Canadian family values are really just corporate values.

90 Sparks St., Ottawa location of the Royal Bank of Canada. (SimonP.)

Family values are really corporate values…

We  live in substantially nastier economic times than our parents did, with all of their high regard for authority and social customs. From 1990 to 2000, families in the top 10 percent income bracket saw incomes increase an average of 14.3 percent.

Families in the middle brackets saw incomes increase by a measly 0.3 percent, and Canadians in the lowest brackets saw their incomes reduced an average of 0.7 percent.

In October 2000, Prime Minister Paul Martin announced, “We must reduce the gap between rich and poor. We have always said this…” In 1990 the average income of the top ten percent was $161,000 and by 2000 it was $185,000. The lowest ten percent’s average income in 1990 was $10,341 and by 2000 it had only increased an average of $80. The top ten percent increased their earnings by over 295 times that of the poor.

In 2004, the top 20 percent of Canadian families earned 42 percent of all market income. The bottom 20 percent of families in this country earned a microscopic 3.6 percent. The 1990s saw an unexpected increase in numbers (of people, not income,) for the low-income groups, even as unemployment fell.

A report issued in November 2006 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows that, “If the rich keep getting richer and the poor getting poorer, Canada will end up more like the U.S. Approximately 65 percent of those polled believed that most of the benefit from Canada’s recent economic growth has gone to the richest Canadians, and hasn’t benefited most Canadians.” The facts bear this out.

The Globe and Mail stated in May 2007, “It is a mark of a healthy society when incomes grow and no one is left behind. The system is working…” Once again the print media in this country reveal their strong ultra right-wing bias and a complete disregard for the truth. They don’t even seem to read their own papers.

In recent years the top income families took home an average of 13 times the income of the lowest ten percent of families. This compares with 5.6 times in Finland and is twice as much as the average in the Nordic countries. In 2004 the gap between rich and poor in this nation was greater than at any other point in our history.

A poll that came out in 2005 reported, “While a record number of Canadians believed that the country was in a period of strong economic growth, the majority say they are not receiving any of the benefits. Only 11 percent of Canadians believe their household income will keep pace with the cost of  living.” (Pollarca/Globe & Mail.)

In The Rich and the Rest of Us, issued by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, economist Armine Yalnizan showed that 40 percent of Ontario families with children saw little or no income growth for the last thirty years.

Countries that do better than us in income distribution include Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Mexico, Turkey, Poland and the U.S.

Norway, Sweden, Japan, Austria and others do a much better job than Canada.

Here on the National Newswatch website is an important article on how tax cuts represent a ‘race to the bottom,’ and how the gap between rich and poor is not just widening, but at an accelerating pace.

ING, owner of Intact Financial, & Trafalgar Insurance,
Grey Power, etc. is a global corporation. (MapLab.)