While Ontario's Liberal government is determined to create jobs, it's not particularly fussy about how it does it.

The Liberals have not yet stooped to offering careers for hit men or fraud artists, but in quick succession they approved two initiatives to create jobs that do little to improve society and in which they cannot take much pride.

The government put out a news release, to which no minister seemed willing to attach his or her name, announcing it will install a staggering 544 new slot machines at the Ajax Downs race track east of Toronto.

This will make a total 800 of what people used to call "one-armed bandits," aptly because they grab your money and almost always give nothing back, in this suburban, mostly below-average income area, where many residents have difficulty buying their groceries even at the discount No Frills.

The slots will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as they are in some of the more than 20 major locations, mostly tracks and casinos, where the province allows them.

The government says more slots are being installed at Ajax because demand for them has increased so that people have to line up Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

It has encouraged placing 23,000 slot machines at race tracks and casinos since they were first allowed in the 1990s.

The release said the new slots at Ajax will provide 70 new full- and part-time jobs for cashiers, food and beverage servers, security and other staff.

It claimed the slots are "exciting entertainment" and they now contribute a large proportion of the money lotteries and other gambling raise for provincial and municipal governments.

The province does not make public how much it rakes in solely from slots, perhaps because it is embarrassed to acknowledge how much it relies on machines that once were illegal and a dirty word.

But they deprive some who put their money in them of funds they need for necessities including food, clothing and shelter.

Dropping money in slots also cannot be said to provide any physical recreation and requires no skills except perhaps the ability to restrain disappointment as participants lose.

While in opposition under Dalton McGuinty, the Liberals used to oppose them as "the crack cocaine of gambling," an insidious way to get addicted. Jobs are welcome, but they must have had to hold their noses when they created these.

McGuinty also should have felt it easy to control his pride when he announced the province will provide $263 million to encourage Ubisoft, a French-based producer of interactive video games, to open a production studio in Toronto.

He said this will create 800 jobs, a significant number considering the way Ontario has lost employment.

The premier claimed optimistically that it will give Ontario a piece of the action in the fast-growing and lucrative business of producing video games, and is "kind of like landing a major Hollywood studio."

But this studio is not of the stature of Metro Goldwyn Mayer or 20th Century Fox and does not produce such epics as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

This company manufactures "games" such as America's Army - Rise of a Soldier, in which participants play snipers tracking down and killing enemy officers, and Assassin's Creed, in which they are said to experience the thrill of murdering people in Renaissance Italy.

The company also makes Red Steel, which is said to allow them to feel the power and freedom of killing their enemies with bullet and blade.

And in Call of Juarez they are enabled to use their gun-fighting skills and arsenal of deadly weapons to kill anyone who stands in their way.

McGuinty has said often that he wants to discourage violence in streets and homes, but his spokesperson said merely it is up to parents to control their children's computer habits.

Creating jobs is not easy, but government has an obligation to look further than those that encourage people to throw away money on gambling and admire violence.