Jim Flaherty is wrong. There are very bad jobs.
The Finance Minister suggested the only lousy job was not having one, noting he'd driven a taxi before succumbing to the lure of politics with his two platinum pension plans.
But Canadian Business magazine crunched the stats and identified the worst ways Canadians earn a paycheque.
Fish processor, harvest labourer, film developer, office clerk, greenhouse worker, plastic parts assembly and garment weaver line the bottom of the list.
Which brings us to the worst of them all. That would be this government's bad job of explaining how it plans to deny workers Employment Insurance if they fail to accept lesser employment.
Three ministers tried and only succeeded in creating confusion. Wait for the details after the bill is approved, they say.
What's needed is to focus on the real problem. That's the chronic sense of entitlement to annual pogey payments by seasonal workers.
It's not workers who have become collateral damage to technology or company relocations and need a financial bridge to something else.
Keep in mind that until the Conservatives arrived, the EI fund created by employee and employer contributions had a surplus of $57 BILLION. Not a nickel of government money was in that fund when the cash was rolled into general revenue, the biggest fiscal heist in history.
EI is a hand-up, not a hand-out, between a pink slip and a new paycheque. It's not to be denied someone for failing to take the first job on the bulletin board in an unrelated unskilled field.
If that's the government's intent, a new bad job is up for worst-ever consideration.
That would be the cold-blooded public servant forced to deny a displaced worker employment insurance until they accept a ditch-digging gig.
That's the Last Word.
