Canada’s Inequality Is Driven by Billionaire Wealth

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Highlights

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the top 20 percent of Canadian households controls 64.7 percent of wealth, with an average CAD $3.3millionperhousehold,whilethebottom40percentholdsonly3.3percentofthetotalwealthwithanaverage$83,189 per household.

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The PBO’s wealth distribution modeling finds the richest 1 percent controls nearly a quarter of Canada’s wealth (24.3 percent), amounting to $3.5trillion.Academicresearchusingasimilarmodelingapproach[finds](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/roiw.12453)thatthewealthshareofthetop1percentmaybeevenhigherat29percentofnetwealth.“Real-timebillionaires”datafrom\ast [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/)\ast findthatsixty-fiveCanadianbillionairesnowcontrolapproximately$410 billion of wealth. The Canadian Business rich list found the richest ten billionaires alone controlled $261 billion.

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Tax policy can’t do all the heavy lifting, however. Blunting the power of the superrich and tackling inequality also require policies that help build working-class power, including making it easier to unionize and fight for higher wages, to increase working-class representation in government, and to enable workers to take charge in the workplace through democratic employee ownership of firms.

✏️ A reminder that taxes can’t fix everything. You still have to empower the working class, give them more wages, more power, more decision-making. 🔗 View Highlight