Who were those People?

There were stories on the web yesterday and in several newspapers this morning about Jack Layton's meeting with Little Stevie. The Liberals have been meeting with the Conservatives all summer so, big deal. Jack got a meeting set up so he could show that he was pushing the government on his issues too.

What struck me about the stories was the Reuters photos that accompanied them. It showed a couple of earnest young adults behind Layton holding up a couple of signs criticizing Jack for meeting. The signs I saw read "Jack will do anything for a new office" and "NDP + Conservatives". The cut lines read something like, "Protesters greet Jack Layton at the Langevin Block as he goes to Meet Stephen Harper."

The story that wasn't written by any reporter was "Who are those people?"

The left, however annoyed they might be at their party or the effectiveness of the leader, tend to grumble about it with each other and very, very seldom air their discontent in public.

That leaves us with the probability that the "protesters" were simply there to try to embarrass Jack. So who were they? I see two possibilities.

Either they were;

• Liberals staffers, annoyed that Jack's meeting with the PM took attention from their own discussions about Employment Insurance.
• Conservative staff trying to undermine the meeting before it even took place.
  

I am betting that the PMO agreed to the meeting with Layton knowing before hand that nothing would be accomplished.

• They knew that Little Stevie was not going to suddenly, see the error of his ways after a chat with Jack, and suddenly veer to the left.
  
• Jack Layton was hardly going to buy into Harper's right wing agenda.
• They did know that Layton wold emerge from the meeting to say the Harper Government is on the wrong track.
  

So what to do. They could just let it all unfold as expected or, try to undermine Layton's meeting right from the get go. My guess is that the stunt originated in the Prime Ministers office. Now how cynical is that? We shouldn't be at all surprised, political junkies take courses in this kind of thing.

I think the question should be, why don't the media report it.