Why does Canada lag in its treatment of expatriates?

I have been living overseas for nearly four years now. As such I believe that between my personal experience, and the fact that I tend to research issues important to me to a nearly compulsive level, I am moving toward expert status with regard to my knowledge of not just the way the Canadian government views its expatriates but how contemporary countries treat their citizens living overseas.
The recent earthquake that hit Japan is the second major issue to afflict foreigners in Japan since I moved here. The first was the collapse of NOVA, a large employer of English language teachers. NOVA accounted for about half of the entire English language industry in Japan when I landed in Tokyo. It was also my first employer in the country. Within the next two months NOVA had gone bankrupt leaving about 5000 foreigners unemployed. This lead to the Australian government to offer its citizens flights home, New Zealand and England quickly added support to their citizens and it was finally America's influence that lead the Japanese government to offer us the same level of unemployment support as Japanese citizens. The Canadian government did nothing and as far as I was told by my friends and family back home this didn't even make news in Canada.
I am not comparing this to the tragedy that has befallen the whole of Japan with the recent earthquake but it is the only other case where foreign governments could have provided help, most that had affected citizens did and the Canadian government remained silent. The current position of Canada with regard to helping Canadians in Japan deal with potential radiation poisoning, according to the Canadian Embassy website,"Government of Canada offices abroad are not in a position to provide medicine or medical treatment to Canadian citizens who have chosen to travel or reside outside of Canada" is a complete farce. This is completely untrue. Canada is a wealthy country with a well funded government. The website should read "Government of Canada offices are unwilling to provide medicine or medical treatment to Canadian citizens who have chosen to travel or reside outside of Canada".
The notion, presumably, is that Canadians who can afford to travel to Japan can pay for their own radiation treatment or flights home. In fact this was explicitly echoed by Harper recently. "There continues to be a large scale normal, for the most part normal, commercial airline service from Japan so it people want to leave they have that option." This is not always the case. A lot of people teaching English in Japan live on very low incomes and subsist month to month on barely enough money to survive. This issue is compounded for anybody working as an assistant language teacher (ALT) at a government school because the January pay cheque is smaller due to the 3.5 week holiday over Christmas and New Years. When you add in that Japanese tradition dictates a monthly pay period it would be difficult for a lot of people to afford a flight home.
As for radiation treatment, potassium iodide (KI) is currently being purchased across the west coast of North America by people worried, rather absurdly, by the radiation cloud heading East across the Pacific via the jet stream. This same treatment is quickly being purchased in Japan to the point that it is nearly impossible to find. That is, assuming, one even has the ability to read enough Japanese to find medication.
For the moment I still think that it is premature to call for evacuation of foreign nationals or to hand out medication to all of a country's citizens. This is not, by any means, a cry for help. I am still confident that my decision to stay in Japan was the right choice. I also personally take a mutli-vitamin everyday that contains an appropriate amount of potassium iodide but there is a level of callousness being showed by the Canadian government that makes me sick.
My friend from Norway got a phone call from his ambassador a few hours after the earthquake to make sure he was OK. Further to that the Norwegian and British embassies hosted Q&A sessions with nuclear physicists to explain the situation in Fukushima. The UK embassy is also handing out free KI pills to all of its citizens and offering free or discounted flights out of the country. America has chartered flights for any citizens wishing to leave and giving people up to 90 days to pay back the price of the ticket. Meanwhile the price of an Air Canada flight to Canada has more than tripled since the earthquake. France and Germany have come out and told their citizens to leave the area. This is probably inappropriate and caused a lot of fear but at least it shows they care about people.