The most frustrating obstacle for the Occupy Canada movement has been the lack of public debate regarding issues of political, social and economic inequality in Canada, and the resulting lack of action by so many Canadians.

The corporate media tends to reinforce Canadians’ ignorance of this growing inequality, and so we accept the unequal status quo as being somehow unavoidable. Making matters worse, our current provincial and federal governments are unwilling to acknowledge that there is even a problem, let alone recognize any solutions.

Whether they agree with the methods or goals of the Occupy Movement or not, Canadians are slowly becoming aware of how inequality is fragmenting and harming our society.

The unemployment rate rose for the third month in a row in December; most new jobs were part-time or self-employment (mostly involuntary), while full-time jobs decreased. There were 1.4 million unemployed job-seeking Canadians; a rate of 7.5 percent understates the problem, as it does not include those workers who have given up looking for work, or part-time workers seeking full-time employment.

Weak job growth has coincided with lower wages in Canada; currently, the cost of living is increasing faster than wages. However, this recent drop in wages is only an acceleration of an existing 30-year trend, where Canadian wages have remained stagnant despite prolonged economic prosperity.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Canadian Conference Board, the Canadian rich-poor income divide has been one of the fastest growing in the world since 1995. This is because income levels for most Canadians have barely changed in decades, according to Statistics Canada.

Between 1980 and 2005, income for the bottom 20 percent of full-time, year-round earners decreased by 21 percent, while earnings of the middle 20 percent stagnated. In contrast, the top 20 percent saw their earnings surge by 16 percent. Indeed, despite prolonged economic growth in Canada, the benefits have clearly been directed primarily to the richest Canadians.

Corporations are of course also raking in billions in profits. Even after the market collapse, Canada’s corporate profits grew 20 percent over 2011, pushing up corporations’ share of GDP to the highest percentage in history. The Conservative government is continuing with its ongoing corporate tax cuts, reducing the federal corporate income tax rate from 21 percent in 2006 to 15 percent on January 1.

The Harper government’s own budget research shows that investment in public services yields more to the economy than corporate tax cuts, which for every dollar spent yields only 30 cents to the economy, whereas a dollar spent on public services yields $1.40.

Rather than investing in public services, governments are imposing draconian austerity measures which are dismantling Canada’s social supports and hurting the middle class and the poor. There is a growing inequality problem in Canada and the current policies are actually making matters much worse.

In 2006, an Environics poll found that 86 percent of Canadians said they would like government to reduce the gap between rich and poor and tackle Canada’s poverty problem. The way forward need not be a radical one, though the solution may be off-putting to corporatist libertarians such as Prime Minister Stephen Harper or Premier Christy Clark.

In the 1930s, it was massive public investments in infrastructure which led the U.S. out of the Great Depression. Publicly inspired, large-scale green infrastructure projects would extend economic, social and environmental benefits exponentially into the future. For example, a high-speed electric train between Windsor and Quebec City would save people time and money, reduce greenhouse gases and create population densification near stops, and prompt immediate high-paying job creation, in addition to exponential future growth throughout the region.

The OECD advises that the solution lies with creating “more and better jobs, enabling people to escape poverty and offering real career prospects,” not with dismantling the Canadian labour force in exchange for some short-term corporate profits.