Mr. Speaker, I echo my colleague and thank all who have worked so hard on this committee. We had a very busy fall agenda.

The report on income inequality in Canada is unfortunately all too brief. There is a disturbing growth in income inequality in Canada over recent decades. We heard stark testimony about the social and economic ills associated with it, but we had a mere three public hearings on such a huge topic. It was also very limited in scope. We believe that on both these grounds, the limited time and the limited scope, were grossly inadequate to address the fundamental problems facing Canadians.

The report successfully details many of the key elements of the inequality problem. We believe the recommendations of the report fail to fully confront the problem that we are facing, so we had a whole range of supplementary recommendations, things like calling for a thorough review of Canada's tax and transfer system to see where the greatest increases in income inequality are located, and we urge that the government review all tax expenditure to assess their cost effectiveness and fairness. We also urge the government to really crack down on tax evasion and go after that revenue, which is badly needed for our economy.

We had strong recommendations about retirement security, improving OAS, reversing the cuts that the government made, improving GIS and improving the Canada and Quebec pension plan, expanding the working income tax benefit and increasing the federal minimum wage.

We also called for stronger measures to allow people to engage in collective bargaining, which we believe would improve their working lives and their incomes, so we had a range of concrete recommendations.

We believe income inequality is not only a terrible personal and social ill, it has an impact on our overall economy. It is bad for economic growth and we believe strongly that with the concrete measures we are proposing, Canada can marshal the resources to address this serious and urgent problem, and growing problem, and that we should be doing this without delay.

Peggy Nash

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