Canada’s 1% Is Incredibly Rich. Their Wealth Needs to Be Taxed.
American leftists look to Canada’s more robust social-welfare state with envy. But all is not well north of the border: Canada’s richest families own 120 times more wealth than the rest of the country combined. There’s never been a better time to introduce a wealth tax.
Taxing Canada’s richest families would socialize a greater portion of the country’s national wealth for investment in badly-needed new programs. (Christopher Furlong / Getty Images)
Despite its global reputation as an egalitarian and pluralist place, Canada’s official image has long helped to paper over deep and abiding social fissures at home and abroad.
This includes different forms of inequality, from those originating in the country’s inception as a colonial enterprise to extreme disparities of wealth and income. Though public opinion surveys suggest many Canadians are at least somewhat aware of these realities, they also suggest that quite a few continue to underestimate just how unequal Canadian society really is.
The data certainly lends weight to this conclusion, at least as far as disparities of wealth are concerned. A 2014 report, for example, identified strong public support for redistributive policies designed to rectify the country’s economic divides, while also noting widespread misperceptions about just how serious they really are.
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