Isotope crisis sets off political meltdown

The Halifax Chronicle Herald yesterday reported it had come into possession of a misplaced audio recording made in January of Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt (below) -- the minister responsible for the nation's nuclear facilities and radioisotope supply -- calling the then-impending radioisotope shortage a "sexy" political issue and eagerly anticipating the political benefits of solving the crisis by throwing money at it.

Unsurprisingly, if not entirely deservedly, her use of the word "sexy" to describe an issue that pertains to thousands of cancer patients' and other patients' health has been met with pleas for sympathy from weepy patients on the evening news and harsh recriminations by members of the opposition in Ottawa. Never mind that the word "sexy" is used by almost every politician across Canada and in most newsrooms as well, as an indignant Christie Blatchford (is that redundant?) makes clear in The Globe and Mail.

Opposition members predictably stood up in the House of Commons to demand Ms Raitt resign from cabinet, which she in fact offered to do. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, however, refused to accept her resignation.

And while all this blustering and bickering takes up the attention of the government and the national news media, the radioisotope shortage only continues to get worse as supplies dwindle. Patients' tests have already been delayed because of the lack of isotopes, and the Toronto Star reported that this week the government's isotope plan is beginning to fail -- in part because foreign production cannot seem to fill our demand -- and hospitals will soon have no isotopes left to use in diagnostic imaging exams. [Toronto Star]

When our elected representatives are done sniping at one another as the parties position themselves for a potential federal election this year, will they finally figure out how we are going to get ourselves out of this mess? Our guess: probably not anytime soon. The major barrier is that solving the problem would require some acknowledgment of mistakes that have been made over the past decade or two. But as should have been made clear by now, that kind of intellectual honesty is simply radioactive.

Photo: Lisa Raitt

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