While many Canadians struggled and saw their financial health deteriorate during the pandemic, the rich got richer.
A new report by Britain’s Oxfam International found that Canadian billionaires saw their wealth grow by a staggering 51 per cent since the pandemic began.
“This accelerated a trend that was already driving wealth inequality in Canada over the past decade,” Oxfam Canada reported.
The figures were released in a report titled ‘Survival of the richest: how we must tax the superrich now to fight inequality,’ issued Monday just ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. All numbers are in U.S. dollars
For every $100 of wealth created in the last 10 years in Canada, $34 has gone to the richest 1 per cent and only $5 to the bottom 50 per cent, according to Oxfam Canada. This means that the richest 1 per cent have gained nearly seven times more wealth than the bottom 50 per cent in the last 10 years. Oxfam says it used Forbes real-time billionaire list as of Nov. 30, 2022 and global banking firm Credit Suisse to compile its data.
“Canadians are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food and utility bills, while the superrich have outdone even their wildest dreams,” said Lauren Ravon, executive director of Oxfam Canada. “Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires.”
Canada’s billionaires, numbering around 50 people, have assets of $249 billion as of November 2022 — just ahead of the $248 billion in assets belonging to the bottom 40% of the Canadian population, according to Oxfam Canada. In the U.S., the numbers are even higher with American billionaires having assets of $4,576 billion nearing the $5,068 billion owned by the bottom 60 per cent of the U.S. population.
In Britain, billionaires have assets of $186.6 billion, compared to the $342 billion owned by the bottom 40 per cent of the U.K. population.
There has been “a shocking trend which is how much in the past two years wealth accumulation at the very top has accelerated,” Ian Thomson, policy manager of Oxfam Canada, told the Star. “We know this has been a trend for over a decade, but things just picked up dramatically ever since 2020 and during the pandemic time period.”
The way out of this wealth inequality, says Thomson, “is through fair taxation. So, bringing in some taxes on the superrich will ensure that wealth accumulation is kept in check and the governments can really spend public revenues on the things that Canadians need, whether it’s health care, child care, or making housing more affordable.”
Oxfam is proposing a few different tax measures including: windfall taxes to end crisis profiteering; a permanent increase in taxes on the richest one per cent with higher rates for multimillionaires and billionaires; and a hike in capital gains taxes, which are subject to lower tax rates than other forms of income.
Globally, the numbers are also eye-popping with billionaires as a group in the past two years watching their fortunes grow by $2.7 billion a day for a total of $26 trillion (63 per cent) of all new wealth, while $16 trillion (37 per cent) went to the rest of the world combined, Oxfam says.
