Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Winnipeg North.
I rise today to address the growing income inequality gap and to ask that the government take immediate action to make a real difference to Canadians, many of whom are suffering.
I have the privilege of representing the riding where I was born and raised. While we are proudly one of the most multicultural ridings in the country, we also have our challenges. Almost 20% of our residents are not yet citizens, and so our families face family reunification challenges and language and job barriers. Almost 25% of our families are headed by single parents, who work two or three jobs just to put food on the table. Almost 20% of our riding is engaged in manufacturing, the second highest percentage for the entire country.
Income inequality hurts Canadians. If middle-class families cannot buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, the entire economy can be affected. In fact, research shows that countries with less inequality tend to have steadier and stronger economic growth in the long term.
This Parliament should be able to imagine and fight for a future where the people who work hard in my riding and ridings across our great country can get a good job, buy a home, raise a family, pay for their children's education and save for retirement, and where the income inequality gap is not ever-increasing.
I am going to provide three concrete examples of how income inequality disproportionately affects our children, those living with disabilities and those who provide care, and how income inequality hurts real Canadians.
Let me begin with children, society's most vulnerable and the voiceless, particularly the one in five who live below the poverty line. I ask directly of the government, what is the state of childhood in Canada? How does Canada compare to other countries? Does the federal government spend enough money on children? Do we even have the data? Who speaks for children and ensures that every child matters? Are children asked and listened to? Do we have the right government structure and policy agenda to ensure effective advocacy for children?
We need change for children. We must put children at the centre of our policies. Nurture demands political advocacy for children's best interests, starting with the basics of love and care and seeing through the eyes of children. This is why, as the hon. member for Westmount—Ville-Marie is advocating, we so desperately need a children's commissioner in Canada who is independent and can speak for the most vulnerable in society.
Tragically, in some parts of our great country families eat only one meal a day instead of three. More often than we would like to admit, some family members eat while others go hungry. No family should face such choices in Canada. No one should face such hardship, not in a country of such enormous wealth.
Hundreds of thousands of Canadian children go to school hungry, and 40% of our elementary students and 62% of our secondary students do not eat a nutritious breakfast. As a result they may stop growing and may be too hungry to learn. When they are older they may be too undereducated to work to their full potential.
Despite the staggering statistics, percentages and well-known outcomes, Canada remains one of the few developed countries without a student nutrition program. If providing food at school increases graduation rates by only 3%, a pan-Canadian school meals program in high schools, at a cost of $1.25 a day, could result in an annual net payback of more than $500 million.
Mere private members' bills or motions are not good enough to protect our children, their futures and our collective future. The government must demonstrate courage and tenacity to swiftly tackle the tragedy of child hunger in Canada while building local markets for Canadian farmers. As Buzz Aldrin says, “If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger”.
In addition to serving my riding, I have the privilege of serving thousands of Canadians living with devastating multiple sclerosis, who bravely fight their disease each day and fight for clinical trials for CCSVI, as well as all those living with a brain disease, disorder or injury, which, along with mental health, affect one in three Canadians or 10 million Canadians.
While the government has promised a registry and clinical trials for CCSVI, all we have to date is announcements and no action. There are no cures and no effective treatments that will consistently slow or stop neurological disorders.
Families often feel impossibly alone and helpless, people like an extraordinary lady with MS whose young son recently suffered an aneurysm and a stroke. She has had to quit work to look after him. They are people like my own aunt who, in her 70s, is at her daughter's house at 6:30 in the morning to feed her daughter and then goes home to her husband who is now suffering with Alzheimer's disease, and my friend's grandfather who is 80 years old and was married for 60 years. He kept his promise to his wife, installed a bed in the living room and for seven years was her sole caregiver, bathing her, feeding her and carrying her upstairs to the washroom.
The government has to do better in terms of income and caregiver support. Whether a neurological condition is diagnosed in childhood, such as cerebral palsy, in early adulthood, such as multiple sclerosis, or later as in Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, as the diseases progresses it takes a toll on the caregiver's or person's productivity. This includes no longer being able to work, perhaps because of the disease but all too often because of the lack of accommodation in the workplace.
There are some relatively easy actions that could be taken now, for example, making employment insurance benefits more flexible to allow people who have episodic conditions to work part time and receive partial benefits.
In terms of neurological conditions, the role of the caregiver changes throughout the course of the condition. Initially the focus may be on helping with finances, personal care and transportation; then later to ensuring that services are delivered safely as scheduled; and finally to being a member of the care team.
Today 2.7 million Canadians provide care for seniors. Family caregivers are responsible for 80% of Canada's home care services, providing over $9 billion in unpaid care each year. Caring for family often results in lost income from work in order to provide care, as well as unexpected out-of-pocket expenses. For example, over 40% of family caregivers use personal savings to survive. One-quarter of family caregivers miss one or more months of work to provide care, and 65% of family caregivers have household incomes under $45,000. Three-quarters of family caregivers are women, who are more likely to have lower wages, fewer savings and additional responsibilities for child care.
The government must provide meaningful support for caregivers in the form of a comprehensive package of education, respite and mandated workplace accommodation with regard to the episodic needs of caregivers, and of course making the family caregiver tax credit refundable so low-income Canadians are not excluded.
The government must recognize the economic and social costs of caregiving, make existing tax credits refundable and explore ways to reform income security programs.
In closing, inequality can also twist or distort democracy. It can give a greater voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists. I leave members with one final thought from the voiceless, a Canadian woman living with multiple sclerosis who says:
Don’t forget me. I’m still in here, trapped in a body that can’t move, that can’t talk. But I think and I feel just like you do, and I hurt. I hurt physically and mentally.
The time to act is now. Our fellow Canadians are hurting.