have given all Canadians pause about Harper’s attitudinal approach to handling of the H1N1 outbreak. A course of incompetent conduct, such that the acronym H1N1 should also stand for Harper Won the confidence of No One. Indeed, look around you and all that there is to survey. Harper has won the confidence of no one, unless of course you are the patient of a private health clinic in Toronto, in which case you have nothing to be concerned about, regardless of whether you fall in a high risk category or not. This is not the way to run a public health problem of pandemic proportions, with haphazard delivery of vaccines with no concept of the medical priorities involved.

Nor is it wise to run a heath problem of pandemic proportions by single sourcing your vaccine from one supplier. How dumb and reckless is that, to put all your eggs in one basket, with no alternative source of vaccine? Having multiple sources for mission critical supplies like vaccines is Supply Management 101. But then what does Harper know about the real world, or any of his Members of Cabinet for that matter? Meanwhile who approved and instructed Canada’s sole supplier to stop the production of vaccine with adjuvant in order to produce vaccine without adjuvant, in the belief that only pregnant women can safely take the latter and not the former (contrary to what the World Health Association is saying), and resulting in today’s real time delay in the manufacture of much needed vaccines of the adjuvant type? Was that a call made by a politician and made on purely political grounds? What studies and trials on pregnant women taking this vaccine exist to support such a decision, or was this decision completely knee jerk? The Miracle on the Hudson, this is not. Was this decision made knowing and truly understanding the effects such a decision would have on vaccine production at Canada’s sole source supplier? Or was that a call made by US authorities, who I understand are being supplied with non-adjuvant vaccine by Canada’s sole source supplier, and Canada’s supply of vaccine is being whipsawed and prioritized by by decisions made south of the border, where the US has no less than 5 suppliers of vaccine, and yet we have but one (GlaxoSmithKline), who answers to two masters, perhaps one more than the other?

Meanwhile what comfort is it for Canadians to know, as they are now being falsely reassured, that everyone who wants it, will have access to a vaccination by December? Do these people in Ottawa making these assurances, not have an understanding of the incubation period of a flu virus in the general population? December? The H1N1 strain has been active all summer and experience, efficacy and prudence says the vaccine should have been administered in August to allow the 10-21 days for maximum immunity before the cool weather and flu season set in. It is now potentially too late for many Canadians and certainly sub optimal, as evidenced by the peaks of infection already reaching some areas of the country.

The bottom line is that H1N1 stands for Harper Won the confidence of No One. As if we needed the H1N1 outbreak to make that point about Harper failing to instill confidence in Canadians through his words and actions, and often false reassurances, too numerous to mention.

Those of us who were lied to by Harper about his income trust promise and were then subsequently lied to by Harper about his tax leakage ruse, were forewarned about Harper’s capacity to lie and mislead and to act in a completely cavalier manner without regard to the consequences to Canadians. Unfortunately, that excludes 99% of the people in the media were willing to accept these lies of Harper’s on face value with no push-back or professional inquiry whatsoever, resulting in another viral infection that has gone completely untreated and essentially undiagnosed in this country called M1N1, acronym for the Media has Won the confidence of No One.

Meanwhile, we are left with the pandemic of Harper’s own creation, which is the ongoing foreign takeovers of vulnerable income trusts, like last weeks $4 billion takeover of Harvest Energy Trust by state owned Korea National Oil Company. Gone will be the $908 million taxes collected in the last five years from income trust investors who owned Harvest Energy Trust, replaced by the goose egg in taxes to be paid by Korea’s state oil company. There is the tax leakage that Harper spoke about..... The $7.5 billion in annual taxes that will be lost from his income trust policy as all these trust get taken over by non-taxable entities using non-taxable structures....the tax leakage pandemic one of Harper’s own incompetent and deceitful creation.

Mr. H1N1 strikes again, as Harper Won the confidence of No One.