The Sixth Estate

Continuing my regular series of hopelessly bad government press releases, let me just say that if this is what human resources minister Diane Finley thinks is strong affirmative action in the face of blatantly illegal mass layoffs by American call centre company IQT falling the closure of their Canadian operations, then that is a strong indication her personal morals are as bad as her husband’s, Doug the Election Finance Launderer, and a rejection of the very idea of responsible government.

You might think that when the government announces it is “reaching out” to ex-IQT employees, at the very least it was either forcing IQT to meet its legal obligations to pay its employees or perhaps even set up a special channel for providing social services to the newly unemployed. Nope. It’s just publishing a reminder that ex-IQT employees, like all former employees who have been laid off by a company, are allowed to apply for Employment Insurance payouts.

What really pisses me off, though, is that Finley goes so far as to say that “we are doing everything we can” to help the workers in question. This is an obvious lie — even if most people think it is appropriate that the government do nothing to help the workers, it is openly deceitful to claim that doing nothing particularly special is actually everything that can be done. Ms. Finley, you and your husband are a disgrace even by the generally low standards politicians are expected to rise to.