Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us today. I'll try to keep it brief.
We talked a lot about manufacturing jobs and productivity gains. A Quebec research institute by the name of Institut de recherche et d'informations socio-économiques recently did a study. And it showed that productivity as measured by GDP per hour of work had gone up 32% in Quebec between 1981 and 2010. Keep in mind, here, that we are talking about Quebec.
During that same period, however, worker incomes rose by only 15%. Had the increase in incomes been commensurate with the increase in productivity, every worker in Quebec would have earned about $6,000 more.
Do you think it's problematic that higher productivity does not go hand in hand with proportionally higher incomes for the men and women creating the country's wealth?