Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
These remarks flow from our submission to the committee dated August of this year. Budget 2015 is going to be a critical budget for Canadians, including the almost 630,000 members that CUPE is privileged to represent. Our members pay collectively just over $3 billion in income taxes annually. When we discuss the issue internally, they agree quality public services are more important than tax cuts. They want fairer taxes, but few want tax cuts if it means public services will be reduced and their own individual cost will rise.
Trickle-down economic policies, tax cuts, and austerity measures are failing to strengthen growth. Growth from this recession is 30% slower than previous recoveries, which means about a $100 billion smaller economy by 2017, equal to $7,000 less per household. Those at the top have benefited the most, with increases for the top 0.01%, and CEOs far outpacing growth in workers' wages. The IMF, the OECD, the ILO, the World Bank, and even Standard and Poor's now agree that growing inequality is reducing growth and that we need to focus on generating quality jobs, raising wages, and reducing inequality to reignite economic growth. Unfortunately, we're not seeing this happen. Our unemployment rate has barely declined in the last three years. Over 80% of the growth last year in new jobs was in part-time jobs, and a fair chunk was in temporary and contract jobs.
Inequality continues to grow, with top occupations gaining bigger pay increases, while wages for many on the lower end of the scale are much lower, barely keeping up with inflation. A top priority for budget 2015 should be to create more and better quality jobs, and support wage and income growth. Private corporations are failing to do this, despite sitting on over $600 billion in surplus cash. The best way to achieve this is through increased public investment and expanded services.
Instead, we've seen the opposite. Some 20,000 full-time federal jobs have been lost, and apparently there are plans for 9,000 more. We're privileged to represent employees at Radio-Canada. Over 2,000 jobs have been eliminated, and another 1,000, one third of the workforce, are on the table. The government should help increase wages of working Canadians, instead of suppressing them, and should cease to interfere in free collective bargaining and bargaining that you control.
We also advocate for a reintroduction of the federal minimum wage, starting at $14 an hour, restoration of EI benefits with the fiscal dividend, and access and reform of the temporary foreign worker program beyond the needed changes that have been introduced by the minister to date. We should ensure decent retirement income security for all Canadians by improving the CPP and the GIS. We should cancel plans to force Canadians to work longer to qualify for OAS and GIS. We should think of the effect this will have on provinces and Canadians.
Polls show Canadians' top priority is to keep public health care systems strong. The federal government's unilateral changes, according to the Council of the Federation, reduce health care funding by $36 billion by 2024, or over $1,000 per person over the next decade.
We urge the government to negotiate a new 10-year health accord with a minimum annual escalator of 6% funding. We also want to see a national pharmacare plan that could help reduce overall costs by $10 billion annually, discussions on a national community residential and home care program, and expanded funding for community health care centres and clinics.
Budget 2015 should also pave the way for a high quality, public early childhood education and care program with the provinces. This would generate thousands of jobs, and would likely pay for itself in fiscal terms, as Quebec's program has done.
How can we pay for this while ensuring a balanced budget and fiscal sustainability? Tax cuts since 2000 have reduced federal revenues by at least $50 billion. Our August submission outlines a few simple steps that would increase tax fairness, and increase the federal government's revenues by over $33 billion annually.
To close, public investment and spending has a much stronger, stimulative impact on the economy than tax cuts. Combining these measures would provide a strong boost to employment and Canada's economic growth.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.