Canadian Capitalism

Canadian Business magazine has come out with its annual listing of the richest 100 people in Canada.

There are 61 Canadian billionaires on the list. That represents under 0.0002% of the national population.

Their combined wealth is $162 billion. That is approximately 5 times as large as the federal government’s 2010 deficit.

Those 61 individuals own about 6% of all personal net worth in Canada (which totalled some $2.8 trillion in 2010). In contrast, the bottom 50% of Canadians owns about 3% of all personal net worth, according to the most recent survey on the distribution of wealth (which was conducted in 2005). Those 61 individuals therefore own twice as much wealth, as the bottom 17 million Canadians.

Average billionaire wealth grew by 8.4% in the last year. That’s over three times as fast as the 2.5% increase in average hourly earnings for Canadian workers in 2010.

The average wealth of billionaires increased by just under $100 million each in the last year. In contrast, average household net financial wealth per capita in Canada grew by $524 in 2010.

It would take 8.7 million person-years of employment, working at Ontario’s current minimum wage ($10.25 per hour) to produce $162 billion: the same value as the combined wealth of the 61 billionaires.

Taken from here