The Conservative government has a long history of demonizing Canadians who have lost their job.
The mockery started when the Conservative HRSDC Minister, in the midst of massive job losses, called the unemployed lazy while defending her Employment Insurance (EI) cuts:
"We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid for it." – Diane Finley, HRSDC Minister, January 30, 2009
Of course that was soon followed by yet another attack on the unemployed later that fall:
“All those no-good bastards sitting on the sidewalk in Halifax that can't get work.” – Gerald Keddy, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade, Nov 23, 2009
Today, Conservatives took this attack a step further by targeting out of work Canadians as the “bad guys”, in response to questions by NDP MPs about quotas for EI application denials at Service Canada. Finley even went so far as to try and claim “the NDP is protecting the bad guys”.
Treating law-abiding unemployed Canadians like criminals is no way to catch the real criminals.
This Minister, increasingly out of touch with the realities facing Canadians, is providing yet more evidence of a defensive and tired government plagued by mismanagement and ethical lapses.
