Mr. Speaker, there has been a trend over the last 25 years to 30 years toward the stagnation of the wages of working people. That is one reason why I introduced my minimum wage bill because the minimum wage has been eroded over the last 30 years.
In North America, especially, there has been a strong undermining of the rights of working people and we see it south of the border. But increasingly here in Canada there is a growing gap between those, like Hunter Harrison, the CEO of CN, who make $56 million a year and the people who work at CN.
Increasingly, the average working people are finding that costs are going up much faster than their incomes and people are eroding their standard of living, and worse than that their rights are being eroded. People become afraid to speak up. If they see a safety problem at work, they are afraid to speak up. If they see some other kind of problem, something that is not right in the workplace, they are afraid to speak up. There is a real overall danger in our society. We undermine democratic structures like the right of working people to have a voice in the workplace.
We can go to countries like China where we never have to worry about workers having a voice or we never have to worry about the environment, human rights or any of those other pesky things that get in the way of a fast moving economy, but we do so at great degradation, not only to the air we breath and the water we drink but to the quality of life and the decent functioning of a civil society.