Mr. Speaker, poverty is a great shame in this country. It denies not only people's freedom and their hope, but their very dignity as persons, as fully participating citizens.
As the prosperity gap grows in Canada, as we have seen it grow, the reality is that it is threatening more and more working and middle class families who are just trying to get by. This is at the same time as we see the CEOs of the corporate giants securing astounding salaries, windfall incomes. Even as CEOs lose their jobs, they are given massive payouts. Yet working and middle class families are finding it harder and harder just to make ends meet.
Making ends meet is increasingly difficult for the average Canadian. That is the big problem. Poverty is increasing across Canada because of this.
The profits at big businesses, the big banks and the major oil companies are absolutely incredible. Last year the banks had profits of some $19 billion while the major oil companies earned $21 billion. There is prosperity, but who is prospering? Not everyone.
In a recent survey conducted by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, nearly half of all of the respondents said that they are one or two paycheques away from being poor. Two-thirds said that they are not benefiting from the economic growth that has been generated in this country.
Many of those living in poverty are working full time. In one-quarter of the poor families in Canada one member is working full time. Something is gravely wrong with an economy when full time workers are living in poverty.
I remember talking to a hotel worker. He was a new Canadian working as a server in the hotel. I asked him how things were going and he said that things were going well. He said that he had a full time job at the hotel working 40 hours a week which produced enough income for him to pay the rent, and his second job allowed him to pay for the food for his family. I thought that was a pretty stinging indictment.
If one cannot have a full time job that covers one's rent in this economy, then we are facing a very tragic situation, but we can do something about it. We do not have to accept this circumstance. Of course, the prosperity gap that we are talking about disproportionately affects certain groups in our society more than others: women, aboriginals, the disabled, and new Canadians, the immigrants to this country.
To speak about the situation facing women, they earn 71¢ on the dollar compared to what men make. More women work two jobs than men do. The figure is 6.1% of employed women take more than one job to make ends meet, only two-thirds of that number in the case of men. One in five women in Canada lives in poverty. That is 2.8 million women, and we need to also consider their children.
With respect to immigrants, during their first year here, new Canadians are 3.5 times more likely than native born Canadians to fall into a low income category. Even after the first year a disproportionate share, 2.5 times more than those born in Canada, find themselves in a chronic state of low income. Of course, part of this is because we invite them here based on their experience and credentials to work in good jobs and when they arrive they find the doors are slammed shut in their faces and they end up having to work at very low wage jobs, including minimum wage positions. This is why our party is advocating a first step in addressing the issue of poverty which would have to do with establishing a $10 minimum wage.
Mr. Speaker, I neglected to indicate at the beginning that I will be sharing my time with the member for Hamilton Mountain, with the indulgence of the House.
With respect to aboriginal people, 40% of off reserve aboriginal children are living in poverty. This is not only a national disgrace but it is drawing the attention of the global advocacy groups, which are saying they are going to have to come in and help in Canada to deal with poverty.
Students are already saddled with record debt. We have taken our national debt and put it on their shoulders. They are now having to work in minimum wage jobs to pay the rent, cover their food costs and deal with skyrocketing tuition. When we look at the record of past Conservative and Liberal governments over the last period of time, frankly, nothing has been done to close this prosperity gap. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Tuition fees have been rising very rapidly and families cannot afford to send their kids to college.
As far as child care is concerned, the Liberals and the Conservatives have been breaking their promises for years. Giving parents $100 a month for child care is said to be a policy. It is not right.
Most unemployed workers cannot even get access to employment insurance under the rules that have been created by the previous Liberal government. Even though they have to pay into the program, they cannot get help when their families are facing poverty and are on the brink.
It is not fair to working people. No wonder there is this sense of increased anxiety on the part of an awful lot of people who work for their living and are struggling.
We need a strategy here in Canada to tackle this prosperity gap. We have to put together a plan that includes many different elements and components. Most of the solutions are well known: affordable child care, affordable housing, these sorts of steps, industrial strategies to establish and keep good jobs which are draining away from this country at a ferocious rate. Whether it be in the resource sector where we sell out our resources, like the softwood sellout, or our manufacturing sector, our governments are in a state of denial even as hundreds of thousands of jobs disappear.
We believe that a starting point for this national strategy is to establish a minimum wage for the federally regulated industries.
The Liberals eliminated this in 1996 and low income workers have suffered as result of that decision. Low income workers and working families have ended up in poverty because of that decision by the Liberal government. Shame on the Liberal Party for having brought in such a policy.
When the federal minimum wage was there, it had a trend-setting effect. In a sense, it embarrassed perhaps provinces to take action. It kept the minimum wage in the different provinces in their regulated industries and sectors relatively closely tied together.
But now, since the federal government abandoned its responsibility for leadership here, we have seen the minimum wages in provinces divert so that they range now from $6.50 an hour in New Brunswick to $8.50 an hour in Nunavut, a difference of $2 an hour or 25%, and frankly it is unacceptable.
The current leader of the Liberal Party, Mr. Dion, was a minister in the cabinet that passed that order and--