QUESTION PERIOD — Finance
Income and Wealth Inequality
October 2, 2020
My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate. Senator Gold, the government is well aware that Canada has a growing wealth inequality problem that tends to worsen in times of crisis. For instance, since the March 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, the total wealth of the 20 richest Canadians has increased by $37 billion. Recent polling from Abacus Data indicates that 85% of Canadians think it’s at least important to create or increase taxes for the richest Canadians to recover from the COVID-19 crisis. Based on the recent Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report on wealth distribution, 10% on the 13,800 households with wealth above $20 million would yield an estimated $56.1 billion in its first year, and could repay the entire direct emergency funding today in less than five years.
If you can, please provide more details about the government’s commitment to:
. . . identify additional ways to tax extreme wealth inequality, including by concluding work to limit the stock option deduction for wealthy individuals at large, established corporations, and addressing corporate tax avoidance by digital giants.
Thank you for your question. It’s the position of the government — and it’s been clear about this — that building a fair, more robust but more inclusive economy that works for all Canadians is of central importance, not only to this government but to the stability and health of our country. Since 2015, the government has taken a number of measures to improve fairness by closing loopholes, eliminating measures that disproportionately favour the wealthy, cracking down on tax evasion — we had a good question yesterday from Senator Downe in the chamber — and reducing taxes for the middle class and people who are working hard to climb the ladder to join it. The government’s position is that when it adopted a tax cut for the middle class that kicked in on January 1, 2016, it took another step in that direction.
You make reference to a number of issues that the government is committed to working on. I am not in a position to share the specific details of exactly how that will be implemented in the period before us. When those details become available, they will be made public and I will happily share them in this chamber.
