Mr. Speaker, the National Council on Welfare reports that the number of poor
people in Canada has increased dramatically and child poverty has reached a 14-year high.
For many years, successive Canadian governments have followed policies designed to reduce the wages of working Canadians and fatten incentives for wealthy Canadians. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and there are more of both of them. Middle income Canadians are being driven to extinction.
Deregulation, free trade, privatization, contracting out, and union busting are driving down the private incomes of working Canadians. At the same time, their social benefits are being reduced by cuts in health care and education, justified as a means to pay off a deficit caused by a high real interest rate policy and tax loopholes that favoured the rich in the first place.
Children are poor because their parents have no money. Case in point. Famous Players Theatres, owned by Viacom Blockbuster, wants its projectionists to take a 60 per cent wage cut and is using scabs to enforce its will. Government should act to protect the children of people who are on strike to protect-