Where is the help for New Orleans???

A very nice op-ed by Bruce Garvey in the National Post today wondering when people are going to start helping New Orleans.

Now, in one of its frequent moments of natual disaster need, the US faces up to the hardship and challenge alone and self-reliant. Late yesterday, the government of Canada, whose citizens flock to the Gulf Coast and Florida beaches in the thousands, announced through deputy prime minister Anne Mclellan its condolences and support.

Twenty minutes earlier opposition leader Stephen Harper had taken it on himself to offer "any assistance that we can provide."

He said he had been shocked by the magnitude of the disaster as he watched it on TV with his wife and children.

"Natural disasters such as this remind us that when our close friends and neighbours are in trouble we as Canadians are always ready to help out," he said.

There was no statement from the Prime Minister himself. But even as Katrina was hammering ashore, one PMO flack named Marc Roy was telling reporters that Paul Martin would be on the phone in a matter of days to George W. Bush not to commiserate over the disaster - but to chew out the beleaguered President about softwood lumber tariffs.

Here's Bush, up to his neck in problems with Iraq, now faced with rebuilding the Gulf Coast, and Paul Martin wants to whine about softwood lumber. The timing and insensitivity boggles the mind.