By Max HarroldMay 2, 2010 12:02 PM

PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI; JANUARY 19, 2010 — Patients wait for treatment by international volunteers at the Family Health Ministries clinic in Cité Soleil, Port au Prince, Haiti, Tuesday January 19, 2009, seven days after a magnitude 7 earthquake that hit the country. Many of the people are earthquake victims

Photograph by: Phil Carpenter, THE GAZETTE

Quebec government officials just back from a fact-finding mission in Haiti are to give reporters an idea Sunday of just how $3 million in taxpayer money has been spent to help the devastated nation.

Quebec International relations Minister Pierre Arcand is to speak to reporters at the Mariott hotel at Trudeau airport just after 1 p.m.

Arcand was in Haiti Friday and Saturday and he met with Haitian President René Préval and Haiti’s ministers for education, professional training, labour and social affairs, public health and culture and communications.

Arcand was accompanied by Haiti’s consul general in Montreal, Pierre Richard Casimir, and Emmanuel Dubourg, MNA for Viau and the Quebec government’s point man on Haiti relief efforts. Also on the trip were Gilles Bernier, a former canadian ambassador to Haiti and Marcel Proulx, director general of the École national d’administration publique.

Official figures estimate more than 220,000 people died, 250,000 were injured – including 3,000 who now are disabled – 1 million were left homeless and 300,000 buildings were badly damaged or destroyed in under a minute when the quake hit at 4:53 p.m. on Jan. 12.

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COMMENT:HAITIAN-TRUTH.ORG

Do I sense a subtle attempt by the international media to reduce the impact of the January 12, 2010 earthquake on Haiti??

Official figures stopped reporting when Preval reported 290,000 bodies recovered and probably 500,000 or more injured, including at least 50,000 who lost an arm, leg or more, 1,500,000 homeless and  240,000 buildings destroyed – many more were damaged to one degree or another.

I could be wrong, but as I sat at my computer, in Haiti, when the quake hit – my clock said 4:43 and the shaking lasted 43 seconds.

Tens of thousands remained buried under debris. Tens of thousands of these  were alive and died miserable, lonely deaths when there were few search efforts in play.

I personally visited Haiti and assisted in the fitting of the first 12  prosthetic devices, with a team of volunteers from New York that attacked overwhelming problems created by 50,000 – plus or minus – amputees. Much, much, much more help is needed in this area and stating that

Back to my main point.

I am monitoring international media reporting, and I sense a scale-down in the actual losses faced by Haiti and its people. Is this just inaccurate reporting or is it a planned effort to minimize the disaster and justify less in the way of assistance?

Wait one minute!!!

I just re-read the article and it states 3,000 disabled. What do they define as disabled??? We have something like 50,000 people who suffered amputation and countless others who still have their arms and legs but have suffered paralysis, broken knees, backs, badly fractured feet, arms, legs, hands that cannot work, walk or function anymore.  The disabled, by North American standards is well in excess of the 50,000 amputees.

So much for truth in media!!!