Thanks, Mr. Chair.
You can see that we want to make sure we get all the information from you. It has been a very interesting discussion, both the questions from the chair and the comments from Mr. Giguère.
Mr. Macdonald, I don't think you had a chance to respond to Mr. Jean. He was being a little over-eager when he was asking questions. I wanted to give you the opportunity to respond a little bit more, because I think this is important. This is where the bubble that Ottawa lives under bursts—when we start talking about Bill C-13, what's missing, and what the reality is out there. There will be 100,000 more breadwinners put out in the streets in the coming months.
You referenced rising inequality. I'd like you to talk about that. I think your institute has done some studies on this. Some people have talked about the late 1920s, saying that the clock has been turned back on inequality, back to those times. Could you confirm to what extent we've turned the clock back, because of the policies of the last few years?
You've talked about the lower-paying jobs and the fact that we have more people without work than in May 2008. That's important. You also talked about the debt load of the average Canadian family. The middle class is living a debt crisis. There's no other way to put it. They have debt loads of 150% of their annual income. Families have been struggling with lower and lower wages by indebting themselves more and more. If you could have this committee revise Bill C-13 so that it actually dealt with some of these realities, what changes would you bring in to address these problems that don't normally penetrate the Ottawa bubble?