Madam Speaker, I had a chance to take a glance at it. Indeed the average income of Canadians has increased over the decade. If my understanding is correct, it has increased mainly because we now have two people working in a family and sometimes three. It has also increased because people have been working extra hours or have an extra or part time job. The family income has gone up because of the extra hours that the family puts into the workplace. I am not sure that is the way we should go.
Through a technological society and innovation we were supposed have more leisure time. I remember these debates about 10 years or 15 years ago when technology started to become the thing to talk about. One of the advantages of technology and computers was to reduce the time at work and free up more time to pursue leisure, arts, sports or whatever one wanted to do. The fact that we have more and more part time jobs and fewer full time jobs, and probably fewer jobs in the general sense that are unionized and have good benefits and wages, people are generally making less per hour and putting in more hours. At the end they make more money but what happens to the quality of life.
These are all things we should look at. We are beginning a new parliament which is really a new phase in the development of our country. It is important that we look at the issues of equality and how we close the gap rather than see it widen. I really mean it when I say the issue of democracy is one that is really important. Our electoral and parliamentary system and the thwarting of democracy or the assault on democracy by big transnational corporations is really quite a thing. It is not really a free enterprise thing either. Free enterprise and entrepreneurs believe in the marketplace. A lot of the big corporations are run by technocrats and bureaucrats with little sensitivity to anything called a free market or fair market. Again, that is a thwarting of democracy.
These things are sort of fleeting away from our hands. We have to look at ways to return power to the people, empower them and make our society and our country more inclusive. I think that can be done.
One way to do that is to make this place a little less partisan through fewer confidence votes and stronger committees, and by electing the chairs of committees and letting them have the right to timetable things out. These are not radical moves. These things happen in countries around the world that are advanced democracies.
Let us look at the idea of proportional representation as well. The time has come. We are one of only three countries in the world with populations of more than eight million people that does not have it. That would create the situation where all votes are equal, no votes are wasted and people would genuinely be empowered.