Mr. Chair and honourable members, I know you've had many long weeks of hearings, and so on behalf of 640,000 CUPE members who work hard to deliver quality public services in communities all across Canada, I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here.
We submitted a brief in August and I'll summarize our main recommendations.
The average pay of our members is about $42,000 a year, and without quality public services, they could barely survive. Because of continued austerity, CUPE members' base wages will increase by an average of just 1.5% this year and next. Average base increases for all unionized workers have been below 2% every year since 2009. You heard on Monday from the Governor of the Bank of Canada about how expectations for economic growth have declined. Next week we'll hear something similar from the finance minister.
When household spending accounts for about two-thirds of our economy, but workers' wages continue to be repressed, should there be any wonder the economy isn't growing any stronger? We don't need more tax cuts or subsidies for corporations that already have over $700 billion in cash they aren't investing in the economy. We also don't need more trade deals that expand the powers of large, multinational corporations and undermine workers' wages and our sovereignty in different ways. We do need more and better quality jobs with decent wages and benefits in a diversified and sustainable economy, in other words, inclusive growth.
We also need improved public services and public infrastructure supported by fairer taxes and not further privatization. We need to increase workers' wages but we also need to increase the social wage that all Canadians receive through public education, health care, pensions, and other public services. One of our top priorities should be to establish and fund an affordable, quality, public early childhood education and care system with professional child care workers. This could pay for itself in fiscal and economic terms, promote equality, and generate hundreds of thousands of jobs. A new health accord should provide significant increases in funding strictly tied to improvements and expansion of public health care, including a national pharmacare program, expansion of publicly provided continuing care and primary health care, and additional support for mental health.
We support reducing and ultimately eliminating undergraduate and college tuition fees. One-half of the cost of this could be paid by eliminating federal education tax credits and loan-based financial assistance. We also need more support for literacy and essential skills.
The green economy network's proposal to invest billions more annually in public transportation, renewable energy, and energy efficiency could generate one million person-years of good green jobs over the next 10 years. Climate change plans should also include transition measures to ensure that vulnerable workers' industries and communities are assisted.
The federal government has shown leadership on a national minimum carbon price. This could provide enough revenue to pay for these additional investments and offset the hardship for those most affected. We support increased funding for public infrastructure in the government's priority areas, but more should be done to ensure that it achieves the greatest social, economic, and environmental return on investment, and creates decent jobs for all Canadians. Federally funded projects should meet a platform of social and ethical standards, including provision of decent wages, labour rights, pay-equity representative work forces, apprenticeships, and high standards of corporate responsibility including payment of taxes.
Public infrastructure should be publicly financed and operated. The P3 fund and PPP Canada should be eliminated, with funding redirected to public infrastructure projects.
We oppose the advisory council on economic growth's proposal for an infrastructure bank. These would mean much higher costs for private finance and cannibalize our public infrastructure for private profit. The public would ultimately pay these higher costs directly through higher user fees and indirectly through higher payments from and lower revenues to governments. Experts such as Matti Siemiatycki have proposed much better suggestions for a national infrastructure bank that would reduce costs and increase accountability and transparency.
Lastly, we need progressive tax reform. Priorities here include closing regressive tax loopholes, taxing income from capital at the same rate as income from labour, increasing corporate tax rates, cracking down on tax evasion and avoidance, and ensuring that large, multinational digital economy corporations such as Uber and Netflix and others pay their fair share of tax.
Thank you. I very much welcome your questions.