The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) has put together the Fairness Express, a lime green bus that is touring the country to get people talking about income equality in Canada.
Mary Ann Harrison, Vice President for SGEU/NUPGE, says that the goal of the bus is to make people aware of the income disparity going on in the country, and start engaging people about what they see as a problem in Canada as a whole.
The big issue that NUPGE wants to see people thinking about on the tour is corporate taxes, Harrison says. There are many tax credits and concessions to corporations that NUPGE feels are unnecessary and do not benefit Canadians overall.
"Corporations need to pay more. They need to pay better wages and they need to pay more taxes. Right now they are getting a lot of tax exceptions and tax credits... You've got corporations getting tax credits and tax breaks, but you're not giving that to the people who actually need the breaks."
She admits that the logic behind the tax breaks is that corporations would be unwilling to continue to do business without the concessions, but feels that this is not something people need to worry about, especially in a resource-based economy, given that the resources cannot be relocated.
"I can't imagine stakeholders would allow them to leave if you said instead of $275 billion you're only going to make $175 billion."
Over the tour across Canada, she says that people have a frustration over a lack of income. With fewer people making a living wage, Harrison says that there is a mounting frustration about the rising costs not being met with rising wages.
"People are becoming aware of it because they are living it... People are telling their stories, we're talking to single parents who can't afford to work because they can't afford childcare."
The goal is to attract attention and awareness, Harrison says, but they want to be the start of the process of people learning more and getting more politically involved. She says people need to be vocal and put greater pressure on their elected officials.
"They need to talk to their MLAs and their MPs and ask them what their stance is, and how they are going to make things better for them... Start pressuring them, start pushing them to keep their promises and make them follow through."
The tour for 2014 is close to wrapping up, and Harrison says at the end they will look at how effective it was before deciding whether or not to continue into the future.
