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Background A photograph of Alan Kurdi, a Syrian boy found dead on a Turkish beach, sparked a major Canadian political crisis. During a federal election campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander responded quickly to the incorrect implication that the government’s immigration policies caused the boy’s death.Analysis This article analyzes the appropriateness of Harper’s and Alexander’s response strategies during the hours right after the crisis broke.Conclusion and implications This article argues that the politicians faced an unusual challenge because, although the government’s policies had not actually caused the crisis, government leaders had to respond as if they had. Harper and Alexander mostly followed best practices but shifted the blame to the greater refugee crisis, which came across as disingenuous. Contexte Une photo d’Alan Kurdi, le garçon syrien retrouvé mort sur une plage turque, a provoqué une crise politique au Canada. En pleine campagne électorale, le premier ministre Stephen Harper et le ministre de la Citoyenneté et de l’Immigration Chris Alexander ont vite répondu à la rumeur fautive voulant que les politiques d’immigration du gouvernement aient causé la mort de l’enfant.Analyse Cet article analyse la pertinence des stratégies de communication de Harper et d’Alexander dans les heures suivant le début de la crise.Conclusion et implications Cet article soutient que les deux politiciens avaient un défi singulier à relever, car même si les politiques gouvernementales n’avaient aucunement causé la crise, les leaders ont dû agir comme si elles l’avaient réellement causée. En gros, Harper et Alexander ont suivi les meilleures pratiques possibles, mais quand ils ont attribué la mort du petit garçon à la crise des réfugiés en général, ils ont paru insincères.

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Connecting Crisis Communication Theory and Canadian Communication ResearchThe COVID-19 pandemic placed a spotlight, unlike any other crisis in recent memory, on the important and challenging public role of the crisis communicator. This work is difficult in the heat of a pandemic, with situations and information changing daily, and some crisis communicators succeeded and some failed. Effective crisis communicators of all types-politicians, corporate leaders, and doctors-warned people about the dangers of the new coronavirus, provided instructions on how to limit its damage, and published statistics of the prevalence of the virus in the community. Spreading crisis communication messages was not limited to professionals: everyone seemed to be doing crisis communication work, even ordinary social media users simply retweeting the recommendations to wash hands and wear masks. Failures in crisis communication involved slow responses and the circulation of misinformation. The four articles in this special issue on Canadian crisis communication research were written before the pandemic. Yet the authors cover topics in healthcare, communication technology, and politics that are directly relevant to the challenges of doing COVID-19 crisis communication.Early in the pandemic, the effect of COVID-19 on the Canadian healthcare system was, naturally, top of mind, and criticism circulated. In Ontario, for example, criticism of health crisis communicators fell in two categories: inconsistent public messaging by health officials and politicians about the prevalence of community transmission of the virus and the lack of information transparency during the early days of the pandemic (

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