The Toronto Star's James Travers had an interesting piece on tsunami relief today, including this observation about the media's handling of the DART issue:

The controversial deployment of the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) is instructive. Without an effective decision-making structure, a government caught off balance as well as on vacation bickered and delayed until public pressure forced a decision based more on political realities than relief priorities.

We in the media exacerbated the situation. Wrongly assuming that DART was a major part of the solution, journalists badgered the government until the unit was sent on a mission that could have been handled more quickly and at lower cost by non-government agencies already on the ground.

There was also an unflattering news story:

Canada's "amateur" response to the tsunami in Southeast Asia highlighted "major problems" with the country's aid-delivery mechanisms, says the head of one of Canada's biggest aid agencies.

A. John Watson, the president and chief executive of CARE Canada, blasted public servants, politicians, the military's disaster response team, the media and other non-governmental organizations — saying all were at fault for the current state of affairs, and that "Canadians expect better of us."

Watson was especially critical of the government's decision to deploy the Disaster Assistance Response Team.

"DART makes no sense, except as a PR exercise," he said, adding he would "throw up" if one more person said DART is fast-moving and was deployed because it could respond faster than an NGO — an assertion he disputes.