Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the economic theory that you're providing today. Of course, Canadians can't eat a theory.
I want to come back to the issue of the quality of jobs. What Statistics Canada tells us is from 1989 to 2004, and those are the most recent figures available, for the lower 60%--in other words, the first, second, and third quintile...over 60% of working families have actually seen their incomes fall in real terms, and they are actually earning less money now than they were in 1989, before we started these free trade agreements and started to change, to restructure the Canadian economy. The upper middle class has held its own, just barely hanging on, and they basically have kept up with inflation. Then you've seen the wealthiest 20% of Canadians see their incomes absolutely skyrocket.
We're not talking about a theoretical situation where there have been some losers. Most Canadians are worse off than they were in 1989. They're working longer and longer hours. Overtime has gone up, as you know, by almost one-third. We're seeing that most of the jobs created in the economy today--Statistics Canada tells us--are part-time, temporary in nature, with no benefits and no pensions. We also see the quality of jobs being created in the current economic context as being jobs with a lot more precariousness and jobs that don't provide the sorts of family-sustaining incomes that we used to see in Canada.
My first question is around that issue of the quality of jobs. I'm looking through and trying to find a road map within your document that actually points to family-sustaining jobs. I don't see it yet. Perhaps I'm missing it, or perhaps it's in later studies. How do you deal with the fact that we have gone through these various trade agreements and most Canadians are worse off than when we began, even though there generally tends to be, from the corporate sector, a siren call to “let's just do more of the same” and somehow magically it will transform into real, equitable prosperity for all Canadians? I have doubts, because the reality is that on the bottom line, over the most recent figures that we have available since 1989, it hasn't worked. It's failed. That's my first question.
My second question is around foreign investment. We've seen 11,000 takeovers in that 15-year period. That's 11,000, and they were all rubber-stamped. Liberals have rubber-stamped them and Conservatives have rubber-stamped them. When is foreign investment not in Canadians' interests? Again, we're seeing a fall in real incomes for most Canadian families--11,000 takeovers without a single real review.
My third question is coming back to the agricultural sector, the family farms. Countries that have the highest quality-of-life index, the human development index, are countries that support the family farms. Here we have a real push by the Bush administration to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board, although farmers are pushing the government back on that, and to basically give up on supply management. Why should Canada give up on supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board when it serves our farmers very well and helps to support family farms and farming communities across the country?
Those are my three questions. Thank you.