A report based on a new modelling approach finds that Canada’s wealthiest families possess billions more of the nation’s riches than previously believed.
The Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer says the top one per cent of Canada’s families hold about 25.6 per cent of the wealth, up from the 13.7 per cent estimate under previous methodology.
According to the report, the amount of money held by all Canadian families totals $11.7 trillion if they liquidated all assets and paid off all liabilities — 25.6 per cent would equate to about $3 trillion.
The report finds that the top 0.5 per cent of Canadian families hold 20.5 per cent or $2.4 trillion of the wealth, up from the previous estimate of 9.2 per cent.
The new calculation incorporates information from Canadian Business magazine’s 2017 Richest People List, with figures from Statistics Canada’s 2016 net worth survey and its fourth quarter 2016 National Balance Sheet Accounts report.
The federal office said it investigated new ways to estimate wealth in Canada following a request during last year’s federal election to provide an estimate of the revenues that could be raised by a tax on the wealthiest families.
“The distribution of wealth among households is heavily skewed toward the wealthiest families,” the report notes.
“In Canada, a small proportion of families at the top of the distribution possess net worth that is orders of magnitude higher than the country’s median net worth.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 17, 2020.
