Canada Needs to Get Serious About Taxing the Rich
Like their counterparts everywhere, Canada’s superrich cream off wealth from the working class while resisting paying taxes. In the age of COVID-19, this state of affairs is more obscene — and more unpopular — than ever. It’s time to tax Canada's rich.
The wealth of Canada’s richest twenty billionaires has ballooned by more than $37 billion since the March 2020 lockdown came into effect. (Unsplash)
Canada needs to get serious about taxing the rich to reverse the rise of extreme inequality, blunt the concentration of economic and political power, and create ongoing streams of revenue to fund badly-needed public services.
A wealth tax is one important tool to accomplish these ends, but it will require breaking with a status quo that narrowly serves the interests of Bay Street (Canada’s equivalent of Wall Street) and the wealthy few.
We Cannot Afford the Rich
Canada’s richest 1 percent control 26 percent of our wealth. Eighty-seven of the country’s richest families together hold more wealth than the bottom twelve million Canadians combined. Each of these richest families hold, on average, 4,448 times the wealth of the typical family.
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